Eating Processed Food Is Killing You Faster, Proves Study Of 44,000 People Over 8 Years
Maybe you enjoy your favourite cereal for breakfast. Maybe bacon is your most cherished addition to a meal. Perhaps you canĄ¯t do without soft drinks. All of these are processed foods and arenĄ¯t just bad for you, they could be shortening your life.
It could be you enjoy your favourite cereal for breakfast. Maybe bacon is your most cherished addition to a meal. Perhaps you can't do without soft drinks.
All of these are processed foods, and all of them aren't just bad for you, they could be shortening your life.
Images courtesy: Reuters
According to a new study in JAMA Internal Medicine by a group of French researchers, too many processed foods can actually shorten our average lifespan. The group studied 44,000 French men and women and their diets over eight years. Their average age at the start of the study was 56.
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For all of these people, about 29 percent of their energy intake was from ultraprocessed foods, including things like instant noodles and soups, breakfast cereals, energy drinks, processed frozen meats, as well as heat-to-eat meals and packaged snacks.
Through the course of the study, 602 of the participants died, though most of the deaths were caused by cancer or cardiovascular disease. Yet, even after adjusting for other factors, the study had dire results to report.
They concluded that, for adults above the age of 45, every 10 percent increase of ultraprocessed foods in their diet directly correlated with a 14 percent increased risk of early death.
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The researchers theorised that the high-temperature processing methods for these foods may form contaminants in them, the packaging lead to contaminants entering, or the additives put in to preserve them might be carcinogenic.
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"This is an association, and we cannot prove that it is causal," said one of the paper's co-authors, Mathilde Touvier. "People may be scared and think they're going to die if they eat these foods," she said, "but we need not be alarmist."
