Ultra-processed foods such as soft drinks, breakfast cereals and ready-made meals are taking up an increasing share of daily diets worldwide, contributing to a decline in overall diet quality. That is the conclusion of an international group of researchers in a new series of articles in The Lancet. A higher intake of ultra-processed foods is also consistently associated with chronic conditions such as obesity, type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
The core message of the study can be summarised quite simply: across the globe, traditional, scratch-cooked meals are gradually being replaced by diets composed largely of industrially manufactured foods. These are products that you don't simply make yourself, which often undergo several processing steps and often contain added flavourings, colourings or other additives. Examples include fruit yoghurts, cakes, sausages and supermarket-ready lasagne. “We are shifting towards an ultra-processed diet,” says nutrition researcher Neha Khandpur of Wageningen University & Research (WUR), who contributed to the publication. “And that pattern is associated with negative health outcomes.”
Worldwide increase
The researchers analysed sales data from 93 countries and food diaries from nine countries, ranging from Brazil to the United States. In nearly all regions, the sale of ultra-processed foods (UPFs) has been rising for years. Low- and middle-income countries in particular show a rapid increase.
In Spain, the share of daily energy intake from UPFs rose from eleven to almost 32 per cent in three decades; in Brazil from roughly ten to twenty per cent. Yet, these figures remain modest compared with the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States, where more than half of all calories consumed now come from UPFs. Although the Lancet study did not track the trend in the Netherlands, a Dutch study from 2022 showed that Dutch consumers also obtain more than half of their energy intake from UPFs.
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