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Population study: followed a group

Study of 305 Brazilian children: ultra-processed food linked to higher blood pressure

Valmorbida and colleagues · Nutrition research (New York, N.Y.) · 2023

Original title: Consumption of ultraprocessed food is associated with higher blood pressure among 6-year-old children from southern Brazil.

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What the study found

Points to harm

Ultra-processed food intake was linked to higher systolic blood pressure at 6 years (P = .05) and higher diastolic blood pressure at 3 and 6 years (P = .01 and P < .01).

The study at a glance

Type of study
Population study: followed a group
Who or what was studied
305 people · 305 children in southern Brazil, studied at ages 3 and 6
What was tested
Share of daily energy from ultra-processed food (40.3% at age 3, 45.2% at age 6) vs blood pressure at age 6
What it measured
Lab tests or markers
Trial registration
NCT00635453
Who has a stake
No stake declared
No competing interests declared.
Journal
Nutrition research (New York, N.Y.), 2023
Source
PubMed record 37354762. This page is based on the abstract only.

How much this study counts

  • –Shows a link, not a cause: people chose their own habits, and other differences between them may explain the result.
  • ✓Followed people over time, so habits were recorded before the outcome happened.
  • •305 people.
  • –Measured lab tests or markers, which stand in for death, heart disease, diabetes and cancer. A better marker does not always mean better health.
  • ✓No competing interests declared.
  • •Summarized from the PubMed abstract only. The full paper may hold details the abstract leaves out.

✓ Strength– Limit• Note

These points come from fixed rules about the type of study, its size and length, what it measured, and who has a stake. Every study on Digestery gets the same rules.

Where this study sits

Each dot is one on-topic paper on this question. Steps near the top answer the question more directly.

↑ Stronger evidence

  1. Trials in people: death and chronic disease

    2

    1 no difference, 1 harm

  2. Trials in people: other measures

    3

    1 mixed, 1 no direction, 1 harm

  3. Trials in people: lab tests or safety

    1

    1 mixed

  4. Population studies

    17

    1 mixed, 16 harm

    ↑ This study is the ringed dot

  5. Blood levels and genes

    0

    None among the papers we read.

↓ Weaker evidence

  • Points to benefit
  • Mixed
  • No difference
  • No direction
  • Points to harm

How it fits with the other research

The short answer to “Are ultra-processed foods bad for your health?”

Linked to worse health; cause not proven.

Confidence: low. Based on 38 on-topic papers.

Read the full answer

Of the other 16 papers on the same step: 1 mixed, 15 harm. This one found harm. It agrees with most of them.

  • Counted on the ladder, but not quoted in the page’s main findings.

Other papers on the same step

See all 38 studies on this question

How this page was made

Label

First read of the abstract
Claude Sonnet
Independent second read
Claude Haiku
Differences settled
The two reads differed. The reviewer checked the abstract and kept the first read. Claude Opus 5.5.
Headline
Claude Sonnet, from the checked study record. A script checked its numbers and wording.
Numbers
Checked against the abstract by a script
“How much this study counts”
Fixed rules, the same for every study
Source check by a person
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