A warning about the effects of the shift towards ultra-processed food

The rapid homogenisation of human and livestock diets around the world will bring massive costs in the long run, argues Harry Cockburn

A wave of homogeneity across the world is standardising unhealthy human diets and damaging ecosystems (Getty)

A "globalised diet" of ultra-processed, factory-assembled food is what the humans of the 21st century are eating.

Reconstituted meat, industrially-produced pizza, pasta and instant noodles, alongside highly sweetened and salted snacks, soft drinks and confectionery are among the items "becoming dominant in the global food supply," according to a new analysis.

It is unlikely to surprise anyone that this kind of diet, in which an array of substances consisting of commodity ingredients and "cosmetic" additives, such as flavours, colours and emulsifiers, is not good for human health.

A varied intake of fruits, vegetables and unprocessed whole foods are the bedrock of a healthy diet. Humans cannot be optimally maintained by subsisting on a limited range of industrially-produced ready meals and snacks.

But experts are also warning that this international rush towards culinary homogeneity and the ultra-processing of food is also devastating biodiversity on our planet.

Currently, the consumption of this kind of processed food is growing fastest in upper-middle-income and lower-middle income countries, according to the commentary by British, American and Brazilian experts published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ).

In it, they warn that global agrobiodiversity – farmed crops – is declining, especially the genetic diversity of plants used for human consumption.

More than 7,000 edible plant species are used for human food, but fewer than 200 species had significant production in 2014, and just nine crops accounted for more than 66 per cent by weight of all crop production.

As much as 90 per cent of humanity’s energy intake comes from just 15 crop plants, and more than four billion people rely on just three of them – rice, wheat and maize.

As a result of this drive to all eat pretty much the same stuff all the time, the world’s poor diet is taking a toll.

The decline in diversity in the food we are growing is now "disrupting and damaging biospheric processes and ecosystems," the authors said.

What is more, the animals we are rearing – often in confined spaces – are similarly being fed on monocultures of the same crops.

These changes have occurred around the planet with unprecedented speed, with diets changing, homogenising and being based on increasingly processed substances, in mere decades.

While the cost to consumers (in both senses of the word) is low, the cost to our health, healthcare systems, and the ecosystems which should allow life to thrive on this planet, is appallingly high.

This global shift is taking up vast quantities of land, water and energy. Massive amounts of dangerous herbicides and fertilisers are used causing terrifying levels of environmental degradation, meanwhile the actual production of the food and its (usually plastic) packaging causes unnecessary additional demand for fossil fuels, releasing greenhouse gas emissions, and also results in the accumulation of colossal volumes of packaging waste.

Ultimately, the experts warn, this industrial spiral will succumb under its own weight.

They said: “The very rapid rise of ultra-processed foods in human diets will continue to place pressure on the diversity of plant species available for human consumption.

“Future global food systems fora, biodiversity conventions and climate change conferences need to highlight the destruction of agrobiodiversity caused by ultra-processed foods, and to agree on policies and actions designed to slow and reverse this disaster.

“Relevant policy makers at all levels, researchers, professional and civil society organisations, and citizen action groups, need to be part of this process.”

The research is published in the journal BMJ Global Health.