About 14% of premature deaths in England attributable to unhealthy food, the most among surveyed countries

Consuming large amounts of ultra-processed food (UPF) increases the risk of an early death, according to a international study that has reignited calls for a crackdown on UPF.

Each 10% extra intake of UPF, such as bread, cakes and ready meals, increases someone’s risk of dying before they reach 75 by 3%, according to research in countries including the US and England.

UPF is so damaging to health that it is implicated in as many as one in seven of all premature deaths that occur in some countries, according to a paper in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

They are associated with 124,107 early deaths in the US a year and 17,781 deaths every year in England, the review of dietary and mortality data from eight countries found.

    • javiwhite@feddit.ukEnglish
      6·
      3 hours ago

      It seems cheese just missed the mark for ultra status according to this specification I found on webMD.

      a quick summarisation is that there are 4 groups:

      1. Unprocessed or minimally processed foods (berries, nuts etc).
      2. Processed culinary ingredients (oils, butter, sugars etc).
      3. Processed foods (cheese, bread. Stuff with 2+ ingredients).
      4. Ultra-processed food and drink products (preservatives, additives, all the bad -ives).

      So I’m guessing a hot dog would be ultra processed due to preservatives and additives often found in the ‘meat’.

      That was an interesting rabbit hole to go down. Feels as though what is considered ultra-processed by the experts, is what us laymen tend to refer to as processed foods. I suppose technically their terminology is correct (the best kind of correct ofc), but it just feels like an exaggeration due to everyday usage of the term being what it is.

      Edit: formatting.

    • HellsBelle@sh.itjust.worksOPEnglish
      38·
      12 hours ago

      How is milk processed? It’s pasteurized, which means it’s heated to kill bacteria. Nothing is added to the milk … so no, it is NOT considered a ‘pprocessed’ food.

      • porous_grey_matter@lemmy.mlEnglish
        61·
        3 hours ago

        Firstly, pasteurisation is most definitely a process.

        Secondly, it’s very unlikely you are buying milk which has only been pasteurised, it has very likely at least also been homogenised, after being mixed from various different sources in order to produce a mill standardised fat & milk solids. The vast majority of the time rather than just being blended, it has been centrifugally separated into fractions that are then recombined in order to create a standard product.

        None of this is really bad, btw, but it is 100% processing.