Hey, everyone, Welcome to another edition of Wisdom Wednesdays. Today, I want to talk about a new research paper that's just been released that I think is yet another nil in the coffin of ultra processed foods. So it was published in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine and the title is Premature Mortality Attributable to ultra process food Consumption in eight Countries. So what they did was they looked at a number of different countries, ones in Central and
South America. So they picked Columbia, Brazil, they picked Chile and Mexico, and then they picked Australia, Canada, United Kingdom
and the US. And the reason for picking these countries is that a couple of them were low consumers of ultra process foods i Columbia and Brazil, a couple were intermediate consumers Chile and Mexico, and the rest of them were high Australia, Canada, United Kingdom, and the United States, which if you've listened to my podcast before, are four of the biggest of the four biggest consumers of ultra processed foods in the world, the biggest one being the
United States, swiftly followed by the United Kingdom, and then we have Canada and Australia. And what they did was they looked at the percentage of ultra processed foods in the diets of the population in those different countries. So
they looked at national surveys. So for instance, the Brazil one was in the year twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen, that's when the survey was done, and this is for people of thirty to sixty nine years old, and the main consumption of ultra process food in Brazil was seventeen point four percent of calories in the diet. Contrast that with the United States that was fifty four and a half percent. That was from the big national survey in twenty seventeen,
twenty eighteen. Now again these are data for thirty to sixty nine year olds, So let's take case in point of the United States, fifty four percent of all calories consumed by thirty to sixty nine year olds were ultra process foods. We know that similar time, they looked at diets of teenagers and they had a whopping sixty six percent of their calories were from ultra process foods. Again
very similar to UK. They had about sixty six percent two thirds of all calories consumed by teenagers in recent years were from ultra process foods. But the data that they used in this that was from a survey in the United Kingdom of twenty eighteen to nineteen and fifty three percent, just over half of all calories consumed were from ultra process foods. And then Canada it was twenty fifteen, data was forty three point seven percent, Australia was twenty
eleven to twenty twelve. So this data is fourteen years old and that was thirty seven point five percent amongst that population. Now and those numbers are definitely higher particularly, and what I mean by that is today they're definitely higher because, for an instance, in the United State, it's seventy three percent of all foods sold in supermarkets are
ultra process foods. I think we can reliably say that in the United States and United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and you could throw in New Zealand into this, over half of all calories consumed across the entire population are from ultra processed foods and drinks. And so some people have criticized. You may have seen some of this. This research paper has been out in the news today, and some people have criticized the idea of ultra processed foods because it's
a bit too blunt. Now, a lot of those people are big food that are talking about this, saying this is a very blunt instrument, and you know, we don't really know for sure, and it could be just that some other researchers are saying, well, these foods tend to be high in fat, sugar, and salt, and maybe it's
that rather than the processing. The counter argument to this is that we know from all the research that's done in ultra processed foods, and I've got at least fifty research papers on ultra processed foods RISKS, so we know consistently that these foods, as well as having high in sugar, fat, salt, and those sorts of things, they also contain most of them emulsifiers, flavor enhancers, and preservatives and often colorings, and we know that those things all disrupt the gut microbiome.
So let's get back to the study. But what I wanted to do is say that when you take not just looking at this paper in isolation, but the totality of evidence that's emerging around ultra processed foods. I think there's a massive smoking gun that's going on here. And
obviously there is a continuum of ultra processed foods. Just to take a step back, they typically tend to have five or more ingredients and are produced large scale industrial processing such as factories, and they have constituents of food parts of food, and they're not kind of real food. As I say, this food hasn't been alive that Now, breakfast cereals tend to be an ultra processed food other
than rolled oats. Now, clearly there's a continuum. You take week bits brand fleets on one end and the cocoa pops and things like that on the other end. There is clearly a continuum. But I think this ultra process foods is a very very good guideline for people. But anyway, let's get back to the study. What the study actually found was that an increasing ultra process foods in the diet by ten percent increased your risk of all cause
mortality that is, death by anything by three percent. Now, some people might think thirty percent increased risk of death by any cause isn't absolutely huge, But when you comper somebody eating a healthy diet like in Brazil, were. As I said, the numbers of ultra processed food consumption, or the rate of ultra process could consumption, was under twenty percent. That's what we typically see in speed pass countries like spaing in Italy, it's less than twenty percent and consumed
across the population. If you compare that with the United States and the UK, and to a lesser extent, Canada and New Zealand and Australia, there's a thirty percent difference in those countries, which ramps up to a ten percent increase in all cause mortality. Now a ten I don't know about you, but for me, a ten percent increase in all cause mortality is absolutely freaking massive. I think you might remember the big hullabaloo come out a number of years ago, and it was all splashed across the
papers that bacon causes bill cancer. And this was about process meets increasing your risk of bill cancer. And that's true, that's undeniable. I think the evidence is pretty strong. But what it's it was basically an extra fifty grams a day of processed meats and increase your risk of ball cancer, a single disease, by eighteen percent. This is all cause mortality. This is death by any cause, including heart disease, cancer, diabetes,
all of those things. And when you combine this study with the recent Umbrella review that I have talked about that looked at all of the different studies that were done on ultra processed food so far and basically find convincing class one evidence that these foods increase the risk of a whole host of different diseases. So, just from memory, I think anxiety it was it was something like a forty between forty and fifty percent increased risk of cardiovascular disease,
the biggest killer, Like that's massive. A forty three percent increase risk in anxiety it was something along that and something like a fifty two percent increased risk in common mental health disorders. And this is class one convincing evidence.
So when we line all of this stuff up, the study showing that they disrupt the got microbiome the additives in them, as well as this study here and the Umbrella review, I think it is very very clear, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that ultra processed foods are killing us, and they're killing our kids. And the real concerning thing for me is the amount of this stuff
that teenagers eat, and not just to remind you. As I said earlier, recent data has shown in the United States and in the United Kingdom, and I think it would be very very similar in Canada, New Zealand and Australia. Sixty six percent of all calories consumed by teenagers are ultra process crap. This me is a national health emergency and we need to just wake up around this. So that's not a very pleasant wisdom Wednesday, but I think it is buyer bewre If it looks like it hasn't
been alive, it's in your treat foods. That's it for this week, folks, catch you next time.