Nutrition|The nutritional content of foods and drinks is more important for health than their degree of processing.
The summary is made by artificial intelligence and checked by a human.
A new study calculates that the diet of plant-based eaters has slightly more highly processed products than that of meat eaters.
The study included the information of almost 200,000 people from the British biobank.
Overall, the differences between the different diet groups were quite small.
The consumption of ultra-processed foods was high in all diet groups.
Plant-based eaters seem to have slightly more highly processed products in their diet than regular meat eaters, calculates based on British data research.
People who eat meat or fish more moderately, on the other hand, consume so-called ultra-processed foods less than regular meat eaters.
In the total amount of highly processed foods, vegans did not differ significantly from meat eaters in the study.
The differences between the groups were quite small overall. What they all had in common was the high consumption of products from the highly processed food group.
“All diet types often consumed many ultra-processed products, such as mass-produced bakery products, carbonated drinks and convenience foods,” says the study.
According to the adjusted results, vegetarians consumed 1.3 percentage points more highly processed foods than regular meat eaters.
The review included the information of almost 200,000 people living in Britain, which came from the British Biobank.
Research have been made by public health scientists from Imperial College London, the Brazilian University of São Paulo, and IARC, the World Health Organization’s cancer research organization.
They divided the participants into six different groups according to dietary information.
There were two groups of carnivores. Regular red meat eaters were all those who reported eating red meat and meat products more than once a week.
Those who eat little red meat were counted as those who reported that they ate red meat or meat products no more than once a week, but they could eat fish or poultry more often.
In flexible and in the plant-based so-called flexitarian diet, no product of the animal kingdom is completely refused. In the study, people who eat fish, red meat, processed meat or poultry no more than once a week were classified as flexitarians.
Those in the fish-eating group ate fish but no red or processed meat or chicken.
Vegetarians did not eat any meat or fish, but there were dairy products and eggs in their diet. Vegans did not consume any products from the animal kingdom.
Carnivores formed the two clearly largest groups. There were more than 75,000 regular meat eaters, and more than 70,000 people in the low meat consumption group.
On average, almost half of the participants’ daily energy intake came from ultra-processed foods.
Ultra processed in calculating food consumption, the so-called Nova classification developed in São Paulo was used, which is a classification recognized by the UN food and health organizations.
Nova distributes the food into four classes according to the degree of processing. However, the division has received a lot review.
It is confusing, for example, that mass-produced packaged bread, i.e. bread sold in plastic bags in grocery stores, is classified as ultra-processed food. In the same group of four categories are sausages, sweets and soft drinks.
Sanapari ultra-processed food is associated with unhealthiness in many minds.
In studies the consumption of ultra-processed foods has been linked to overweight, to cardiovascular disease eventspoor cholesterol levels, metabolic syndrome, depression and a higher risk of premature death.
Numerous experts are, however emphasizedthat the nutritional content of foods and drinks is much more important for health than their degree of processing. Food processing is when, for example, carrots are peeled, chopped, boiled and mashed.
If the food has a lot of sugar, salt or especially hard fat and little fiber, vitamins and minerals, you should limit eating it.
Highly processed foods contain many products with poor nutritional content. It is good to avoid heavy consumption of such products.
Fresh the authors of the study looked at the consumption of foods belonging to the ultra-processed category by product group. Vegans and vegetarians showed higher consumption of plant-based products that replace milk and meat than other groups.
The market for products that replace meat and milk is constantly growing, researchers say.
“Plant-based and low-meat diets are often considered healthy and environmentally sustainable,” they write.
“However, new evidence from the literature has suggested that the degree and purpose of food processing may be important when assessing the healthiness of plant-based foods,” the researchers continue couple for research referring to.
Research was published by the scientific journal eClinicalMedicine, which is part of the prestigious The Lancet group of journals.
The researchers consider the study’s weaknesses to be that there were few vegans, which creates uncertainty about the results. In addition, some foods may have been misclassified, and today there are more plant-based highly processed products than during data collection in 2009–2012.