Now that you’ve ran Monday's label test and the bread failed. So did the yogurt, the oat milk and the stock cubes.
You're probably looking at the pantry wondering if you're supposed to bake your own bread for the rest of your life?
The ultra-processed label covers very different foods. In the largest studies, sweetened drinks and processed meat carry most of the risk, and wholegrain bread, yogurt and wholegrain cereal carry little or none, so you can keep the bread.
Monday was about how much of what we eat counts as ultra-processed, restaurant meals included. Today is about which of those foods are worth doing something about and which you can leave alone, plus the seed oil question we said we'd come back to. Friday turns it into a shopping list, and the like-for-like swaps are already in the Whole Food Swaps guide.
What the research actually says
Harvard has tracked what about 200,000 nurses and health professionals eat for more than 30 years, with a fresh questionnaire every 4 years. Since 2022 its researchers have split ultra-processed food into its parts and tested each one against heart disease, diabetes, bowel cancer and early death.
Sweetened drinks and processed meat came out badly in every one.
Heart disease and stroke, in 206,957 adults: 9% more in the heaviest drinkers of sugary drinks than the lightest, 8% more for diet drinks, 7% more for processed meat.
Dying of any cause, in 74,563 women and 39,501 men followed for more than 30 years: 13% higher for processed meat and similar ready-to-eat meat products, 9% higher for sweetened drinks, sugar or diet.
Type 2 diabetes, in the same cohorts: higher with sweetened drinks, processed animal products, ready meals, white bread, and sauces and spreads.
The researchers adjusted the diet drink result for weight and for dieting and it held, though some of it may still be people switching to diet soda once their health is already slipping.
Wholegrain bread, cereal and yogurt came out fine.
Wholegrain bread: no link with heart disease, and a lower risk of diabetes.
Breakfast cereal: 9% less heart disease, and a lower risk of diabetes.
Yogurt and dairy desserts: 8% less heart disease, and a lower risk of diabetes.
Packaged savory snacks came out 7% lower for heart disease too. Nobody thinks chips protect your heart, so treat any single line here as a rough guide.
The bowel cancer results were different for men and women. In that analysis, men who ate the most ultra-processed food had 29% more bowel cancer than men who ate the least, with processed meat (44% more) and sugary drinks (21% more) standing out. In women there was no link overall. The group that stood out for women was ready meals, at 17% more, while yogurt came out 17% lower.
The overall risk is smaller than Monday's number suggests. Monday's 21% was an average across 45 pooled analyses. In the Harvard mortality study, the gap between the heaviest and lightest ultra-processed eaters was 4%: 1,536 deaths a year per 100,000 people against 1,472. Processed meat (13%) and sweetened drinks (9%) were the largest pieces, and ready meals, snacks, sauces and sweets sat at or near zero. When people were sorted by the overall quality of their diet, how much of it was ultra-processed stopped predicting much.
Seed oils. They're on the label of most ultra-processed food, which is a big part of how they got their reputation. When researchers look at the oils on their own, the results are better than that.
In 221,054 adults followed for up to 33 years, the people using the most plant oils had a 16% lower risk of dying than those using the least. Per teaspoon a day, canola came out 15% lower, olive 8% and soybean 6%.
A pooled analysis of 30 studies in 13 countries measured linoleic acid, the main fat in seed oils, in the blood and body fat of 68,659 people. Those with the most had a 22% lower risk of dying from heart disease.
Those results are for oil poured at home, and they don't excuse Monday's restaurant fryer, where the oil is held hot for hours and used by the cupful. If you'd rather keep to extra virgin olive oil, it did well in the same study and has centuries of Mediterranean cooking behind it.
The bottom line
Monday's label test tells you what's ultra-processed. Here's the order to deal with it in.
Start with what you drink. Soda, diet soda and anything else sweetened in a can or bottle came out badly in each of these studies, and it's the simplest change to make: sparkling water with citrus, unsweetened tea or coffee. If diet soda is how you got off the regular kind, that was progress, and the next step is having it less often.
Take processed meat out of the daily routine. That's bacon, ham, salami, hot dogs and deli slices. Keep them for when you really want them and use leftover roast chicken, canned fish or eggs in the everyday sandwich.
Go easy on ready meals. They were linked to type 2 diabetes, and to bowel cancer in women. Check the label, and when you do cook, cook double so there's a tray of your own in the freezer.
Keep the wholegrain bread, the plain yogurt and the low-sugar cereal. Choose wholegrain over white and the shortest ingredient list on the shelf. An emulsifier near the end of that list isn't a reason to give up a food that keeps coming out neutral or better.
At home, cook with the oil you like. Extra virgin olive oil has the longest record and canola holds up in the data, so the thing to cut back on is fried food when you eat out.
Give the drinks 2 weeks and see how your afternoons feel. If you track your weight or blood sugar, watch those too.
One honest caveat. These studies watch what people eat instead of assigning it, and nearly all of this comes from one group of American nurses and health professionals, almost all of them white. People who eat yogurt and wholegrain cereal tend to do plenty else right, which is probably why chips looked protective. The middle of the list moves around too: dairy desserts came out lower for heart disease in one paper and 7% higher for early death in another, where breads and breakfast foods that weren't wholegrain were 4% higher as well. Sweetened drinks and processed meat are the two that came out the same way every time.
Friday is the shopping list. If you want the swaps now, the Whole Food Swaps guide has a like-for-like replacement for each of the common packaged foods.
FROM OUR INSTAGRAM
The 5 everyday habits that show up in the long-term studies
The slides go through each one and what to change this week. A burger on the weekend doesn't make the list.
Worth Your Time
LISTEN
Which packaged food would you find hardest to give up? Hit reply and tell us. We read every one, and Friday's list has room for it.
Friday Preview
Friday is the shopping list: drinks, lunch meats and ready meals swapped like for like on one page, next to the foods you can stop worrying about.
Until Friday.
Longevity Daily / The Building Decades
P.S. Know someone who gave up bread over an ingredients list? Forward this to them. The Whole Food Swaps guide has the package-by-package version.