Those donuts, cakes, and ready-to-eat meals might satisfy your taste buds, but they come with a hefty price. Although, often convenient and delicious, ultra-processed foods (UPF) are increasingly being linked to serious health risks.

Recent research adds more evidence to the link, revealing that these indulgent foods might not just harm your body in the short term, but they could also significantly shorten your life expectancy.

The researchers developed a model to estimate the relative risk of all-cause mortality based on food consumption data across the eight countries. The results published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine revealed that in countries like Colombia, ultra-processed foods accounted for 15% of the total caloric intake, while in the United States, that figure skyrocketed to over 50%.

The study also discovered a concerning trend: countries with lower ultra-processed food consumption had a 4% increased risk of death, while in nations with the highest levels of these types of food intake, like the United States, the risk soared to nearly 14%.

"For example, in 2018, 124,000 premature deaths were attributable to the consumption of UPFs in the United States," said lead investigator of the study, Eduardo Augusto Fernandes Nilson in a news release.

"We looked at the risk of a person dying from eating more ultra-processed foods between the ages of 30 and 69, a time when it would be premature to die. We found that for each 10% increase in total calories from ultra-processed foods, the risk of dying prematurely rose by nearly 3%," said study coauthor Carlos Augusto Monteiro from the University of São Paulo, Brazil.

Although earlier studies have found the health effects of ultra-processed food, this study is significant as it provides evidence for "a linear dose-response association between the ultra-processed food consumption and all-cause mortality."

Based on the study's findings, researchers are calling for urgent action, emphasizing that "policies that disincentivize the consumption of UPFs are urgently needed globally."

"It is concerning that while in high-income countries UPF consumption is already high but relatively stable for over a decade, in low- and middle-income countries the consumption has continuously increased, meaning that while the attributable burden in high-income countries is currently higher, it is growing in the other countries," Nilson added.

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