Ultra-processed foods up risk of all-cause mortality

People who regularly consume ultra-processed foods are at higher risk of death from all causes, according to the Adventist Health Study-2 involving a population with many vegetarians.

Additionally, the total of animal-based food intake such as meat, dairy, and eggs does not appear to contribute to mortality risk, but consumption of red meat does.

In this observational, prospective cohort study, the authors examined the relations of two dietary factors (ie, ultra-processed and animal-based foods), adjusted for each other, with all-cause mortality. A total of 95,597 men and women were recruited from Seventh-day Adventist churches across North America, which yielded an analytic sample of 77,437 after exclusions.

The following dietary factors as exposure of interest were measured using a food frequency questionnaire: 1) proportion of dietary energy from ultra-processed foods (other processing levels and specific substitutions in some models) and 2) proportion of dietary energy from animal-based foods (red meat, poultry, fish, and eggs/dairy separately in some models).

The authors obtained data on all-cause mortality, the main outcome, through 2015 from the National Death Index. They performed analyses using proportional hazards regression.

Overall, 9,293 deaths were identified. Mutually adjusted continuous linear models of both dietary factors showed that the hazard ratio (HR) for the 90th vs the 10th percentile of the proportion of dietary energy from ultra-processed food was 1.14 (95 percent confidence interval [CI], 1.07‒1.21, comparing 47.7 percent with 12.1 percent dietary energy), while that for animal-based food was 1.01 (95 percent CI, 0.95‒1.07, comparing 25.0 percent with 0.4 percent dietary energy). Evidence of interaction was not observed (p=0.36).

Of note, only red meat among animal-based foods correlated with mortality (HR, 1.14, 95 percent CI, 1.08‒1.22, comparing 6.2 percent vs 0 percent dietary energy).

“These findings suggest that high consumption of ultra-processed foods may be an important indicator of mortality,” the authors said.