Recent Research Reveals Plant-based Ultraprocessed Foods Linked to Heart Disease, Early Death

Do you want to prolong your life and lessen your chances of chronic illness while also benefiting the environment? Consume a plant-based diet, advise experts.

Does it mean you can have frozen vegetable pizza, deep-dish macaroni and cheese, or fast-food French fries and then have a doughnut or three for dessert?

According to Duane Mellor, a senior teaching fellow at Aston Medical School in Birmingham, United Kingdom, and qualified dietitian, all of those ultraprocessed options carry some danger even though they may be meatless.

Mellor stated in a statement, “We can’t always assume plant-based means healthy, as sugar is plant-based.” “Although many plant-based foods, such as biscuits, crisps, candy, and soft drinks, are free of animal products, most people wouldn’t view them as necessary components of a healthy diet.”

According to a recent study that the authors refer to as “the first” to demonstrate the link between ultraprocessed plant foods and an increased risk of cardiovascular diseases, consuming such plant-based junk food actually significantly increases bad cholesterol and hypertension, which can cause related heart disease and early death.

Renata Levy, a researcher at the Epidemiological Research Center in Nutrition and Health at the University of São Paulo, also known as Nupens/USP, in Brazil, who is a senior study author, stated that eating plant-based products can either be advantageous and protect against health problems or it can represent a risk.

Foods that have been ultraprocessed go through a number of industrial procedures, including heating, fracking to extract nutrients and proteins, molding, compression, and the addition of chemicals to change the appearance, flavor, and texture. These foods are designed to be incredibly convenient, needing little to no preparation time, and highly pleasant to human taste senses.

Fresh fruits and vegetables, eggs, and milk are examples of unprocessed foods. Culinary elements like salt, herbs, and oils, as well as meals like canned goods and frozen veggies that blend unprocessed and culinary ingredients together, are examples of minimally processed foods.

First author Fernanda Rauber, a researcher with Nupens/USP, stated that “food additives and industrial contaminants present in these foods might cause oxidative stress and inflammation, further aggravating the risks.”

In light of this, Rauber said in a statement, “Our results support the shift towards plant-based food choices that consider the degree of processing to improve cardiovascular health outcomes.”

Eat fresh and frozen minimally processed plants

The study used data from the UK Biobank, a longitudinal study with participants from Wales, Scotland, and England. It was published on Monday in the journal The Lancet Regional Health — Europe. Over 118,000 respondents, aged 40 to 69, provided information regarding their diet. Later, hospital and death records regarding the emergence of cardiovascular risk factors were connected to that data.

The study discovered that ultraprocessed plant-based diets raised the risk of cardiovascular disease by 5% and the risk of dying young by 13%.

Additionally, researchers discovered that a 10% substitution of fresh, frozen, or minimally processed plants for ultraprocessed plant-based foods reduced the risk of cardiovascular disease by 7% and offered a 13% reduction in the risk of dying from heart disease.

Additionally, as plant-based meat products like sausages, nuggets, and burgers naturally fall into the ultraprocessed category, the study also examined these products. Nonetheless, Peter Scarborough, a population health professor at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, noted that it was challenging to pinpoint the precise level of risk associated with such foods. He did not participate in the research.

In a statement, Scarborough stated that “plant-based meat alternatives make up only 0.5% of all the plant-based ultraprocessed foods included in this paper.”

The packaged breads, pastries, buns, cakes, and cookies accounted for more than half of the plant-based ultraprocessed foods examined in the article.

Therefore, Scarborough continued, “it is very difficult to conclude from this paper that plant-based meat alternatives are bad for your health.”

Furthermore, a significant portion of the information included in the publication is well-known, according to Tom Sanders, an emeritus professor of nutrition and dietetics at King’s College London who was not engaged in the research.

According to a statement, “it is well accepted that well-balanced plant-based diets, like the DASH or Mediterranean diets, are favorable for cardiovascular health and these already emphasize avoiding unhealthy foods like cakes, biscuits, and confectionary, as well as sugar-sweetened beverages and crisps, among other unhealthy foods.”

“These latter foods, whether manufactured commercially or at home, are unhealthy.”

Originally published on CNN