Realfooding is gaining more strength than ever, and it is that this movement that defends eating real food and avoiding ultra-processed products is the best solution to bad diets with excess added sugars, salt and unhealthy fats that are the first factor of loss of health and cause of diseases.
A reality that has been demonstrated once again with the experiment carried out by a group of scientists from King’s College London for BBC Panorama: comparing how the health of two identical twins changes with very different diets.
The study. Aimee Kingston, 24, has spent two weeks on an ultra-processed diet, while Nancy, her identical twin, was on a diet that contained exactly the same amount of calories, nutrients, fat, sugar, and fiber, but ate raw or little processed.
With just two weeks of study, the health of both of them who started from the same starting point changed completely: Aimee gained almost a kilo of weight, while Nancy lost weight. Aimee’s blood sugar levels also got worse, and blood fat (lipid) levels increased.
Worry. A short-term study that once again highlights the growing fears among some scientists about the possible impact of so-called ultra-processed foods on our health. “Over the past decade, evidence has slowly been mounting that ultra-processed foods are harmful to us in ways we hadn’t thought. We’re talking about a whole range of cancers, heart disease, stroke and dementia,” Tim Spector, a professor of epidemiology at King’s College London who supervised the trial, told the BBC.
Health. But not only that, one of the most comprehensive studies on ultra-processed foods, carried out by the Imperial College School of Public Health and published in The Lancet medical journal last January, found studying up to 200,000 adults that a greater consumption of ultra-processed foods it may be linked to an increased risk of developing cancer in general, and specifically ovarian and brain cancer.
Among the most popular and common ultra-processed foods are: mass-produced bread and sweetened breakfast cereals, instant soups, prepackaged and microwaveable meals, fruit-flavored yogurts, ham, sausages, ice cream, chips, cookies, soft drinks and some alcoholic beverages, such as whiskey, gin, and rum.
It should not be forgotten that as the consumption of ultra-processed foods increases, the rates of diabetes and cancer also increase. Some academics think this is not a coincidence and are investigating the link between some of the chemicals in ultra-processed foods and cancer, diabetes and stroke.
