Ultra-processed foods have colonized our refrigerator. A series of scientific reviews published in the scientific journal The Lancet This Wednesday warns of this shift in the dietary paradigm, highlights how it is eroding global health and calls on governments to act. In an associated editorial, the 43 signatory global experts denounce that this situation is “driven by the desire for corporate profit, not by nutrition or sustainability”.
Comparisons with the tobacco industry are constant, in reference to when, in the middle of the last century, the manufacturing companies tried to silence the scientific evidence against them through marketing and lobby pressure. Now the same thing would be happening, explain the scientists, who point directly to a handful of manufacturers that dominate the market, companies such as Nestlé, PepsiCo, Danone, Ferrero, Kraft Heinz and Coca-Cola.
The study is accompanied by a letter from the World Health Organization. In this, the signatories highlight that “the growing consumption of ultra-processed foods represents a systemic threat to public health, equity and environmental sustainability”. UNICEF also published an associated editorial, denouncing that “the global proliferation of ultra-processed foods has become one of the most urgent, but insufficiently addressed, threats to human health in the 21st century” and advocating the protection of children from this scourge, calling for “food and health to be prioritized over corporate profit.”
What is striking about the letters and the study is that they no longer report that there will be a lot of junk food in the future, they say that there is some in the present, that we are in a moment of de-escalation. To continue making comparisons with other fields, it is like when at climate summits it is emphasized that emissions must be reduced before it is too late.
Ultra-processed foods are not foods, they are edible industrial preparations that artificially stimulate the appetite. “They are very practical for daily life in the frenetic society in which we live,” explains María Bes Rastrollo, professor of Preventive Medicine and Public Health at the University of Navarra and co-author of the study, in a conversation with this newspaper. “They are easily accessible, cheap, tasty and enjoy excellent publicity. enviable.” All this has meant that over the last 30 years the presence of metastatic virulence in the supermarket has multiplied.
The scientific review of The Lancet compares data from more than 36 countries. The percentage of ultra-processed foods in the diet ranges from 9% in Iran to over 60% in the United States. There are big differences, but this is a global phenomenon. More and more. Developed countries are more exposed to these products, but in developing countries their importance is increasing at a dizzying pace. From 2007 to 2022, annual per capita sales of ultra-processed foods increased nearly 20 percent (from 104 kilos to 121.6) in upper-middle-income countries. They did so by 40% (from 45.3 kilos to 63.3) in low- and middle-income countries. And up to 60% (from 20.3 to 32.2 kilos) in Uganda, the only low-income country evaluated in the meta-analysis.
Ultra-processed foods spread across the planet like an invasive species, eroding culinary traditions and classic diets in their wake. Several countries that follow the Mediterranean diet have managed to keep the percentage of consumption of ultra-processed foods below 25%. This is the case of Italy, Greece or Portugal. It is not that of Spain. Here, consumption of ultra-processed foods has tripled in just 20 years, according to this report, going from 11% to 32%. “Adherence to the Mediterranean diet in Spain is not very high,” says Bes Rastrollo. “On a 14-point scale of adherence to this model, on average it is at six points: we fail and we have a lot of room for improvement.”
The most recent Spanish data used in the report dates back to 2010, so it is conceivable that the current figure is even higher. “Other recent studies observe that ready-to-eat foods grew by 49% in supermarkets and hypermarkets from 2022 to 2024,” warns Bes Rastrollo. After all, the omen of Juan Roig, executive president and majority shareholder of Mercadona, is not so distant: “By the middle of the 21st century there will be no more kitchens”, he said a few months ago. It was not the objective analysis of a simple observer, but the desire of a man who made a fortune with this business model.
In Spain the consumption of ultra-processed foods has tripled in just 20 years, going from 11% to 32%
To study the impact of these products on our health, experts examined 104 studies published between 2016 and 2024. Their consumption was associated with excessive calorie intake, low nutritional quality (with excess sugar and unhealthy fats and reduced fiber and protein content) and increased exposure to potentially harmful chemicals and additives. This type of diet is not harmless, it results in an increased risk of 12 outcomes: overweight or obesity, visceral fat, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, dyslipidemia, cardiovascular disease, coronary heart disease, cerebrovascular disease, chronic kidney disease, Crohn’s disease, depression and all-cause mortality. “The available scientific evidence is sufficient and justifies the adoption of urgent and decisive actions to stop the consumption of these products and improve the health of the population,” concludes Bes Rastrollo.
This meta-analysis “demonstrates that some of the major chronic diseases affecting modern life are associated with increased consumption of ultra-processed foods,” says Jules Griffin, director of the Rowett Institute at the University of Aberdeen, in statements to the SMC science portal. Griffin points out that the data is observational and that “association may not imply causation.” It is the same criticism that Jordan Beaumont, professor of Food and Nutrition at Sheffield Hallam University, also makes of SMC. “The authors encompass a large number of disparate concepts under the term ultra-processed foods. This concept, its impact on our health and the adoption of the NOVA classification tool are highly controversial,” he points out.
The available scientific evidence is sufficient and justifies taking urgent and decisive action to stop the consumption of these products.
This international system classifies foods based on their degree of processing, without taking into account their composition. Therefore, foods that may have nutritional value, such as breakfast cereals and flavored yogurts, fall into the same category as less healthy products, such as nuggets or sugary drinks. Some authors believe this can be counterproductive. “But ultra-processed foods are rarely consumed in isolation,” they defend in the study Hand. theThe World Health Organization, FAO and UNICEF officially recognize the NOVA-UPF index as a global parameter of diet quality.
The study does not take into account the impact of weight-loss drugs, although there is already some macro data indicating their impact on the food industry. According to Gallup data, the percentage of Americans with a BMI over 30 peaked at 39.9% in 2022 and has now fallen to 37%. It is the first time in more than a decade that obesity rates have not increased. The survey also reveals that the number of people using GLP-1 or similar drugs for weight loss has increased from 5.8% of the population in February 2024 to 12.4% today. “The use of these drugs can be useful to help patients who have more difficulty losing weight,” says Bes Rastrollo. “But it is very dangerous that in a hedonistic society like the current one we think that we can binge on ultra-processed foods without consequences for our health, thinking that later a drug will be available that will solve the problem.”
A commercially perfect product, disastrous from a health point of view
The business model of large ultraprocess manufacturers alerts analysis The Lancetinvolves the large-scale manipulation of low-cost raw materials, such as corn, wheat, soybeans and palm oil, to convert them into attractive, appetizing and tasty products. From a commercial point of view they are perfect, from a health point of view a disaster. “The ultra-processed industry is an example of a food system increasingly controlled by multinationals that prioritize corporate profit over public health,” the experts denounce in their editorial.
They are aggressively marketed and designed to be addictive, encouraging repeat consumption. This feature was something that manufacturers boasted about years ago. Slogans like “they gave me two”, “when you do it pop it’s no longer there stop” or “can’t you eat just one?”, were common in the 1990s and early 2000s. But when the mechanism that explained these messages, their highly addictive capacity, was discovered, manufacturers changed their advertising. The meta-analysis denounces how the business community is trying to change the global perception of these products. “Ultra-processed companies use sophisticated political tactics to protect their profits”, they go so far as to underline. “They block regulations, influence scientific debates and manipulate opinion public. They coordinate hundreds of interest groups around the world, lobby politicians, make donations and file lawsuits to delay policies.”
Companies block regulations, influence scientific debates and manipulate public opinion
They also do this through marketing and advertising. In 2024, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and Mondelez together spent 11.3 billion euros on advertising, almost four times the WHO’s operating budget. “This type of marketing is a form of ideological power in food systems,” the study denounces. These industry tactics “threaten public health,” the WHO adds.
Finally, the meta-analysis highlights how the damage extends to planetary health. The industrial production, processing and transportation of these foods consume large quantities of fossil fuels. Furthermore, plastic packaging for these types of products “is ubiquitous.”
Bes Rastrollo underlines that it is necessary to “counter the tactics used by these few large multinationals”. This is why it supports, as the study does, the implementation of globally coordinated policies. Better labelling, fiscal measures that tax harmful products and make healthy ones cheaper, regulate their presence in health centers and schools and limit their advertising. “Improving dietary patterns cannot be based only on changing individual behavior, but requires coordinated policies at a global level,” he summarizes. If that were the case, there would still be a lot of work to do. A study published a few months ago on Natural foodconcluded that 85.9% of interventions aimed at limiting consumption of ultra-processed foods focused on modifying the food environment to influence consumer choice. The rest, a meager 14%, was destined for industry.
