cigarette filters in the 1950s<\/a> as protective innovations that \u201cin practice offered little meaningful benefit\u201d.<\/p>\nQuick GuideWhat is ultra-processed food?Show<\/p>\n
Ultra-processed food involves extremely high levels of manufacturing to produce. It includes all formula milk, many commercially produced baby and toddler foods, fizzy drinks and sweets, fast food, snacks, biscuits and cakes, as well as mass-produced bread and breakfast cereals, ready meals and desserts.<\/p>\n
What do these foods contain?<\/p>\n
Ultra-processed ingredients include fruit juice concentrates, maltodextrin, dextrose, golden syrup, hydrogenated oils, soya protein isolate, gluten, \u201cmechanically separated meat\u201d, organic dried egg whites, as well as rice and potato starch and corn fibre. Additives such as monosodium glutamate, colourings, thickeners and glazing agents are also ultra-processed.<\/p>\n
Why does it matter?<\/p>\n
Ultra-processed food contains higher levels of salt, sugar, fat and additives that are associated with obesity, cancer, type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. They also tend to have lower levels of protein, zinc, magnesium, vitamins A, C, D, E, B12 and niacin necessary for a child\u2019s optimal growth and development. It is also thought that other mechanisms are at play in UPFs being associated with worse health outcomes, including negative effects on the development of gut microbiota.
By Anna Bawden<\/p>\n
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\u201cMany UPFs share more characteristics with cigarettes than with minimally processed fruits or vegetables and therefore warrant regulation commensurate with the significant public health risks they pose,\u201d they concluded.<\/p>\n
One of the authors, Prof Ashley Gearhardt of the University of Michigan, a clinical psychologist specialising in addiction, said her patients made the same links: \u201cThey would say, \u2018I feel addicted to this stuff, I crave it \u2013 I used to smoke cigarettes [and] now I have the same habit but it\u2019s with soda and doughnuts. I know it\u2019s killing me; I want to quit, but I can\u2019t.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
The debate around UPFs fits a well-worn pattern in the field of addiction, according to Gearhardt. She said: \u201cWe just blame it on the individual for a while and say \u2018oh, you know, just smoke in moderation, drink in moderation\u2019 \u2013 and eventually we get to a point where we understand the levers that the industry can pull to create products that can really hook people.\u201d<\/p>\n
While food, unlike tobacco, is essential for survival, the authors argue that the distinction makes action doubly necessary because it is difficult to opt out of the modern food environment.<\/p>\n
Gearhardt said it should be possible to distinguish between harmful UPFs and other foodstuffs in the same way that alcoholic drinks are differentiated from other beverages.<\/p>\n
UPFs meet \u201cestablished benchmarks\u201d as to whether a substance should be considered addictive, the paper argues, with design features that \u201ccan drive compulsive use\u201d \u2013 although \u201cthe harms of UPFs are clear, irrespective of their addictive nature\u201d.<\/p>\n
The authors suggested that lessons from tobacco regulation, \u201cincluding litigation, marketing restrictions and structural interventions\u201d, could offer a guide to reducing harm related to UPFs, calling for public health efforts to \u201cshift from individual responsibility to food industry accountability\u201d.<\/p>\n
Prof Martin Warren, chief scientific officer at the Quadram Institute, a specialist food research centre, said that while there were parallels between UPFs and tobacco, the authors risked \u201coverreach\u201d in their comparisons.<\/p>\n
There were questions, he said, over whether UPFs were, like nicotine, \u201cintrinsically addictive in a pharmacological sense, or whether they mainly exploit learned preferences, reward conditioning and convenience\u201d.<\/p>\n
He said it was also important to consider whether the adverse health effects attributed to UPFs came from their contents, or because they replaced \u201cwhole foods rich in fibre, micronutrients and protective phytochemicals\u201d. He said: \u201cThis distinction matters, because it influences whether regulatory responses should mirror tobacco control or instead prioritise dietary quality, reformulation standards, and food system diversification.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dr Githinji Gitahi, chief executive of Amref Health<\/a> Africa, said: \u201cThis journal article reinforces a growing public health alarm sounding across Africa [where] corporates have found a comfortable, and profitable, nexus: weak government regulation on harmful products and a changing pattern of consumption.<\/p>\n\u201cAll this places new and preventable pressures on already stretched health systems,\u201d he said. \u201cWithout publicly led interventions on the rising burden of non-communicable diseases, we risk health systems\u2019 collapse.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ultra-processed foods (UPFs) have more in common with cigarettes than with fruit or vegetables, and require far tighter…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":278402,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[103,61,60,446],"class_list":{"0":"post-278401","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nutrition","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-nutrition"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=278401"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278401\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/278402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=278401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=278401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=278401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}