Children who get more than 30% of their daily calories from ultraprocessed foods are at a 4x increased risk of developing asthma.
The shocking finding comes from a new Spanish study that followed 700 Spanish schoolchildren and training their allergies and food intake.
The researchers took 691 children who were four or five years old at the time the study began.
Their parents reported what they ate by completing a detailed questionnaire using the NOVA food-classification system, which ranks foods according to the degree of processing rather than the nutritional content.
Parents also provided information about whether their children had been diagnosed with asthma or other allergies.
The researchers controlled for a number of variables including weight and time spent in front of screens.
Medical Xpress explains, “The results showed a strong link between ultra-processed foods and asthma. “Higher UPF consumption may be associated with an increased risk of developing asthma in school-age children,” commented the team in their paper.
“Beyond the nearly fourfold increase in asthma risk compared to children with the lowest intake of UPFs, the study found that the quantity of processed foods mattered. As the percentage of processed food in a child’s diet went up, the likelihood of an asthma diagnosis also appeared to increase.
“However, no such link was shown between ultra-processed foods and other allergic conditions. The study authors suggest that this may be because UPFs are irritating the lungs through a type of inflammation not related to an allergic reaction.”
Ultraprocessed foods are one of the main targets of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Make America Healthy Again crusade, because they have been linked to a wide variety of chronic diseases, especially in children.
Levels of childhood chronic disease have exploded in tandem with consumption of ultraprocessed foods.
