According to a 2019 article in Public Health Nutrition, you can see if a food is ultra-processed by checking the list of ingredients. Processed ingredients are those you typically won’t find in your kitchen, including mechanically separated meats, hydrogenated oils, and additives to improve their shelf life. This includes pre-packaged pasta and pizza.
A double pepperoni fully stuffed crust pizza from DiGiorno uses enriched wheat flour, modified food starch, and enzymes among its ingredients. The pepperonis might sound tasty, but these processed meats have mechanically separated chicken, sodium nitrates, and preservatives such as BHA and BHT. It also contains an unspecified “bioengineered food ingredient,” which means one of the ingredients was modified in the lab.
Per a 2022 article in the American Journal of Epidemiology, people who ate more ultra-processed foods had a 29% higher risk of mortality compared to people who ate more whole foods. Red meat and processed meats such as pepperoni are linked to a 15% higher risk of death. A 2021 analysis in Nutrients looked at how ultra-processed foods were linked to mortality from specific diseases. Diets high in ultra-processed foods can increase your risk of dying from cardiovascular disease by 50% and heart-caused deaths by 66%. How much ultra-processed food you eat matters. For each 10% increase in calories from ultra-processed food, your risk of early death from any cause increases by 15%.