Ultra-Processed Foods May Cause Cancer, Early Death - Here's Why

Eating more ultra-processed foods has been linked to heart disease and early death in both men and women, as well as a significant increase in men's risk of colorectal cancer, according to new data from two studies recently published in the British medical journal the BMJ via CNN.

Ultra-processed foods "are industrial formulations made by deconstructing whole foods into chemical constituents, altering them and recombining them with additives into products that are alternatives to fresh and minimally processed foods and freshly prepared meals," according to the journal entry, and include soft drinks, prepackaged soups, sauces, frozen pizzas, ready-to-eat meals, hot dogs, sausages, french fries, sodas, ice cream, store-bought cookies and numerous other indulgent food items.

The two, large-scale studies shared in the BMJ included one examining the diets of more than 200,000 Americans for up to 28 years, which determined that colorectal cancer -- the third most diagnosed cancer in the U.S. -- was linked to ultra-processed foods in men, but not women.

Processed and ultra-processed meats had long been linked to a higher risk of bowel cancer among men and women through data compiled by the World Health Organization, American Cancer Society and the American Institute for Cancer Research, but the recent study found that all types of ultra-processed foods also play a factoring role.

"We found that men in the highest quintile of ultraprocessed food consumption, compared those in the lowest quintile, had a 29% higher risk of developing colorectal cancer," said co-senior author Fang Fang Zhang, 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, via CNN.

A second study of more than 22,000 people in Italy conducted over a dozen years assessing the risk factors for cancer, as well as heart and brain disease, determined that both nutrient-poor and ultra-processed foods independently led to an increased risk of early death, specifically in relation to cardiovascular diseases.

The study found that ultra-processed foods were "paramount to define the risk of mortality" and more than 80% of the foods classified by the study's guidelines as nutritionally unhealthy were also ultra-processed, according to author Marialaura Bonaccio, an epidemiologist at the department of epidemiology and prevention at the IRCCS Neurologico Mediterraneo Neuromed of Pozzilli, Italy.

"This suggests that the increased risk of mortality is not due directly (or exclusively) to the poor nutritional quality of some products, but rather to the fact that these foods are mostly ultraprocessed," Bonaccio said via CNN.