Health Update: Ultra-processed Foods and Death
Mark Smith • April 15, 2024
Hello friends:
In case you are tempted to put some drive-through into yourself, or other ultra-processed foods, please stop and consider the long-term consequences. These foods may taste pretty good, but they do not contribute to your health…instead they can destroy it, one bite at a time. Please read what the authors had to say about these ‘treats’:
“Ultra-processed foods include items such as instant noodles, chicken nuggets, hot dogs, ready-to-eat meals, sugary cereal, packaged baked goods, snacks, and soft drinks. These foods often undergo numerous industrial processes and may be made up of chemically modified substances that are extracted from foods. Additives may be used to enhance the appearance, texture, taste, or durability of the food, along with added colors, flavors, and emulsifiers. Often, ultra-processed foods are high in salt, sugar, and fat, low in vitamins and fiber, and have minimal or no whole foods.”
“An ultra-processed food is a food that resembles nothing of its component parts/ingredients. An ultra-processed food has been stripped of its nutritional value (essentially). It also has many ingredients, including food additives (i.e. hydrogenated fats, modified starches) that are not used in home cooking. These foods are mainly of industrial origin and can be stored for long periods of time,” Dana Hunnes, PhD, a senior clinical dietician at the UCLA Medical Center who was not involved in the research, told Medical News Today.
“Unfortunately, ultra-processed foods are inexpensive to purchase [but] expensive in terms of health,” she added. “Individuals need to look at what they can afford in their diet and make incremental changes. Our brains become addicted to these hyperpalatable flavors and ingredients, and like a drug, we need to wean off these ultra-processed foods and exchange them for healthier, whole-food items.”
About 73% of the food supply in the United States is made up of ultra-processed foods. Experts note that ultra-processed foods are a common part of the diet in the United States with many people unaware of the health dangers associated with them.”
https://www.bmj.com/content/384/bmj-2023-077310
Bottom Line:
Friends do not let friends eat these ‘food like objects’ so please just remove them from your diet. Start with removing added sugars for the next 3 to 4 weeks, then move on to removing processed grains for the next month, then consider only consuming healthy snacks, then removed fried things…by now, you know what to remove next, so keep going. Take a deep breath…and begin! A healthier you is on the way with a better protected future.
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Health News Update: Happy New Year 2026! 1.5.26 Hey there everyone: Here is some news you can use to help you age optimally. I have written before about circadian rhythms and meal timing where it has been shown that eTRF (early time restricted feeding) has many benefits. But what happens as we age and shift our mealtimes away from our natural circadian clocks? Here are some snippets from this paper: “Chrononutrition, the study of the timing of eating, has emerged as a modifiable risk factor for adverse health outcomes The role of eating schedules is biologically relevant as dietary intake acts as an environmental cue influencing the circadian clocks of peripheral metabolic tissues and therefore can contribute to circadian misalignment and internal desynchrony 2 , 10 . The emerging evidence largely suggests that later mealtimes, particularly eating during the biological evening, is detrimental to health, Physical and psychological illnesses, including fatigue, oral health problems, depression, anxiety, and multimorbidity, are primarily associated with later breakfast. Later breakfast timing is also associated with increased mortality Importantly, eating breakfast later with aging was linked to a higher risk of death” https://www.nature.com/articles/s43856-025-01035-x meal timing important for health Bottom Line: While this paper focuses on the elderly, it is certainly applicable to all of us. I have seen significant health benefits when people adopt eTRF patters…from better digestion to weight loss, to better sleep, to more energy! Here are two links to my earlier blogs for the info on when to eat for optimal health: https://www.richmondchironeuro.com/health-news-update-when-you-eat-is-critical-to-long-term-health https://www.richmondchironeuro.com/health-news-update-when-we-eat-is-as-critical-as-what-we-eat
Health News Update: Health is Your Most Valuable Asset 12.29.2025 Hello again everyone: This blog is a follow up to last week’s Christmas wishes, because it is my sincere wish for each of you that you fully embrace a healthy lifestyle for 2026 and beyond. Health is built on many components, and if you were to choose just one to get started, it would be to seriously upgrade your food choices, which specifically means a whole food, unprocessed or minimally processed (home cooking), plant-based food plan. Why? As you have heard me say, over and over, that inflammation will cause, perpetuate, and/or aggravate ALL chronic conditions and diseases plus it makes us susceptible to acute illness such as infections (flu, mono, Covid, etc.). As noted in the Journal of the American Medical Association (1), the Standard American Diet (SAD) is the leading cause of death and disability in our country and many others. It used to be that the leading causes of death were Communicable Diseases, i.e., infections. Today, the leading causes of death are Non-Communicable Diseases (NCD’s) such as heart disease, cancer, high blood pressure, stroke, diabetes, dementia…these chronic degenerative diseases are responsible for over 70% of all deaths worldwide. (2) Additionally, while we are living longer, we are living sicker. This means that our healthspan is about 10 to 15 years shorter than our lifespan…this is a deplorable condition that I have seen so many suffer through with progressive disability, suffering, and an early and unpleasant death spiral. At this moment, about 40% of us have multiple chronic health conditions while nearly 60% are burdened with at least one chronic health diagnosis…and this situation has only been forecasted to worsen significantly. (3,4) The tragedy is that this situation is largely preventable. You already know that food is the leading cause of death and disability…so what foods are they talking about? The researchers are talking about the Standard American Diet, also known as SAD…which is unfortunately a very fitting abbreviation. The SAD is notable for a high consumption of processed and ultra-processed foods, added sugars, saturated fats, refined carbohydrates, processed meats, red meat, additives, colorings, flavor enhancers, sugary drinks, higher pesticide and chemical burdens, and refined grains…and lacking in clean sources of vegetables, fruits, whole grains, nuts, seeds, legumes, and leaner protein sources. (5) The SAD diet is notable for high energy density and low nutrient density...a recipe for illness. All cellular processed require nutrition, not just calories. No single food has all of the nutrients, vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients, fiber, protein, fat, and carbohydrates that we need to thrive and remain robust and resilient. Consuming a diet that results in insufficiency, deficiency, or an excess of nutrients will eventually lead to some type of illness, disease, or condition as well as predispose you to becoming chronically inflamed, ill, or just sick. The SAD diet has been linked to many chronic diseases primarily because it leads to uncontrolled, chronic, background inflammation that drives health degeneration. Current research states that on average both children and adults consume 60% of their daily caloric intake from ultra-processed foods and only 10% of us meet the daily requirements for recommended fruit and vegetable intake (5, 6, 7) and 73% of our food supply is ultra-processed. Additionally, many studies have revealed that this type of ‘food’ is directly linked to many diseases and conditions and has been categorized as a high inflammatory potential diet. (8) An inflammatory dietary pattern will cause, perpetuate, and/or aggravate all of the leading causes of death and disability…or as some research puts it, “The chronic inflammatory state significantly contributes to the development and progression of many noncommunicable disease processes, including cancer, cardiovascular disease, and neurocognitive decline.” (13) On the flip side, a diet that consists of minimally processed, whole food, plant-based sources of nutrient dense, low inflammatory potential, and calorically appropriate foods is associated with fewer diseases, better health, less disability and an overall higher quality of life. It even helps when you are already not feeling well. (9,10,11,12,13,14) In my practice and clinical experience, without an optimal food plan, no amount of adjustments, vitamins, herbs, exercise, or stress reduction will work nearly as well as they should, if at all. Additionally, you should know that if you would like to experience healthy aging, an anti-inflammatory food upgrade is essential…and this includes both physically and cognitively. By now, I hope you are at least curious about consuming an anti-inflammatory, unprocessed, clean, whole food plant-based dietary lifestyle. This is not a sprint…we are all in it for the long haul and slow and steady (consistency) wins the race. Invest in yourself by taking classes in how to create your optimal food plan. I have recently taken several courses and gotten a lot out of them and upgraded our foods even more. (15,16,17,18,19) Undoubtably there are more classes out there…let me know what you find! Remember, you can start slowly and gradually work your way into this upgrade/shift. For example, in week one, you can start with 2 or 3 plant based lunches and next week add a breakfast, and so on. You can reduce your animal foods gradually at a pace you can be comfortable with. Just start…go plant-based and see what happens…you have nothing to lose (except some unwanted pounds and inflammation) and everything to gain. Part of being a good steward and tending your Temple is realizing that food is an essential part of our worship. We would never put diesel into our gas tank, nor should we put ultra-processed ‘food like things’ into our Temple. Now that you know this, what will you choose to do? So, this is my New Years wish for you and yours: freedom from disability, illness, and disease, a massive recovery if you need it, and the feeling of vibrant health always. Thank you for your time and attention…all the best for 2026! References: 1. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2678018 (see Figure 2) 2. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10830426/ 3. https://chronicdisease.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/FS_ChronicDiseaseCommentary2022FINAL.pdf 4. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/public-health/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2022.1082183/full 5. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/western-diet 6. https://foodtank.com/news/2022/11/database-indicates-u-s-food-supply-is-73-percent-ultra-processed/ 7. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/overall-diet-quality-may-be-more-important-than-how-much-ultra-processed-foods-you-eat#Why-ultra-processed-foods-are-unhealthy 8. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/overall-diet-quality-may-be-more-important-than-how-much-ultra-processed-foods-you-eat#How-to-have-a-more-healthy-diet 9. https://health.unl.edu/health-benefits-anti-inflammatory-diet-10-foods-eat-and-6-avoid/ 10. https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-prevention/anti-inflammatory-diet 11. https://www.henryford.com/blog/2020/07/health-benefits-antiinflammatory-diet 12. https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/quick-start-guide-to-an-antiinflammation-diet 13. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK597377/ 14. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8389628/ 15. https://simplyplantbasedkitchen.com/ 16. https://thriving.foodrevolution.org/join/?frn_source=blog&frn_medium=link&frn_campaign=ppt&frn_content=menu 17. https://hellonutritarian.com/nutritarian-power-prep-program/ 18. https://cookingcourse.forksoverknives.com/ 19. https://www.drfuhrman.com/blog/210/beginners-guide
Health News Update: Tending Your Temple 12.22.25 Hello everyone, and Merry Christmas to you! Health Update: Predictable Crisis Hello everyone: As we celebrate this Holy time and the start of a new year, I want to just speak to you heart to heart. Most of us know that our physical body has been deemed to be the Temple for us to experience this worldly life. Additionally, we are meant to be stewards and caretakers of this awesomely wrought and magnificent Temple. While this may mean different things to each of us, most of us agree that taking care of the Temple involves a health promoting lifestyle. From interviewing thousands of patients, I have seen that deep within each of us there is a feeling or a knowingness of how well we are tending our Temple. And what emerges from these discussions is that most of us have never been taught or shown or educated on the concept of the need to be good stewards and how to do that. For me as a healthcare practitioner, science allows me to peer into God’s creation and be filled with awe and wonder. And yet as great as science has gotten at treating the leading causes of death and disability, it seems to have forgotten that recovery depends upon our innate healing abilities which in turn depends upon our food choices. Chronic unhealthy food choices really do affect your quality of life as well as what diseases or disabilities you may get, along with your ability to recover from them or to even prevent them. On top of that, science now recognizes how food choices have shifted over time and how this is leading to environmental destruction and contributing to climate change. The old saying “Let Food Be Thy Medicine” now applies to each of us as well as the planet. We Have Created a Predictable Crisis Nowhere can this be as easily seen as with the mismatch we are creating between what our body needs and what we are feeding it. Poor food choices, lack of physical activity, and stress drive the leading causes of death and disability. These facts are undeniable, and science has verified this many times over. What do we think will happen when we put diesel fuel into the gas tank? What are we thinking when we put drive-through into a Holy Temple? Each of us can do better and we all should try every day. Poor nutrition is now known to be the leading cause of death and chronic illness…and thus massive and needless suffering. Today, 8 out of 10 of the causes of death and disability are chronic inflammatory degenerative illnesses that are caused, perpetuated, aggravated, and sustained by food choices. Our societies current reactive approach to health care, without improving the underlying health of the patient, is expensive and has led us to the era of predictable yet unnecessary chronic illness, death, and disability. I am truly fortunate to have witnessed people recover their health through simple dietary upgrades. These people were patient, committed, and took one small step at a time until they had transformed their health, their kitchen, and in many cases, they assisted in the transformation of their entire family to better health and wellbeing. This transformation is available to you, too. If you have a chronic health condition, or want to avoid one, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain by going predominantly plant based. Go into this upgrade with a 100% commitment for 6 months and see how it goes. Don’t you owe it to yourself to live a life congruent with your true nature? Shouldn’t we have the self-respect to make the best choices as to how we tend our Temple? Simply by making your food choices compatible with your nature, it is possible for you to massively improve your health and simultaneously feel better about your stewardship of the Temple and the planet that sustains it. Consider for a moment, how good it will feel to live in alignment with your true Nature. If you can imagine that, then you can achieve it! All of us here at Richmond Chiropractic Neurology wish everyone a healthy, safe, happy, and loving Holy Day and Blessed New Year!
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