Processed foods like ramen packets and frozen pizza can hurt your heart — and the globe, this study says. Read the full story here:
Our tendency to indulge in packaged ramen lunches, frozen pizza, too much pasta and then soda to wash it all down doesn’t only put our personal health at greater risk over the long run — scientists argue that highly processed diets are damaging the planet.
The connection between human health and environmental factors was laid out in new research and commentary published in the BMJ Global Health journal.Ultra-processed foods, such as sweetened or salty snacks, soft drinks, instant noodles, reconstituted meat products, pre-prepared pizza and pasta dishes, cookies and candy, are made by assembling food substances, mostly commodity ingredients, and “cosmetic” additives, such as color and emulsifiers, through a series of industrial processes.
The variety and variability of animals, plants and microorganisms used directly or indirectly for food and agriculture, impacting soil health and farming’s long-run profitable resilience as well. As much as 90% of humanity’s energy intake comes from just 15 crop plants, and more than four billion people rely on just three of them: rice, wheat and maize, also known as corn depending on where it’s grown.
The authors pointed to an ongoing study of 7,020 ultra-processed foods sold in the main Brazilian supermarket chains, which found that their five main ingredients included food substances derived from sugar cane , milk , wheat , corn and soy .