A Closer Look at Ultra-Processed Food Risk

I think the results of the UK Biobank ultra-processed food (UPF) study were interesting, as I relayed on Tuesday, but the researchers went further. They estimated how substituting non-UPF plant-sourced foods for any of the other three sources of food resulted in a reduction of cardiovascular disease (CVD) morbidity and mortality. Further, and what got the headlines, substituting UPF plant-sourced foods for any of the other three increased the risk of CVD morbidity and mortality.

That led some experts to speculate about how processing destroyed fiber and phytonutrients and may even increase the amounts of negative chemicals that have been associated with disease in UPF plant-sourced foods. The problem is that there are no randomized-controlled trials to prove that. Here are a few things that stood out to me.

Theoretically…

The most important issue was this: The determination made about UPF increasing or decreasing the risk of CVD was theoretical and based on calculations. They used a 10% substitution for the non-UPF or UPF plant-sourced foods to calculate the expected raising or lowering of risk. What they could have done was divide the subjects into actual groups based on percentage of nutrients they actually ate instead of running theoretical statistical formulae. My impression is that so few people were diagnosed or died from CVD during the nine-year observational period that they wouldn’t have enough subjects for each group.

So few subjects were diagnosed or died? In the entire subject population—over 118,000 subjects followed for nine years—there were only 7,806 people diagnosed with CVD and only 529 deaths from CVD. Only? Most of the subjects were between 40 and 70, prime time for being diagnosed with some form of CVD.

When looking at the percentage of UPF-plant-sourced foods, the highest percentages were from industrialized packaged breads (9.9%),

pastries, buns, and cakes (6.9%) and biscuits (the kind called cookies in the U.S.) at 3.9%. That’s over half the amount of UPF-plant based foods on the list provided in the research paper. While wheat and other grains were certainly stripped of nutrients in the ultra-processing, that’s nothing new—that’s been happening to flour for over 100 years. What was missing were any fruits or vegetables processed in that manner.

The Bottom Line

Should you take the corn chips and vegan burgers out of your cart? Don’t get the impression that I think UPF plant-based foods should be eaten in mass quantities. I don’t. But I don’t think this study provided much direction in a reasonable response to the issue. On top of that, the analysis of the data may be just plain wrong. We’re not done yet, but we’ll get to that after the 4th of July. One more holiday challenge coming up on Tuesday.

What are you prepared to do today?