Ultraprocessed foods: mechanisms of harm and harm reduction

Globally, about one in four deaths are related to unhealthy diets. Unhealthy diets cause obesity and chronic diseases such as diabetes, cancer and heart disease. Around two-thirds of UK adults and one-third of children live with overweight or obesity. Obesity and chronic diseases are more common in people living in poorer households.
Ultraprocessed foods (UPFs) are industrially produced using methods that cannot be replicated at home. On average, UPFs make up at least half of the food people in the UK eat, with people living in poorer households eating more UPFs. About half of UPFs are also high in fat, salt or sugar (HFSS). Most current UK dietary policies support people to eat fewer HFSS foods.
Many studies find links between eating UPFs and obesity and chronic diseases, although sometimes only for some types of UPFs. Some countries now tell citizens to avoid UPFs. In the UK, the current scientific evidence is not yet considered strong enough to include UPFs in guidance. This is partly due to uncertainty about the biological mechanisms linking UPFs to diseases.
There is a high level of political and public interest in UPFs. If guidance to eat fewer UPFs were to be introduced, we would quickly need to know the best intervention mechanisms to support people to eat less harmful UPFs and more non-UPFs without exacerbating existing inequalities. There is also uncertainty about what these are.
To address these uncertainties, we will bring together an interdisciplinary team to study the:
· biological mechanisms linking UPF consumption to obesity and chronic diseases
· intervention mechanisms to support everyone to eat less harmful UPFs and more non-UPFs
We will start by exploring the overlap between UPFs and other food classifications, such as HFSS, to help determine what, if anything, is unique about UPFs and which types of UPFs are most harmful. We will study how eating different UPFs influences blood chemicals to identify particularly harmful UPFs and biological...