Highly processed foods are commonly eaten but can lead to an earlier death.
Ultra-processed foods are one of the causes of more than 30 health problems, including heart disease, cancer, and anxiety. Highly processed foods are growing in popularity around the world.
What is ultra-processed food?
Highly processed foods are foods that contain ingredients that we do not use in home cooking. Highly processed food ingredients including:
- Various chemicals
- Food colouring
- Sweeteners to make food appetizing. They provides a better taste and texture, such as in soft drinks, sweets, and chicken nuggets, etc.
What are the types of processed foods?
1. Unprocessed foods or minimally processed foods, most of which are trimmed to remove inedible parts or through grinding, separation, filtering, roasting, boiling, fermentation, drying, etc., pasteurization, refrigeration, freezing, then packaged in containers or airtight packaging to maintain the quality and freshness of natural food.
2. Processed culinary ingredients such as oil, butter, sugar, and salt to prepare household cooking.
3. Processed foods use oil, sugar, or salt as ingredients and food preservation methods by pickling, smoking, etc. Curing to allow ingredients to penetrate into the food and change the nature of the food, such as:
- fruits and vegetables pickles
- Canned fish
Cured meat products
4. Ultra-processed foods use standardized industrial production processes, and have a variety of products added that extend their shelf life, such as with:
- Mystery meat
- Margarine
- Ice Cream
- Chips
- Soda
- Frozen meals
- Canned Foods
- Instant Noodles
- Cereal
How do we know if it's a highly processed food?
Any product that contains at least 5 ingredients has the potential to be classified as a “highly processed food”. These foods tend to contain high amounts of salt, sugar, and saturated fat. (Public health expert from the University of Navarra in Spain.)
- Highly processed foods may be in the form of “fresh food”, but they will have a long shelf life.
In the United Kingdom and in many other countries, this will be highlighted to the consumer on the packaging.
What is the harm for the body of eating highly processed foods?
Although there is no clear evidence about the health effects of eating a highly processed diet, from the results of a study in the British Medical Journal which uses data from more than 9.9 million people around the world, It has been found that eating highly processed foods is associated with many illnesses, such as:
- The risk of dying from cardiovascular disease (such as acute heart attack and ruptured cerebral artery) is increased.
- Obesity
- Type 2 diabetes
- Sleeping problems
- Anxiety and depression
How to consume processed food safely
To ensure that processed food is consumed appropriately, you should always read the nutrition label to make sure that it does not contain excess salt, too much sugar and fat. Currently, the nutrition symbol “Healthier Choice” is used to show that the food product has passed the criteria to have an appropriate amount of sugar, fat, and sodium.
Limiting sweet, oily, and salty foods reduces risk factors for chronic non-communicable diseases (NCDs). Most importantly, you should eat all 5 food groups, exercise regularly, and get enough rest for good health life, free from disease.
Reference:
1. Monteiro CA, Cannon G, Levy RB, et al. Ultra-processed foods: what they are and how to identify them. Public Health Nutr2019;22:936-41.
2.Srour B, Fezeu LK, Kesse-Guyot E, et al. Ultra-processed food intake and risk of
cardiovascular disease: prospective cohort study (NutriNet-Santé).
BMJ2019;365:1451.
3. Monteiro CA, Moubarac JC, Cannon G, Ng SW, Popkin B. Ultra-processed
products are becoming dominant in the global food system. Obes
Rev2013;14(Suppl 2):21-8.
4. Juul F, Parekh N, Martinez-Steele E, Monteiro CA, Chang VW. Ultra-processed
food consumption among US adults from 2001 to 2018. Am J Clin
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