Consuming large amounts of ultra-processed food (UPF) increases the risk of an early death, according to a international study that has reignited calls for a crackdown on UPF.
Each 10% extra intake of UPF, such as bread, cakes and ready meals, increases someone’s risk of dying before they reach 75 by 3%, according to research in countries including the US and England.
UPF is so damaging to health that it is implicated in as many as one in seven of all premature deaths that occur in some countries, according to a paper in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
They are associated with 124,107 early deaths in the US a year and 17,781 deaths every year in England, the review of dietary and mortality data from eight countries found.
Some bread is treated with stuff one would ordinarily not want to eat.
So why not focus on the foods containing that stuff, rather than the superficial resemblance of all foods that kinda look like the foods that contain that stuff?
Let’s say you have a problem with potassium bromate, a dough additive linked to cancer that remains legal in U.S. bread but is banned in places like Canada, the UK, the EU.
So let’s have that conversation about bromate! Let’s not lump all industrially produced breads into that category, even in countries where bromate has been banned.
Another cancerous item is sodium benzoate. I use it to make photos. It reacts with UV light in gelatin to cause the gelatin to harden up. That same effect is what give you cancer. Its the free radicals generated during UV exposure.