Ready meals and pop give you cancer
Huge study points to deadly link
READY meals, sugary cereals and fizzy pop may cause cancer, warn researchers.
Their massive study reports a possible link between highly processed food in the diet and cancer.
The researchers say the rising consumption of these foods “may drive an increasing burden of cancer in the next decades”.
Highly processed foods include packaged baked goods and snacks, fizzy drinks, sugary cereals, ready meals and reconstituted meat products – often containing high levels of sugar, fat, and salt but lacking in vitamins and fibre.
They are thought to account for half of total daily energy intake in several countries. A few studies have linked highly processed foods to higher risks of obesity, high blood pressure and cholesterol levels.
The findings of the researchers, based in France and Brazil, are based on 104,980 healthy adults,78 per cent of them women, with an average age of 43.
The results show a 10 per cent rise in the proportion of highly processed foods in the diet was associated with increases of 12 per cent in the risk of overall cancer and 11 per cent in the risk of breast cancer.
No significant link was found for prostate and colorectal cancers. And no link was found between less processed foods – such as canned vegetables, cheeses and freshly made unpacked bread – and cancer risk.
Fresh or minimally processed foods – such as fruit, vegetables, pulses, rice, pasta, eggs, meat, fish and milk – were associated with lower risks of overall cancer and breast cancer.
Study author Dr Mathilde Touvier said: “This study is the first to highlight a rise in the risk of overall – and specifically breast – cancer associated with ultraprocessed food intake.”