Are ultra-processed foods (UPFs) as bad for you as cigarettes?
A new study by researchers in the United States is calling for authorities to treat them similarly. The researchers claim that UPFs have far more in common with cigarettes than fruits and vegetables.
UPFs include biscuits, soft drinks, formula milk, several baby and toddler foods, sweets, fast food, snack cakes, mass-produced bread, breakfast cereals, ready meals and desserts.
But what do we know about the study? Are UPFs as damaging for you as smoking?
Let’s take a closer look.
The study
The study was compiled by scientists from Harvard University, the University of Michigan, and Duke University. It was published this week in the Milbank Quarterly healthcare journal.
As per DW, it found that UPFs “share key engineering strategies adopted from the tobacco industry” designed to increase “compulsive consumption”.
It said that these foods are industrially manufactured in such a way as to perfectly deliver “doses” of addictive ingredients such as refined carbohydrates and fats and encourage overeating – just as the cigarette industry did with nicotine.
“UPFs are not just nutrients but \[are\] intentionally designed, highly engineered and manipulated, hedonically optimised products,” the study states. As per The Guardian, the authors claimed that UPFs that market themselves as “low fat” or “sugar free” are “health washing” in order to halt regulation against them. They said that these “in practice offered little meaningful benefit” and essentially “collectively hijack human biology”.
“Many UPFs share more characteristics with cigarettes than with minimally processed fruits or vegetables and therefore warrant regulation commensurate with the significant public health risks they pose,” the researchers said.
The study recommended that authorities take the same measures against UPFs as they did against cigarettes, including clearer labelling, higher taxes, restricting their availability in schools and hospitals,
and not allowing them to be marketed to children.
The study concluded, “UPFs should be evaluated not only through a nutritional lens but also as addictive, industrially engineered substances. Lessons from tobacco regulation, including litigation, marketing restrictions, and structural interventions, offer a roadmap for reducing UPF-related harm. Public health efforts must shift from individual responsibility to food industry accountability, recognising UPFs as potent drivers of preventable disease.”
The development comes months after a UNICEF study published in _The Lancet_ in December showed the extent children in nearly a dozen countries are consuming UPFs. It showed that between 10 and 35 per cent of children the age of five and under are already having soft drinks regularly. Meanwhile, while 60 per cent of teens admitted to having eaten at least one UPF product the day before.
‘Feel addicted to this stuff’
The authors of the study urged authorities to act because “opting out of the modern food supply is difficult”.
Professor Ashley Gearhardt from the University of Michigan, one of the authors of the study, was quoted by The Independent as saying, “They would say, ‘I feel addicted to this stuff, I crave it – I used to smoke cigarettes [and] now I have the same habit but it’s with soda and doughnuts. I know it’s killing me; I want to quit, but I can’t.’”
“We just blame it on the individual for a while and say, ‘Oh, you know, just smoke in moderation, drink in moderation’ – and eventually we get to a point where we understand the levers that the industry can pull to create products that can really hook people,” Gearhardt, a clinical psychologist specialising in addiction, added.
The Guardian quoted Dr Githinji Gitahi, chief executive of Amref Health Africa, as saying, “This journal article reinforces a growing public health alarm sounding across Africa, where corporates have found a comfortable, and profitable, nexus: weak government regulation on harmful products and a changing pattern of consumption.
“All this places new and preventable pressures on already stretched health systems,” he said. “Without publicly led interventions on the rising burden of non-communicable diseases, we risk health systems’ collapse.”
However, not everyone agrees
The newspaper quoted Professor Martin Warren, chief scientific officer at the Quadram Institute, a specialist food research centre, as saying that though there were similarities between the two industries, the researchers may have “overreached”.
He said questions lingered over whether UPFs were “intrinsically addictive in a pharmacological sense, or whether they mainly exploit learned preferences, reward conditioning and convenience”.
He added that it must be examined whether any ill effects came from UPFs themselves or because they displaced “whole foods rich in fibre, micronutrients and protective phytochemicals”.
“This distinction matters, because it influences whether regulatory responses should mirror tobacco control or instead prioritise dietary quality, reformulation standards, and food system diversification.”
With inputs from agencies
