Processed food is linked to the risk of Type 2 diabetes

PEOPLE who regularly tuck into processed meats, artificially sweetened drinks and chocolate are putting themselves at risk of developing Type 2 diabetes.

Diets made up of almost 30 per cent ultra-processed foods (UPF) can raise a person’s chance of contracting the disease by 15 per cent, a study has shown.

Previous research has linked their consumption to an increased risk of early death and chronic diseases such as cancer, and cardiovascular disease.

But now diabetes has been added to the mix as in a study of 21,800 men and 82,907 women, scientists found absolute Type 2 diabetes rates in the lowest UPF consumers were 113 per 100,000 compared with 166 per 100,000 for those who ate the highest levels.

On average UPF made up 17.3 per cent of the food consumed by volunteers but a 10 per cent increase put participants in the danger zone the condition.

Data on dietary intake was collected using 24-hour records designed to register participants’ usual consumption for more than 3,500 different food items.

In a follow-up six years later, 821 participants had been diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. for

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The results held true even when other factors that might influence the results – such as obesity and exercise levels – were taken into account.

Dr Bernard Srour, of the Centre of Research in Epidemiology and Statistics at the University of Paris, said while the results suggested an association between UPF consumption and Type 2 diabetes further research was needed to determine the cause. “They need to be confirmed in large prospective cohorts in other settings, and underlying mechanisms need to be explored in ad-hoc epidemiological and experimental studies,” he stated in a report published in the American journal JAMA Internal Medicine.

Kevin McConway, emeritus professor of applied statistics at The Open University, said: “The new study does not really throw much new light on how ultraprocessed food consumption might possibly be a cause of changes in diabetes risk.

“The possible causal pathways from the foods to the diabetes do not apply to every food on the ultra-processed list, so it would need analysis of individual foods or groups of foods to throw clearer light on what might be going on, and despite the 100,000 participants, there isn’t really enough data for most such investigations.”