The issue with these foods seemed to go beyond their sugar, fat and salt content, the authors wrote. They may also be hazardous for health because of how the food matrix has been altered, the inclusion of various food additives during processing, as well as contaminants from packaging material, like bisphenol A. “Any of these may affect endocrine pathways or the gut microbiome, and contribute to subsequent disease risk,” the authors said.
Sweets and desserts, savory snacks, plant-based alternatives and ready-to eat or heat dishes were not associated with risk of multimorbidity, while consumption of ultra-processed breads and cereals – likely because they contain fibre – seemed to lessen the risk.
But why the discrepancy?
Ultra-processed foods may be too broadly defined, so lumping them in one category doesn’t account for nutritional differences, says Daisy Coyle, an accredited practising dietitian and research fellow in Food Policy at the George Institute of Global Health.
“As the NOVA system [used to define ultra-processed foods] is very broad, it groups wholegrain packaged bread in with foods high in saturated fat, sugar and salt such as confectionery, ice creams and processed breakfast cereals,” she says.
“There is also the issue of relativity,” adds Professor Simone Pettigrew, program director of Health Promotion and Behaviour Change the George Institute of Global Health. “For example, my favourite pre-prepared soup that I eat regularly contains lots of nutrition but would technically be classified as UPF. By comparison, if I had home-cooked, deep-fried potato wedges, it wouldn’t be ultra-processed but would have negative dietary implications if consumed regularly.”
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While the nuance is often lost and certainly wholegrain UPF bread is better than white bread, it doesn’t mean foods that have been highly processed and still contain an array of additives are good for you.
“I don’t think that this [study] shows that they’re healthy,” says Jane Martin, executive manager of Food for Health Alliance. “None of this is black and white. But it seems to show that some categories of ultra-processed foods have potentially more of an impact on your health than others.”
And while Martin says that encouraging reformulation of ultra-processed foods – to be lower in salt and sugar, or higher in fibre for instance – can have a “quite powerful” effect on our health, it still doesn’t make those foods ones that should make up the majority of our daily sustenance.
Dr Ben Wood, a research fellow at Deakin University’s Global Centre for Preventative Health, published a paper earlier this month exploring how big food corporation’s obligation to deliver maximum profits to shareholders means the health of those they are selling to is low on the priority list.
This makes UPFs bad for us in more ways than one. “Not just for health and environmental reasons, but also for various social and economic reasons,” says Wood.
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