Impact of Food Ultra‐Processing on Cardiometabolic Health: Definitions, Evidence, and Implications for Dietary Guidance

ntil recently, the impact of food processing on health was rarely studied.A search of papers in the PubMed database including the terms "food processing" or "processed food" or "ultra-processed food" and cardiometabolic health-related conditions ("cardiovascular disease, risk or mortality," "obesity," "diabetes," "hypertension," "dyslipidemia," or "metabolic syndrome") in their titles retrieved zero records before 2014.Between 2014 and 2019, 17 records were retrieved; then a total of 103 between 2020 and 2024.A sufficient reason for the absence of studies on processed food consumption and health before 2014 was the absence of any standard food classification based on food processing.This limitation was overcome with the creation of the Nova food classification system, initially proposed in 2009 and published in final form in 2014.