Ultra-Processed Foods ‘A Rising Threat to Health’

The international team of researchers also pushed back against criticism of their work on UPFs, saying efforts to "manufacture scientific doubt" on the subject were similar to tactics used by the tobacco industry.

There has been intense debate in scientific circles about UPFs, with some health and nutrition experts raising concerns that the term is vaguely defined and that more research is needed.

However, leading UPF researchers argued in The Lancet medical journal that these foods present too great a danger to wait any longer, calling for action.

In the first of three papers, the researchers reviewed 104 previous studies, demonstrating that eating a diet with a lot of UPFs is linked to a higher risk of a range of diseases, including obesity, diabetes, heart problems and early death. 

The second paper showed that the consumption of UPFs is increasing around the world, and already represents more than half of all calories eaten in the United States, Australia and the U.K.

The third blamed a handful of massive corporations for altering global diets in recent decades by using aggressive marketing to sell products made with cheap ingredients and industrial methods.

Eight UPF manufacturers, Nestle, PepsiCo, Unilever, Coca-Cola, Danone, Fomento Economico Mexicano, Mondelez, and Kraft Heinz, accounted for 42 percent of the sector's $1.5 trillion in assets in 2021, the paper said.

The authors called for nations to introduce warnings on package labels, restrict marketing, particularly advertisements aimed at children, and tax certain UPFs, using the money to make fresh food more affordable for low-income households.