Time for governments to clamp down on processed food

It’s time governments got serious about processed food.  It’s a major cause of premature death and chronic disease, a new study has found.

Ultra-processed foods (UPFs)—which usually include five or more additives such as sweeteners, preservatives and colourants—are responsible for around 14 percent of premature deaths in the US and UK, where they form a major part of the overall diet.

This equates to around 124,000 premature deaths in the US, and nearly 18,000 deaths in the UK, say researchers from the Darcy Ribeiro University in Brasília who looked at diets and data on deaths from Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, UK and the US.

Because the study was observational, the researchers say they cannot absolutely establish that UPFs directly cause premature death and chronic disease, but looking at the extent of the foods in the diets and the death and disease rates in the eight countries studied suggests a connection.

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