Prepare Meals to Reduce Calorie Intake at home: Study Finds
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A new analysis led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found that more than half of calories consumed at home by adults in the U.S. come from ultraprocessed foods.
The study was published in the Journal of Nutrition.
“The perception can be that ‘junk food’ and ultraprocessed foods are equivalent,” says Julia Wolfson, PhD, MPP, associate professor in the Bloomberg School’s Department of International Health and the study’s lead author. “Yet ultraprocessed foods encompass many more products than just junk food or fast food, including most of the foods in the grocery store. The proliferation and ubiquity of ultraprocessed foods on grocery store shelves is changing what we are eating when we make meals at home.”
For their analysis, the researchers used data from the 2003–2018 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES).
On two separate days, participants were asked about the foods they had eaten in the past 24 hours and where they had consumed the food—at home or away from home. Using the Nova Food Group Classification—a well-established framework for grouping foods by level of processing—foods were assigned to one of four categories: 1) unprocessed or minimally processed, 2) processed culinary ingredient, 3) processed, 4) ultraprocessed.
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