Research
Energy balance
High consumption of ultra-processed foods does NOT significantly increase the risk of incident obesity (BMI ≥ 30 kg/m²) in individuals who are already overweight (BMI 25-30 kg/m²) at baseline.
For those already overweight, simply reducing UPF may not be enough to prevent progression to obesity; other lifestyle factors may play a larger role.
GoodRefutesMEDIUM confidence
2 % greater risk (1.02; (0.85, 1.21)) of incident obesity... associations for incident obesity among those overweight at baseline were not statistically significant
Why this rating
Longitudinal cohort design, but the specific subgroup analysis showed non-significance.
Source
Ultra-processed foods, incident overweight and obesity, and longitudinal changes in weight and waist circumference: the Brazilian Longitudinal Study of Adult Health (ELSA-Brasil)
Scheine Canhada et al. · Public Health Nutrition · 2019
DOI 10.1017/s1368980019002854
cohort · n=11827Cited 258×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
More from this paper
- High consumption of ultra-processed foods (UPF), defined as >30.8% of total daily energy intake, significantly increases the risk of large weight gain (≥1.68 kg/year) and large waist circumference gain (≥2.42 cm/year) compared to low consumption (<17.8% of energy).Good
- High consumption of ultra-processed foods increases the risk of incident overweight and obesity (BMI ≥ 25 kg/m²) in individuals who are not overweight at baseline, with a 20% greater risk observed in the highest consumption quartile.Good
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