Ultraprocessed foods are pervasive in the modern food system. It's estimated that around 60% to 70% of an average American adult's daily calories consist of these products. While convenient and tasty, chronic consumption eventually wrecks your health, and the first place that's affected is your gut. Eating ultraprocessed foods weakens your intestinal lining, allowing harmful bacteria to thrive and creating systemic inflammation. Moreover, your gut's balance shifts dramatically, crowding out beneficial microbes that normally keep your gut healthy
More than half of the calories American adults eat now come from ultraprocessed foods. From breakfast cereals to plant-based burgers and low-fat yogurt, ultraprocessed products dominate grocery aisles and dinner plates. They're cheap, convenient, and often heavily marketed as healthy. But the truth is, these industrial creations are quietly dismantling your body's ability to regulate blood sugar. Type 2 diabetes is no longer a condition that only affects older adults.
Participants on the non-processed food regimen burned more fat, had lower systolic blood pressure, and lower levels of glycated hemoglobin compared to the processed one.
The research led by Erikka Loftfield discovered biological markers in blood and urine that can indicate how much energy a person consumes from ultraprocessed foods, offering new insights into the food-health relationship.