Concerns about the health effects of ultra-processed foods are growing, as studies increasingly link them to conditions such as heart disease, diabetes, and even early death.\u00a0But scientists\u00a0are\u00a0still debating\u00a0what’s\u00a0driving those risks: the nutritional quality of these foods-which are often high in saturated fat, sodium, and added sugars-or the industrial processing and additives used to make them.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A new study from\u00a0researchers at\u00a0the\u00a0Food is Medicine Institute\u00a0at the\u202fGerald J. and Dorothy R. Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy\u00a0at Tufts University, published in\u00a0American Journal of Public Health, suggests the processing itself may play an independent role.\u00a0The researchers\u00a0found that people who ate more ultra-processed foods had worse health outcomes,\u00a0even after accounting for the overall nutritional quality of\u00a0the\u00a0foods.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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The findings suggest ultra-processed-food\u00a0factors beyond nutrients-such as changes to foods’ cellular\u00a0structure, loss of beneficial\u00a0chemical\u00a0compounds, additives, and chemicals from packaging-may\u00a0create health risks not addressed by traditional nutrition metrics or policies.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Dariush Mozaffarian,\u00a0study’s senior author,\u00a0cardiologist and director, Food is Medicine Institute<\/p>\n
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For the\u00a0observational\u00a0study, the researchers\u00a0analyzed data from\u00a010\u00a0consecutive cycles of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) from 1999 to 2018, linked to National Death Index through 2018. Study participants had completed one or two 24-hour dietary recalls.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Using a standard classification system,\u00a0the team grouped foods based on how they were made-from minimally processed food-based ingredients\u00a0like fruits and vegetables to ultra-processed products made with industrial ingredients and additives not typically used in cooking.\u00a0The researchers also rated the nutritional quality of foods using a system that scores foods based on their overall\u00a0healthfulness. Each participant received an overall diet-quality score based on the foods they reported eating.\u00a0The team then examined how ultra-processed food consumption was linked to current health measures-such as weight, blood sugar, and cholesterol-as well as long-term risk of death.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For every 10% increase in calories from ultra-processed foods, the researchers found worse health markers.\u00a0People who ate more of these foods tended to have higher body\u00a0weight,\u00a0worse\u00a0blood sugar control,\u00a0higher\u00a0blood pressure,\u00a0and less\u00a0favorable\u00a0cholesterol levels. They were also more likely to have conditions such as diabetes,\u00a0metabolic syndrome,\u00a0and cancer and\u00a0had a slightly higher risk of dying during the study period.\u00a0<\/p>\n
These links remained even after researchers accounted for\u00a0reported foods’ nutrient\u00a0quality\u00a0and\u00a0the\u00a0amounts of saturated fat, added sugar, or sodium\u00a0present\u00a0in the ultra-processed foods. The patterns were\u00a0largely the\u00a0same across different\u00a0subgroups of people.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Ultra-processed\u00a0foods\u00a0make up\u00a0a substantial portion of the American diet,\u00a0accounting for more than 50% of adults’ and about\u00a060% of\u00a0children’s\u00a0caloric intake,” said\u00a0Juna Hatta-Langedyk,\u00a0first author and\u00a0an undergraduate\u00a0biology student\u00a0at Tufts.\u00a0“Understanding how these foods affect health\u00a0is a critical public health priority, given the large proportion of the population affected.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Addressing structural and policy-related barriers to accessing\u00a0fresh and minimally processed\u00a0foods remains critical for promoting dietary\u00a0changes\u00a0that improve the health and life span for all Americans,”\u00a0said\u00a0Mozaffarian.\u00a0“Our findings\u00a0can help inform many current policy efforts, such as a national definition of ultra-processed foods,\u00a0and multiple states’\u00a0endeavors\u00a0to propose and pass laws addressing ultra-processed foods, including warning labels, bans on certain additives, and limits in school meals.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
Lu Wang, Bingbing Fan, and Peilin Shi from the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy are also co-authors on this study.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Source:<\/p>\n
Journal reference:<\/p>\n
Hatta-Langedyk, J., et al. (2026)\u00a0Ultraprocessed Food Versus Diet Quality in Relation to Cardiometabolic Health and All-Cause Mortality: NHANES 1999\u20132018.\u00a0American Journal of Public Health.\u00a0 DOI:\u00a010.2105\/AJPH.2026.308499.\u00a0https:\/\/ajph.aphapublications.org\/doi\/abs\/10.2105\/AJPH.2026.308499<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Concerns about the health effects of ultra-processed foods are growing, as studies increasingly link them to conditions such…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":41707,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[4250,4251,26312,3535,3619,564,134,2862,5457,3193,111,139,556,69,1675,1518,32037,26851],"class_list":["post-460699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-blood","tag-blood-sugar","tag-cholesterol","tag-diabetes","tag-diet","tag-food","tag-health","tag-heart","tag-heart-disease","tag-medicine","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nutrition","tag-nz","tag-public-health","tag-research","tag-ultra-processed-food","tag-ultra-processed-foods"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=460699"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460699\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=460699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=460699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=460699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}