The importance of overall diet quality
However, researchers in the new study said that once they had taken overall diet quality into account, the association of ultra-processed foods on death was less pronounced.
They said this suggests that dietary quality may have a stronger influence.
The researchers argue their study highlights that not all ultra-processed food products should be restricted. Instead, certain kinds of ultra-processed foods such as meat, poultry, and seafood ready-to-eat meals could be limited with the focus being on overall diet quality.
“Diet quality looks at the total overall quality of someone’s diet,” Dana Hunnes, PhD, a senior dietitian supervisor at RR-UCLA Medical Center in California who was not involved in the study, told Medical News Today. “Is it filled with processed and ultra-processed foods or is it filled with non-processed foods such as whole fruits and vegetables, whole grains, nuts, seeds, legumes, etc. A good-quality/high-quality diet would be mostly non-processed foods, mostly whole foods as they grew from the ground versus ultra-processed foods that are unrecognizable and have been stripped of their nutritional quality (sometimes having it added back in through fortification) and therefore add calories and fat to the diet without the beneficial nutrition qualities of the whole foods (including fiber).”
“You can occasionally eat ultra-processed foods if 95 percent of what you eat is whole, unprocessed foods and have good dietary quality,” Hunnes added. “Alternatively, you can eat a diet that is 90 percent ultra-processed/processed foods that don’t have much fiber and are unrecognizable and have extremely poor diet quality. Ultra-processed foods occasionally have a place in a healthy diet. We cannot be fully ascetic and eat 100 percent healthy all of the time, it’s not 100 percent feasible 100 percent of the time. That’s where the concept of diet quality comes in. The occasional ultra processed food is OK. Less though, is always better.”
How to have a more healthy diet
The U.S. Dietary Guidelines for AmericansTrusted Source recommends a healthy eating plan that consists of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains as well as a variety of proteins, fat free or low fat milk and milk products, and foods that are low in cholesterol, trans fat, saturated fat, added sugar, and sodium.
Lauri Wright, PhD, the president of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics who was not involved in the study, says instead of buying ready-to-eat meals from the store, convenience foods can be prepared at home.
“I would recommend preparing meals at home and making ready-to-eat meals from the leftovers,” she told Medical News Today.
The BMJ study is observational, so firm conclusions can’t be made between cause and effect. The study authors say that the classification system of ultra-processed foods doesn’t adequately account for the complexity of food processing, meaning some items could be misclassified.
“Future studies are warranted to improve the classification of ultra-processed foods and confirm our findings in other populations,” the study authors wrote.
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