A new study published on Monday in The Lancet Regional Health — Europe, led by Renata Levy from the University of São Paulo, links ultra-processed plant-based foods to heart disease and 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 ultra-processed options carry some danger even though they may be meatless.

“We can’t always assume plant-based means healthy, as after all sugar is plant-based,” Mellor said in a statement. “Many foods that do not contain animal products, which includes biscuits, crisps, confectionary and soft drinks, are technically plant-based but would not be considered essential as part of a healthy diet by the majority of people.”

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

“Eating plant-based products can be beneficial, acting as protection against health problems, or it can represent a risk — it all depends on the level of processing of these foods,” explained Renata Levy, a senior study author, and researcher at the University of São Paulo’s Nupens/USP Epidemiological Research Center in Nutrition and Health in Brazil.

Foods that have been ultra-processed go through several 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, are examples of minimally processed foods.

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

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

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 (pdf below). 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 ultra-processed 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 ultra-processed 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 ultra-processed 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.

“Plant-based meat alternatives make up only 0.5% of all the plant-based ultra-processed foods included in this paper,” Scarborough said in a statement.

Packaged bread, pastries, buns, cakes, and cookies accounted for more than half of the plant-based ultra-processed foods examined in the article.

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

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.

“It is well accepted that well-balanced plant-based diets such as the Mediterranean or DASH diets are favorable for cardiovascular health and these already emphasize avoiding unhealthy foods such as crisps etc., sugar-sweetened beverages, cakes, biscuits, and confectionary,” he said in a statement.

“These latter foods are unhealthy regardless of whether they are made industrially or home-made.”

Recently, GreatGameIndia reported that Italy’s Minister of Agriculture, Francesco Lollobrigida, announced via a Facebook post on November 16 that Italy has banned lab-grown meat.

Read the study below:

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