Research

Mixed

Consumption of an ultra-processed dietary pattern (80% UPFs) induces significant alterations in plasma and urine metabolomic profiles compared to an unprocessed dietary pattern, affecting pathways such as glutamate, bile acid, and fatty acid metabolism.

Even if you match the protein and carbs, eating ultra-processed foods changes your body's internal chemistry differently than whole foods. Look for changes in metabolites related to bile acids and amino acids, which may signal different metabolic stressors.

GoodSupportsHIGH confidence
We identified exogenous and endogenous metabolites, representing a range of metabolic pathways, that consistently differed between a UPF-DP and UN-DP.
Lauren E O’Connor et al. · Current Developments in Nutrition · 2022

Why this rating

Randomized controlled crossover feeding trial with matched macronutrients, though sample size is small (n=20).

Source

Plasma and Urine Metabolomic Response to an Ultra-Processed Dietary Pattern: A Biomarker Discovery Analysis in a Domiciled Randomized Controlled Crossover Feeding Trial

Lauren E O’Connor et al. · Current Developments in Nutrition · 2022

DOI 10.1093/cdn/nzac054.038

crossover · n=20
Read the paper
DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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