Consumption of Ultra-Processed Foods Linked To Cancer

Junk food lovers, it might be time to put on the brakes on your processed food consumption. According to BBC News, A link between highly processed foods and cancer has been suggested by French researchers. Foods classified as ultra-processed included cakes, chicken nuggets, and mass-produced bread.

A study of 105,000 people hinted the more of such foods people ate, the greater their risk of cancer. While the results of the research are being taken with a pinch of salt, experts do agree that a healthy diet is definitely best.

The Findings

The team at Universite Sorbonne Paris Cite used food surveys on two days to work out what people were eating. Participants of the study, who were mostly middle-aged women, were followed for an average of five years.

The results, in the British Medical Journal, showed that if the proportion of ultra-processed food in the diet increased by 10%, then the number of cancers detected increased by 12%.

During the study they discovered: On average, 18% of people’s diet was ultra-processed, on average, there were 79 cancers per 10,000 people each year, and that increasing the percentage of processed food by 10% would lead to nine extra cancers per 10,000 people per year.

The researchers concluded: “These results suggest that the rapidly increasing consumption of ultra-processed foods may drive an increasing burden of cancer in the next decades.”

However, they determined the findings need to “be confirmed by other large-scale” studies and research was needed to establish what could be behind the link.