In your quest for a longer, healthier life, steering clear of highly refined foods—including packaged snacks, processed meats, sweetened beverages, candies, and more—can make a major difference. This blog post will delve into the detrimental effects of processed and ultra-processed foods on your health, providing targeted advice on making informed dietary choices that can help prolong your life.
What Are Processed Foods?
Before we explain why highly processed foods can be so harmful, let’s answer the question: “What does ‘processed food’ mean?” and establish a clear processed food definition.
Processed food is any food that has been altered for the sake of convenience, longevity, or flavor. Forms of processing include cooking, curing, canning, and other types of preservation. By contrast, foods that are not processed are those in their natural state, and include whole fruits and vegetables, fresh meat, eggs, and other unaltered ingredients.
Keep in mind that there are different degrees of food processing, necessitating the subcategories of “processed” and “ultra-processed,” as we’ll describe in the following section.
Processed vs. Ultra-Processed Foods
Now that we’ve defined processed foods, what are ultra-processed foods? Also known as heavily processed foods, ultra-processed foods typically contain industrial ingredients and additives as well as high levels of refined carbs, preservatives, and unhealthy fats that can be harmful to your health, especially when consumed in large quantities.
Next up are some examples to help you better understand the difference between these two categories.
Examples of Processed Foods
Here’s a list of processed foods you might commonly encounter in the United States:
- Canned fish
- Fruits in syrup
- Canned vegetables
- Fresh bread
- Cheese
Examples of Ultra-Processed Foods
And here’s a list of ultra-processed foods that are widely consumed in the U.S.:
- Soda
- Packaged snacks like potato chips
- Frozen meals
- Breakfast cereals
- Instant soups
- Mass-produced pastries
- Processed meat
What’s Wrong with Ultra-Processed Foods?
So: why are processed foods bad?
In fact, they’re not inherently bad. Some forms of food processing (such as cooking or preservation) don’t alter foods’ nutritional value, but rather make them easier to consume, digest, or store.
But ultra-processed foods tend to be pretty unhealthy, as the list of examples above illustrates. This is because they’re high in sugar, refined carbs, artificial additives, “empty” calories, trans fats, and other detrimental ingredients. They also tend to taste pretty good, prompting you to consume even more of those ingredients.
Surplus of Sugar and Refined Carbohydrates
Products like packaged cakes and cookies contain white flour and added sweeteners, meaning that they’re high-glycemic and rapidly spike your blood sugar by flooding your bloodstream with glucose. The lack of fiber or protein that would otherwise slow the absorption of these carbs means that your blood sugar tends to increase and then drop rapidly. When your body experiences these blood glucose spikes, it produces lots of insulin to compensate, promoting angiogenesis that causes fat cells to grow and can even increase cellular replication and growth of tumors.
Artificial Ingredients
Artificial ingredients include food additives like synthetic flavors, colors, artificial sweeteners, emulsifiers, and preservatives, which can have a range of adverse health effects including allergies, endocrine disruption, weight gain, and even cancer. Keep in mind that the FDA regulates these additives, but it can still be beneficial to limit your intake of them overall due to their potential harmful effects.
“Empty” Calories
So-called “empty” calories are those that are found in foods with relatively few micronutrients, meaning that these foods are high in fats (from ultraprocessed oils) and carbs (from refined grains and sugar)—they are calorie dense—without providing nutritional value for your body.
High in Trans Fats
Trans fats—also known as partially hydrogenated oils—are the most unhealthy fats to consume. They are formed by adding hydrogen to vegetable oil, which turns the oil into a solid at room temperature and helps it last longer without going rancid. Trans fats increase your risk of type 2 diabetes, strokes, and heart attacks, and can also increase your levels of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) or “bad” cholesterol, which tends to build up on the walls of your arteries over time.
What Are Some of the Health Risks of Eating Too Many Ultra-Processed Foods?
It’s OK to eat “junk food” in moderation, but when ultra-processed foods make up a large proportion of your diet, this can have lots of negative health effects that can even shorten your life.
Diabetes
Because ultra-processed foods are high in sugars and refined carbs, they spike blood sugar levels, which can lead to insulin resistance over time. If insulin resistance becomes severe enough, it can turn into type 2 diabetes.
Obesity
Consuming large quantities of ultra-processed foods can lead you to become obese, which can decrease your life expectancy considerably.
Cardiovascular Disease
Cardiovascular disease is another risk associated with high consumption of ultra-processed foods.
Inflammation
Although more studies are needed to confirm this relationship, high consumption of ultra-processed foods may contribute to chronic inflammation in the body.
What’s Your Life Expectancy?
If this article has you rethinking your diet and considering ways you can improve your daily menu to improve your health, give the Life Expectancy Calculator a try for an estimate of your current life expectancy. This number can act as a baseline against which you can compare future life expectancy estimates, once you’ve altered your health-related behaviors for the better.
