How Likely Is It That Ultra-Processed Foods (UPFs) Will Kill You?

Without adjusting for knowledge of your diet, if you are an average American, then the chance of a premature death being the result of consuming ultra-processed foods is 14%.

Think about that for the moment: if you knew that the chance of a premature death being the result of your neighbor murdering you would be 14%, you’d probably feel strongly about that! You might even take steps to avoid your neighbor. Yet, millions of Americans effectively have a killer lurking in their kitchen, and what do they do? Go to the store to look for more of the same.

See for example: Ultra-processed foods make up nearly half of US grocery purchases, raising public health concerns

Of course you, dear reader, are quite possibly not the average American; indeed, we expect most of our readers are more health-conscious than that.

About that 14% figure

This comes from a very large study that found…

❝The meta-analysis showed a linear dose–response association between the ultraprocessed food consumption and all-cause mortality (RR for each 10% increase in percentage ultraprocessed food=1.03; 95% CI=1.02, 1.04).

Considering the magnitude of the association between ultraprocessed foods intake and all-cause mortality and the ultraprocessed food dietary share number (percentage ultraprocessed food) in each of the 8 selected countries, estimations varied from 4% (Colombia) to 14% (United Kingdom and U.S.) of premature deaths attributable to ultraprocessed food intake.❞

There are (as you might expect) a lot of stats in the study; for brevity we’ll not include them all, but another interesting statistic is:

❝adherence to ultraprocessed dietary pattern was associated with 32 poor physical and mental health outcomes❞

…which is really a lot of ways to go wrong in terms of looking after one’s body and brain!

You can read the paper in full, here:

Premature Mortality Attributable to Ultraprocessed Food Consumption in 8 Countries

How to play the odds better

Ultra-processed foods have a (statistically well-deserved) bad reputation. However, it’s not necessarily the processing itself that makes them bad; that’s just a high correlation.

For example, tofu is by definition ultra-processed (because there are several stages to its processing), and yet is one of the healthiest things one can eat.

See for example: Not all ultra-processed foods are bad for your health, whatever you might have heard

So, what’s generally the problem? According to one of the researchers in the above study,

❝UPFs affect health beyond the individual impact of high content of critical nutrients (sodium, trans fats, and sugar) because of the changes in the foods during industrial processing and the use of artificial ingredients, including colorants, artificial flavors and sweeteners, emulsifiers, and many other additives and processing aids, so assessing deaths from all-causes associated with UPF consumption allows an overall estimate of the effect of industrial food processing on health.❞

In short: there’s a lot going on, and we don’t know half of it half so well as we would like.

So what to do about it? Minimizing ultra-processed foods seems sensible, of course, and when it comes to things that are regulars in our diet, then perhaps giving them extra attention with regard to investigating their ingredients and the processes involved, to decide in an informed fashion whether they deserve to stay in our diet or not.

If you’d like to get technical about it, in a way that’s as labor-unintensive as reasonably possible, here’s a great resource:

How Processed Is The Food You Buy, Really?

Take care!