Revealed: The 21 ultra-processed foods you need to avoid and the ones that are ... trends now
The devastating health effects of eating too much junk are well known by now.
But when it comes to so-called 'ultra-processed food,' not all types are created equal.
A landmark study published this week found there are seven categories that are considered the most detrimental for your health.
Some of them were probably not a surprise - soda, microwave meals and brightly-colored candy.
Others may have been more of a shock: white bread, breakfast bars and ketchup.
The reason, so says the study, is that these seven food groups have multiple more stages of processing, which adds more synthetic ingredients that have little nutritional benefit and can cause harmful effects in the body.
They also contain more artificial ingredients like colorings and dyes, which have been linked to conditions like hyperactivity and cancer.
DailyMail.com has picked several of the most popular foods from these categories to create a startling graphic warning of the most high-risk foods.
The latest study was on 100,000 Americans. It lasted over 30 years.
'We observed strong positive associations between ultra-processed food and mortality outcomes,' the researchers wrote in the study, published Wednesday in the British Journal of Medicine.
The team found that people who ate the most servings of ultra-processed foods - about seven per day - were four percent more likely to die from any cause than those who stuck to three daily servings.
Additionally, they were nine percent more likely to die from neurodegenerative diseases like dementia, Parkinson's, ALS, and Huntington's disease.
In particular, the biggest culprits were processed meats like deli meat and jerky, dairy-based desserts like ice cream, and convenient breakfast foods like precooked sausage and Pop-Tarts.
The researchers also warned against chips, condiments, snack cakes, and even some breads.
Popular chips like Cheetos, Doritos, and Ruffles, for example, get their bright orange coloring from dyes like Yellow 5, Yellow 6, and red 40. Diet Sundrop Soda is also a culprit for containing yellow dyes.
States like California, New York, New Jersey, and Missouri have tried to put these dyes on the chopping block because they contain benzidine, a known carcinogen.
According to the FDA, ingestion of free benzidine raises the cancer risk to just under the ‘concern’ threshold, or one cancer in 1 million people.
The colors are not banned outright in the EU, nor are they banned in the US. But unlike in the US, European authorities must include a warning label that details the risks associated with the dyes.
They have been theorized to exacerbate attentional problems in children, leading EU regulators to mandate that product makers say dyes could cause ‘an adverse effect on activity and attention in children.’
Those who love Twinkies and cereals like Cap'n Crunch will also take in a dose of yellow 5 and 6.
Researchers found that certain ultraprocessed foods like ready-to-eat meat and dairy-based desserts raised the risk of death by as much as 10 percent
Meanwhile, the researchers also flagged processed meats like Oscar Mayer sliced turkey and ham, Hillshire Farm dried salami, and Slim Jims.
That's because these contain nitrates, compounds made from nitrogen and oxygen atoms.
When eaten, nitrates can undergo a reaction that turns them into a substance called N-nitroso chemicals (NOCs).
These can damage the cells that line the bowel, the organ that processes your food, which, in turn, can lead to the development of cancer.
Several studies have shown a
