Have you ever heard the joke: ” When I asked for vegetables at my homestay overseas, I was given a mountain of french fries instead “?
This is a clear example of how just because a food is plant-based doesn’t necessarily mean it has health benefits.
However, we often make similar mistakes, such as drinking sweetened vegetable juice every day for the sake of our health.
So, do ” ultra-processed foods ” that use vegetables or fruits as one of their ingredients pose fewer health risks than regular ultra-processed foods?
A recent study conducted by a research team led by Fernanda Lauber of the School of Medicine at the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil focused on ultra-processed, plant-based foods and investigated the risk of cardiovascular disease in people who consume a lot of them.
According to the results of this study, the excuse that “it contains vegetables and grains” probably doesn’t hold up after all.
Imperial College London (ICL) in the UK also participated in this research.
What are ultra-processed foods?
There are many different types of food in the world, including some called ultra-processed foods ( UPF ).
Ultra-processed foods are foods that have been overly processed.
The Nova classification system, developed in 2009 by researchers at the University of São Paulo (USP) in Brazil, separates foods into four groups based on their level of processing, with ultra-processed foods being the most highly processed group.
For example, foods classified under the Nova classification system include the following:
1. Unprocessed or minimally processed foods, such as fruits, vegetables, grains, beans, meat, eggs, and milk.
2. Processed food ingredients: olive oil, salt, sugar, starch, honey, butter, etc.
3. Processed foods: canned vegetables and fish, dried fish, bread, sweets, snacks, meat products, etc.
4. Ultra-processed foods: Soft drinks, fruit juices from concentrate, meat substitutes, cereal products, breads and snacks containing food additives, instant noodles, frozen pizza, etc.
As you can see from the foods classified as ultra-processed foods, many of them have lost valuable nutrients and dietary fiber found in whole foods during the processing.
Not only that, but the added salt, sugar, oil, and additives make them more likely to have adverse effects on health.
For this reason, many people are conscious of their health and are trying to avoid ultra-processed foods as much as possible.
However, there are cases where people have the impression that foods such as concentrated juices and breakfast cereals are healthy simply because they contain vegetables or grains.
In this study, Lauber and his team investigated the impact of such ultra-processed plant-based foods on our health.
Ultra-processed foods, even if originally healthy, increase risk of cardiovascular disease
The study used data from the UK Biobank, a large-scale long-term biobank study in the UK, on 118,000 adults who had been followed for approximately 10 years.
This included dietary, habitual, environmental, health, and medical data of the participants.
We then analyzed these data together with the Nova classification system, which classifies processed foods, to see what correlations there were.
By the way, the particular focus was on ” ultra-processed plant-based foods,” examples of which are below.
- Factory-made bread, cakes, crackers, French fries, and potato chips.
- Chocolate candy, cereal bars, frozen pizza, and margarine.
- Breakfast cereals, soft drinks, fruit juices, and low-calorie drinks.
- Sauces, dressings, tomato ketchup, salad dressings, pasta sauces.
- Meat alternatives (such as vegetarian hamburgers or tofu mince).
The analysis also found that people who consumed more ultra-processed, plant-based foods were more likely to die from heart disease.
For example, every 10% increase in calories consumed from ultra-processed, plant-based foods was associated with a 5% increase in the odds of developing cardiovascular disease.
In particular, the risk of developing coronary heart disease (a condition in which blood flow to the coronary arteries, which supply blood to the heart muscle, is reduced) increased by 6%.
On the other hand, it has been reported that every 10% increase in intake of non-processed plant-based foods was associated with an 8% lower risk of developing coronary heart disease and a 20% lower risk of death from coronary heart disease.
Additionally, replacing “ultra-processed plant-based foods” with “not overly processed plant-based foods” was associated with improved health, reducing the risk of developing cardiovascular disease by 7% and the risk of death from cardiovascular disease by 15%.
This makes sense, as we have seen from examples of ultra-processed plant-based foods that they are clearly unhealthy.
Lauber concludes: “Despite being plant-based, these foods may pose a risk to health due to their composition and processing.”
It seems that the lame excuse “because it’s derived from plants” doesn’t work on our bodies after all.
However, the study and press release analysed and referred to all “ultra-processed plant-based foods” together, which many experts say makes the assessment inaccurate.
Both potato chips and minced tofu are considered to be “ultra-processed foods based on plants.”
Therefore, there is a high possibility that ultra-processed plant-based foods contain ingredients that are not harmful to your health.
In particular, foods such as fruit juice, breakfast cereals, tomato pasta sauce, and vegetarian hamburgers are all foods that are easily associated with a healthy image.
The study doesn’t show what effect each of these individual foods actually has.
However, we have become so accustomed to processed foods that we tend to ignore the nutrients that are lost from the original ingredients, depending on the degree of processing.
For example, in the case of concentrated juices, the vitamins expected from fruit juice are destroyed in the first place, so the vitamins contained in them are added later, making them processed foods after all.
(*Concentrated juice was first developed by Dr. James Lind, who determined that the cause of scurvy was a lack of fruit, and gave it to sailors to drink. However, the most important vitamins were destroyed in the juice, so it ended up being ineffective.)
When we can’t afford to eat a proper meal, we tend to choose products sold at convenience stores that contain vegetables and grains, thinking they are healthy. However, if we don’t get into the habit of buying real vegetables and fruits every once in a while and eating them raw, it could be causing serious damage to our health.