How Ultra-Processed Foods Could Cause Disease: Industrial Contaminants

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There are contaminants of processed foods that don’t show up on the ingredients label.

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Below is an approximation of this video’s audio content. To see any graphs, charts, graphics, images, and quotes to which Dr. Greger may be referring, watch the above video.

One of the reasons the consumption of ultra-processed foods is associated with a higher risk of disease is food additives, like artificial colors and flavors, sweeteners, emulsifiers, and more, as I talked about in the last video. But at least they are listed in the ingredients on the label; so, you could avoid them if you wanted to. Unlisted are some of the sneakier ways ultra-processed foods can be bad for you, like contaminants formed during industrial processing methods.

For example, there’s acrolein, a toxin found in cigarette smoke, that’s also generated during the cooking or frying of food with fats or oils. So it can be found in foods like potato chips, French fries, donuts. Ironically, canola oil, considered to be perhaps the most “heart healthy” type of oil, appears to generate the highest amounts of acrolein. And acrolein may cause cardiovascular disease, and probably causes cancer, too.

In fairness, acrolein would still be a problem even if you made French fries from scratch, which would be considered a minimally-processed food rather than ultra-processed frozen fries or fast food fries. But if every time you wanted to have fries you had to cut up potatoes and deep fry them, we’d probably eat a lot fewer fries.

Fried and pre-fried foods may also be contaminated with 3-MCPD, another possible carcinogen.

Furans and acrylamide are two other heat-generated contaminants that are possibly or probably cancer-causing.

Trans fats are produced in the refining process to make vegetables oils. So, they may end up as high as half a percent trans fats. In fairness, even unprocessed meat and dairy products naturally have a lot more, without much difference between unprocessed and ultra-processed products.

Similarly problematic are dietary cholesterol oxidation products, which are found in meat, eggs, and dairy. Once absorbed into circulation, they can contribute to the progression of several inflammatory diseases. Cholesterol is bad enough; however, oxidized cholesterol is even more toxic and disease-causing than cholesterol itself. And it’s also associated with the initiation and progression of major chronic diseases including atherosclerosis, Alzheimer’s, kidney failure, and diabetes.

Food processing can dramatically trigger the accumulation of cholesterol oxidation products in meats, including fish and poultry, eggs, and dairy products. But that “processing” can be just cooking the meat. Cholesterol oxidation products arise during thermal processing of foods of animal origin, with maximal cholesterol oxidation at only 300 degrees Fahrenheit (150 °C) or so. So, the difference between the levels in ultra-processed products, like pork sausage, aren’t that much different from a minimally-processed product, like roast pork. That’s why the level of oxysterols in foods—including oxidized phytosterols in margarine—is split mainly between ultra-processed foods and minimally-processed foods.

So, many of these contaminants are not exclusive to ultra-processed foods. Advanced glycation end products (AGEs) are another good example.

Increasing evidence shows that uptake of dietary AGEs—advanced glycation end products—is closely related to the occurrence of many chronic diseases, such as diabetes, chronic kidney disease, osteoporosis, and Alzheimer’s. In fact, it’s hard to find an age-related disease that doesn’t involve AGEs.

Dietary AGEs are abundant in highly-processed foods, because thermal treatments are commonly used to improve their flavor, texture, preservation, and safety. But thermal treatment just means heat; so, you can get AGEs from industrial processing or home cooking.

Canned corn has 20 units of AGEs per serving, corn chips 151, and corn pops cereal 373. Rice has 9 per serving, rice crackers 275, Rice Krispies 600.

A boiled potato has 17 AGE units per serving, potato chips 865, and fast-food fries more than 1500, whereas homemade fries have less than half that. So, ultra-processed plant foods can have nearly 100 times more AGE units than minimally-processed plant foods. But animal foods start out with high levels, even when they’re raw and unprocessed, and just go up from there.

Instead of 10 or 20––like the corn, rice, and potatoes––fish, poultry, and other meat start out at around 500 AGE units or more, and then jump into the thousands once cooked, which is considered minimally processed. For meat that’s processed or ultra-processed, they can exceed 10,000 per serving.

Although these contaminants are by no means limited to ultra-processed foods, you can see how considering how good or bad foods are based only on their listed nutrients fails to capture how food processing can transform food at the molecular level. And it’s clear that just using the clean label strategy of sticking to foods with simple ingredient lists won’t help, because we’re never going to see acrolein or acrylamide on the label. It’s the processing itself, whether traditional or industrial, that is affecting the healthfulness of the food.

Please consider volunteering to help out on the site.

Motion graphics by Avo Media

Below is an approximation of this video’s audio content. To see any graphs, charts, graphics, images, and quotes to which Dr. Greger may be referring, watch the above video.

One of the reasons the consumption of ultra-processed foods is associated with a higher risk of disease is food additives, like artificial colors and flavors, sweeteners, emulsifiers, and more, as I talked about in the last video. But at least they are listed in the ingredients on the label; so, you could avoid them if you wanted to. Unlisted are some of the sneakier ways ultra-processed foods can be bad for you, like contaminants formed during industrial processing methods.

For example, there’s acrolein, a toxin found in cigarette smoke, that’s also generated during the cooking or frying of food with fats or oils. So it can be found in foods like potato chips, French fries, donuts. Ironically, canola oil, considered to be perhaps the most “heart healthy” type of oil, appears to generate the highest amounts of acrolein. And acrolein may cause cardiovascular disease, and probably causes cancer, too.

In fairness, acrolein would still be a problem even if you made French fries from scratch, which would be considered a minimally-processed food rather than ultra-processed frozen fries or fast food fries. But if every time you wanted to have fries you had to cut up potatoes and deep fry them, we’d probably eat a lot fewer fries.

Fried and pre-fried foods may also be contaminated with 3-MCPD, another possible carcinogen.

Furans and acrylamide are two other heat-generated contaminants that are possibly or probably cancer-causing.

Trans fats are produced in the refining process to make vegetables oils. So, they may end up as high as half a percent trans fats. In fairness, even unprocessed meat and dairy products naturally have a lot more, without much difference between unprocessed and ultra-processed products.

Similarly problematic are dietary cholesterol oxidation products, which are found in meat, eggs, and dairy. Once absorbed into circulation, they can contribute to the progression of several inflammatory diseases. Cholesterol is bad enough; however, oxidized cholesterol is even more toxic and disease-causing than cholesterol itself. And it’s also associated with the initiation and progression of major chronic diseases including atherosclerosis, Alzheimer’s, kidney failure, and diabetes.

Food processing can dramatically trigger the accumulation of cholesterol oxidation products in meats, including fish and poultry, eggs, and dairy products. But that “processing” can be just cooking the meat. Cholesterol oxidation products arise during thermal processing of foods of animal origin, with maximal cholesterol oxidation at only 300 degrees Fahrenheit (150 °C) or so. So, the difference between the levels in ultra-processed products, like pork sausage, aren’t that much different from a minimally-processed product, like roast pork. That’s why the level of oxysterols in foods—including oxidized phytosterols in margarine—is split mainly between ultra-processed foods and minimally-processed foods.

So, many of these contaminants are not exclusive to ultra-processed foods. Advanced glycation end products (AGEs) are another good example.

Increasing evidence shows that uptake of dietary AGEs—advanced glycation end products—is closely related to the occurrence of many chronic diseases, such as diabetes, chronic kidney disease, osteoporosis, and Alzheimer’s. In fact, it’s hard to find an age-related disease that doesn’t involve AGEs.

Dietary AGEs are abundant in highly-processed foods, because thermal treatments are commonly used to improve their flavor, texture, preservation, and safety. But thermal treatment just means heat; so, you can get AGEs from industrial processing or home cooking.

Canned corn has 20 units of AGEs per serving, corn chips 151, and corn pops cereal 373. Rice has 9 per serving, rice crackers 275, Rice Krispies 600.

A boiled potato has 17 AGE units per serving, potato chips 865, and fast-food fries more than 1500, whereas homemade fries have less than half that. So, ultra-processed plant foods can have nearly 100 times more AGE units than minimally-processed plant foods. But animal foods start out with high levels, even when they’re raw and unprocessed, and just go up from there.

Instead of 10 or 20––like the corn, rice, and potatoes––fish, poultry, and other meat start out at around 500 AGE units or more, and then jump into the thousands once cooked, which is considered minimally processed. For meat that’s processed or ultra-processed, they can exceed 10,000 per serving.

Although these contaminants are by no means limited to ultra-processed foods, you can see how considering how good or bad foods are based only on their listed nutrients fails to capture how food processing can transform food at the molecular level. And it’s clear that just using the clean label strategy of sticking to foods with simple ingredient lists won’t help, because we’re never going to see acrolein or acrylamide on the label. It’s the processing itself, whether traditional or industrial, that is affecting the healthfulness of the food.

Please consider volunteering to help out on the site.

Motion graphics by Avo Media

Doctor's Note

If you missed the previous videos in this series, check out: 

Stay tuned for the rest of this extended video series on ultra-processed foods, coming out over the next several months.

If you don’t want to wait for each video to be released, we’ve compiled all the information into a brand-new book, Ultra-Processed Foods: Concerns, Controversies, and Exceptions.

If you haven't yet, you can subscribe to our free newsletter. With your subscription, you'll also get notifications for just-released blogs and videos. Check out our information page about our translated resources.

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