Study Determines Ultraprocessed Foods Linked to Early Cancer and Death of Both Men and Women

According to two new, large-scale studies of people in the United States and Italy published on Wednesday in the British Medical Journal (The BMJ), consuming too many ultraprocessed foods substantially increases men's risk of colorectal cancer and can eventually lead to heart disease and early death in both women and men.

Ultraprocessed foods commonly include prepackaged soups, sauces, frozen pizza, ready-to-eat meals, and pleasure foods such as sausages, sodas, candies, and many more.

Marion Nestle, the Paulette Goddard Professor Emerita of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health at New York University, and author of numerous books on food politics and marketing, including 2015's "Soda Politics: Taking on Big Soda (and Winning)," told CNN Health many studies associate ultra-processed foods to obesity, cancer, cardiovascular disease, and entire mortality.

Such type of foods is extremely linked to an increased risk for chronic disease as the two studies continued the consistency while digging for more information that is helpful to the people.

How are ultraproccesed food associated with Cancer?

Processed meats - ham, hotdog, and corned beef have long been affiliated with an increasing number of bowel cancer in both women and men, says the World Health Organization, American Cancer Society, and the American Institute for Cancer Research.

However, the new study found that nearly all types of ultraprocessed foods played a role to some degree.

Fang Fang Zhang, co-senior author of the study, a cancer epidemiologist and chair of the division of nutrition epidemiology and data science at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University in Boston, said that men are found to have the highest quintile of processed food consumption, compared to the data in the lowest quintile which had a 29 percent higher risk of developing and having colorectal cancer.

A United States-based study examined the diets of more than 200,000 men and women aged 28 years and above and found a connection between processed foods and colorectal cancer, which appears to be the third most diagnosed cancer in the U.S. men, excluding women.

Hence, the new study didn't reveal why women do not have the same risk for colorectal cancer as factors of sex difference, different roles, sex hormones, and obesity may affect but is clearly unknown as of the moment.

Dr. Robin Mendelssohn, a gastroenterologist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, who was not involved in the study, argues that women may have chosen healthier processed foods than men.

Read Also: How Excessive Eating of Pizza Can Affect Children's Health

How it can be linked to an early death?

An analysis published in The BMJ analogized the role of nutrient-poor foods such as foods high in sugar and saturated or trans-fat versus ultraprocessed foods that develop chronic disease and early death. The researchers have determined that both types of foods independently increased the risk of two: early death and cardiovascular diseases.

Marialaura Bonaccio, first author, an epidemiologist at the department of epidemiology and prevention at the Istituto di Ricovero e Cura a Carattere Scientifico (IRCCS) Neurologico Mediterraneo Neuromed of Pozzilli, Italy, said that the researchers discovered when they compared the two different foods to check which contributed the most and found out that such processed foods were critical in defining the risk of morality.

The second study, The Moli-sani study, followed more than 22,000 people within 12 years in the Molise region of Italy. It began in March 2005 and was designed to assess risk factors for cancer, heart, and brain disease.

More than 80 percent of the foods identified by the guidelines in the study that appear nutritionally unhealthy were also ultraprocessed. The data suggest that the inflated risk of morality is not because of a few products' poor nutritional quality but because most of the food is ultraprocessed.

On the other hand, Americans are the most affected by such diseases as processed foods nearly become part of their lifestyle, which is hard to change and totally remove. Children ages 3 to 5 are the ones who consumed more ultraprocessed foods and had poorer locomotor skills as a result.

Related Article: Fast Food Consumption: How Fast Food Affects Children's Overall Health