Want to reduce your intake of ultra-processed food? If so, cook at home more often, don’t eat late at night and chew your food more slowly.
Those are among some of the tips doctors have offered to help people limit the amount of UPF they consume given the acute and growing danger it poses to human health worldwide.
Their recommendations also include eating plain rather than flavoured or sweetened yoghurt, replacing sugary drinks with water and reading the nutrition label and list of ingredients on any tin, packet or sachet of food before buying anything.
Those are some of the things specialist heart doctors are being urged to advise patients to do if they already have heart disease or are at risk of developing it. An estimated 8 million people in the UK are estimated to have been diagnosed with cardiovascular disease, which claims about 170,000 lives annually and is one of the country’s biggest killers. That means they are at risk of having, or have already suffered, a heart attack or stroke or have a condition such as atrial fibrillation.
The advice is outlined in a new “clinical consensus statement” on how to tackle UPF drawn up by the European Society of Cardiology and European Association of Preventive Cardiology. They have set out steps they think cardiologists should take when talking to patients about their health.
For example, they should “encourage patients to cook at home more frequently”, “discuss with patients the potential benefits of avoiding late eating” and “advise patients to prefer high-fibre, minimally processed foods and practice slower, mindful eating to enhance satiety and reduce overeating of UPFs”, according to the paper, published in the European Heart Journal on Thursday.
Cardiologists should start to include discussion of UPF when talking to patients. They should routinely ask how much UPF they consume and then “apply UPF counselling in outpatient clinics and during routine lifestyle assessment, particularly in preventive cardiology”.
Showing patients images of UPF foods for sale in shops to remind them which products they are is better than relying on merely verbal explanations of such foods, which are of little or no nutritional value, the statement adds.
“Doctors should be having much more practical conversations with heart patients about the food they eat every day. In simple terms, that means encouraging people to cook more at home where they can, although this can often be difficult, choose more fresh or minimally processed foods, and cut back on products such as sugary drinks, packaged snacks, processed meats, ready meals and takeaways that are often high in salt, sugar and unhealthy fats,” said Dr Kawther Hashem, a senior lecturer in public health nutrition at Queen Mary University of London and head of research and impact at Action on Salt and Sugar.
Doctors should advise people with existing heart problems to eat less salt in particular, because it raises blood pressure, a leading cause of heart disease, stroke and kidney disease, she added.
“For people with heart problems, reducing salt is especially important because it helps lower blood pressure, one of the biggest risk factors for heart disease, stroke and kidney disease. Cutting sugary foods and drinks can also help reduce excess calorie intake and the risk of weight gain and type 2 diabetes.”
Prof Luigina Guasti, a co-author of the paper, said: “Evidence shows that people who cook more meals at home tend to have better overall diet quality and eat less ultra-processed food. Even small and gradual increases in home-prepared meals can improve health over time.”
Consuming fewer sugary drinks, packaged snacks and processed meats – which are common types of UPFs – would be “a good first step towards a healthier diet overall”, she added.
The paper is based on a review of the existing evidence about UPF’s risks to health. It confirmed the known danger that eating such foods too often increases the risk of obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, chronic kidney disease and dying from cardiovascular disease.
Tracy Parker, a senior dietitian at the British Heart Foundation, said that individuals could only achieve so much on their own in a quest to consume less UPF and that the government should do more to create a healthier food environment.
