These Ultraprocessed Foods Pose the Greatest Diabetes Risk

Potato chips, hot dogs, frozen pizza, sugary cereals, and other ultraprocessed foods are packed with additives that add little or no nutritional value. In fact, they might even increase the risk of an early death.

Now new findings suggest that people who eat too many highly processed foods face a higher chance of developing type 2 diabetes.

“The good news is that replacing ultraprocessed foods with less processed foods was associated with a reduced type 2 diabetes risk,” said lead author Samuel Dicken, a PhD student at the University College London’s Center for Obesity Research, in a press release.

Lowering Diabetes Risks Through Healthier Choices

For the analysis, Dicken and his collaborators looked at ultraprocessed food consumption and health outcomes for more than 300,000 people from eight European countries over nearly 11 years on average. During that time, more than 14,000 people developed type 2 diabetes.

The results, published in The Lancet Regional Health–Europe, linked each 10 percent rise in the amount of ultraprocessed foods a person eats with a 17 percent increase in type 2 diabetes risk.

Using scientific modeling, however, the authors estimated that risk could be lowered 14 percent by replacing 10 percent of ultraprocessed foods in a diet with unprocessed or minimally processed foods such as eggs, milk, and fruit, used along with cooking ingredients like salt, butter, and oil.

Even replacing ultraprocessed foods with some processed alternatives — those not overly loaded with sugar, oils, fats, coloring, flavor enhancers, and other additives — could make a difference in terms of diabetes risk.