A Study On 44,000 People Proves Processed Food Shorten Your Life

Cereal, bacon, and soft drinks may be your favorite daily meal. It is known that they are all processed foods which not only are bad for your health but also gradually decrease your life expectancy.

Processed foods are proven to decrease life expectancy

A French researcher group has recently released their new research in JAMA Internal Medicine that proves the harmful effect of processed food abuse on decreasing the average life expectancy. Accordingly, these researchers carried out a study on 44,000 French women and men and followed their daily diets for more than eight years. At the beginning of this study, the average age of these people was 56.

Based on the study, the researchers found that about 29 percent of these people’s energy intake came from ultra-processed foods including instant soups and noodles, energy drinks, breakfast cereal, packaged snacks, heat-to-eat meals as well as processed frozen meats.

Through the study course, there are 602 participants in the study dying although most people died of serious diseases like cardiovascular disease or cancer. However, even when the researchers had considered other factors, they still collected extremely serious study results.

Processed foods contain many contaminants; even carcinogens

For instance, they found that if above 45-year-old adults increase their intake of ultra-processed foods by 10 percent, they will increase the risk of early death by 14 percent.

According to the researchers’ theory, processed foods have processing methods with high temperature, which leads to contaminant production in these foods. In addition, the packaging process makes the contaminants enter the foods, and food additives to preserve them could be carcinogens.

Mathilde Touvie, one of the co-authors of the study, said that it's an association which they can't prove it's causal. She added that people may freak out thinking about dying of eating these foods, but we don't need to be alarmist.