The present commentary contains a clear and simple guide designed to identify ultra-processed foods. It responds to the growing interest in ultra-processed foods among policy makers, academic researchers, health professionals, journalists and consumers concerned to devise policies, investigate dietary patterns, advise people, prepare media coverage, and when buying food and checking labels in shops or at home. Ultra-processed foods are defined within the NOVA classification system, which groups foods according to the extent and purpose of industrial processing. Processes enabling the manufacture of ultra-processed foods include the fractioning of whole foods into substances, chemical modifications of these substances, assembly of unmodified and modified food substances, frequent use of cosmetic additives and sophisticated packaging. Processes and ingredients used to manufacture ultra-processed foods are designed to create highly profitable (low-cost ingredients, long shelf-life, emphatic branding), convenient (ready-to-consume), hyper-palatable products liable to displace all other NOVA food groups, notably unprocessed or minimally processed foods. A practical way to identify an ultra-processed product is to check to see if its list of ingredients contains at least one item characteristic of the NOVA ultra-processed food group, which is to say, either food substances never or rarely used in kitchens (such as high-fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated or interesterified oils, and hydrolysed proteins), or classes of additives designed to make the final product palatable or more appealing (such as flavours, flavour enhancers, colours, emulsifiers, emulsifying salts, sweeteners, thickeners, and anti-foaming, bulking, carbonating, foaming, gelling and glazing agents).

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Ultra-processed foods: what they are and how to identify them

Objective To assess the prospective associations between consumption of ultra-processed foods and risk of cardiovascular diseases. Design Population based cohort study. Setting NutriNet-Sante cohort, France 2009-18. Participants 105 159 participants aged at least 18 years. Dietary intakes were collected using repeated 24 hour dietary records (5.7 for each participant on average), designed to register participants’ usual consumption of 3300 food items. These foods were categorised using the NOVA classification according to degree of processing. Main outcome measures Associations between intake of ultra-processed food and overall risk of cardiovascular, coronary heart, and cerebrovascular diseases assessed by multivariable Cox proportional hazard models adjusted for known risk factors. Results During a median follow-up of 5.2 years, intake of ultra-processed food was associated with a higher risk of overall cardiovascular disease (1409 cases; hazard ratio for an absolute increment of 10 in the percentage of ultra-processed foods in the diet 1.12 (95% confidence interval 1.05 to 1.20); P Conclusions In this large observational prospective study, higher consumption of ultra-processed foods was associated with higher risks of cardiovascular, coronary heart, and cerebrovascular diseases. These results need to be confirmed in other populations and settings, and causality remains to be established. Various factors in processing, such as nutritional composition of the final product, additives, contact materials, and neoformed contaminants might play a role in these associations, and further studies are needed to understand better the relative contributions. Meanwhile, public health authorities in several countries have recently started to promote unprocessed or minimally processed foods and to recommend limiting the consumption of ultra-processed foods. Study registration ClinicalTrials.gov NCT03335644.

https://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/365/bmj.l1451.full.pdf

Ultra-processed food intake and risk of cardiovascular disease: prospective cohort study (NutriNet-Santé)

Increasing evidence suggests that high consumption of ultra-processed foods (UPF) is associated with an increase in non-communicable diseases, overweight and obesity. The present study systematically reviewed all observational studies that investigated the association between UPF consumption and health status. A comprehensive search of MEDLINE, Embase, Scopus, Web of Science and Google Scholar was conducted, and reference lists of included articles were checked. Only cross-sectional and prospective cohort studies were included. At the end of the selection process, twenty-three studies (ten cross-sectional and thirteen prospective cohort studies) were included in the systematic review. As regards the cross-sectional studies, the highest UPF consumption was associated with a significant increase in the risk of overweight/obesity (+39 %), high waist circumference (+39 %), low HDL-cholesterol levels (+102 %) and the metabolic syndrome (+79 %), while no significant associations with hypertension, hyperglycaemia or hypertriacylglycerolaemia were observed. For prospective cohort studies evaluating a total population of 183 491 participants followed for a period ranging from 3·5 to 19 years, highest UPF consumption was found to be associated with increased risk of all-cause mortality in five studies (risk ratio (RR) 1·25, 95 % CI 1·14, 1·37; P < 0·00001), increased risk of CVD in three studies (RR 1·29, 95 % CI 1·12, 1·48; P = 0·0003), cerebrovascular disease in two studies (RR 1·34, 95 % CI 1·07, 1·68; P = 0·01) and depression in two studies (RR 1·20, 95 % CI 1·03, 1·40; P = 0·02). In conclusion, increased UPF consumption was associated, although in a limited number of studies, with a worse cardiometabolic risk profile and a higher risk of CVD, cerebrovascular disease, depression and all-cause mortality.

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Consumption of ultra-processed foods and health status: a systematic review and meta-analysis

The human gut is inhabited by trillions of microorganisms composing a dynamic ecosystem implicated in health and disease. The composition of the gut microbiota is unique to each individual and tends to remain relatively stable throughout life, yet daily transient fluctuations are observed. Diet is a key modifiable factor influencing the composition of the gut microbiota, indicating the potential for therapeutic dietary strategies to manipulate microbial diversity, composition, and stability. While diet can induce a shift in the gut microbiota, these changes appear to be temporary. Whether prolonged dietary changes can induce permanent alterations in the gut microbiota is unknown, mainly due to a lack of long-term human dietary interventions, or long-term follow-ups of short-term dietary interventions. It is possible that habitual diets have a greater influence on the gut microbiota than acute dietary strategies. This review presents the current knowledge around the response of the gut microbiota to short-term and long-term dietary interventions and identifies major factors that contribute to microbiota response to diet. Overall, further research on long-term diets that include health and microbiome measures is required before clinical recommendations can be made for dietary modulation of the gut microbiota for health.

Effect of Diet on the Gut Microbiota: Rethinking Intervention Duration

Understanding the drivers and dynamics of global ultra-processed food (UPF) consumption is essential, given the evidence linking these foods with adverse health outcomes. In this synthesis review, we take two steps. First, we quantify per capita volumes and trends in UPF sales, and ingredients (sweeteners, fats, sodium and cosmetic additives) supplied by these foods, in countries classified by income and region. Second, we review the literature on food systems and political economy factors that likely explain the observed changes. We find evidence for a substantial expansion in the types and quantities of UPFs sold worldwide, representing a transition towards a more processed global diet but with wide variations between regions and countries. As countries grow richer, higher volumes and a wider variety of UPFs are sold. Sales are highest in Australasia, North America, Europe and Latin America but growing rapidly in Asia, the Middle East and Africa. These developments are closely linked with the industrialization of food systems, technological change and globalization, including growth in the market and political activities of transnational food corporations and inadequate policies to protect nutrition in these new contexts. The scale of dietary change underway, especially in highly populated middle-income countries, raises serious concern for global health.

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Ultra-processed foods and the nutrition transition: Global, regional and national trends, food systems transformations and political economy drivers.

The dietary pattern that characterizes the Western diet is strongly associated with obesity and related metabolic diseases, but biological mechanisms supporting these associations remain largely unknown. We argue that the Western diet promotes inflammation that arises from both structural and behavioral changes in the resident microbiome. The environment created in the gut by ultra-processed foods, a hallmark of the Western diet, is an evolutionarily unique selection ground for microbes that can promote diverse forms of inflammatory disease. Recognizing the importance of the microbiome in the development of diet-related disease has implications for future research, public dietary advice as well as food production practices. Research into food patterns suggests that whole foods are a common denominator of diets associated with a low level of diet-related disease. Hence, by studying how ultra-processing changes the properties of whole foods and how these foods affect the gut microbiome, more useful dietary guidelines can be made. Innovations in food production should be focusing on enabling health in the super-organism of man and microbe, and stronger regulation of potentially hazardous components of food products is warranted.

https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/10/3/365/pdf

The Western Diet–Microbiome-Host Interaction and Its Role in Metabolic Disease

Diets differing in carbohydrate cellularity and amount similarly reduced visceral fat in people with obesity - a randomized controlled trial (CARBFUNC).

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[Vitamin D status and disease--hasty conclusions?].

Neither the Western diet nor the Mediterranean diet resembled actual human diets. The Western diet was made from ingredients and not whole foods. Such ingredients are common in ultraprocessed foods, typical of a Western diet, but to our knowledge, no study has reported more than 60% of ultraprocessed foods in actual human diets. The Mediterranean diet was also composed mainly from ingredients, with a few minimally processed foods: applesauce and tomato paste. One whole food was on the list (banana [tropical]). Most foods characteristic of a Mediterranean diet (olives, extra-virgin olive oil, fish, legumes, nuts, fruits, vegetables, and small amounts of cheese and yogurt) are whole or minimally processed foods. The monkeys receiving the Mediterranean diet were consuming a “cookie dough” made from fish meal and oil, nut flour, casein, whey powder, dried egg whites, bean flours, dextrin, and cellulose. Hence, this experimental diet was not similar to diets traditionally consumed in the Mediterranean area. Comparing two diets based on their nutritional content is insufficient for assessing health effects. A growing body of evidence has supported the idea that the food matrix is important for the health-promoting potential of foods. For example, processing of nuts and grains affects the digestibility and, thereby, the uptake of nutrients (2), and studies have shown that the degree of processing affects the health-promoting properties of foods (3). Moreover, the dynamics of availability and uptake also affects the structure and function of the gut microbiome, in turn, influencing the metabolism of the organism. Acellular nutrients especially have the potential to promote growth of pathobionts in the small intestine, thereby causing gut inflammation, which is linked with several metabolic disturbances. In our 2018 review, we discussed these factors in detail (4).

Inge Andreas Lindseth

Papers

The Western Diet–Microbiome-Host Interaction and Its Role in Metabolic Disease

Diets differing in carbohydrate cellularity and amount similarly reduced visceral fat in people with obesity - a randomized controlled trial (CARBFUNC).

[Vitamin D status and disease--hasty conclusions?].

Two Bad Diets for Monkeys.