Link between food, disease stronger than you might think

The phrase “you are what you eat” is commonly used in conversations about health and the connection between food and the body. Eating an unhealthy diet can have serious consequences and can increase someone’s risk of dying from heart disease, stroke and Type 2 diabetes.

Things such as smoking and genetics put us at risk for developing different diseases, but they are not the biggest risk factors.

“Nutrition is now the No. 1 cause of early death, and early disease in our country and the world,” said Dr. Stephen Kopecky, a preventive cardiologist at the Mayo Clinic.

Kopecky says having genes for disease will increase your risk by 30 percent to 40 percent, but having a bad lifestyle for disease will increase your risk by 300 percent to 400 percent.

“About 57 percent of the calories we consume every day in this country are ultraprocessed foods,” he said.

While ultraprocessed foods tend to be convenient and cost-effective, they are inflammatory and can cause a host of health issues over time.

“It bothers our tissues. It bothers our heart. It bothers our arteries, our brains, our pancreas, our liver and our lungs. And that leads to disease,” Kopecky said. “It could be in the brain with Alzheimer’s, the heart with coronary artery disease, or cancers elsewhere.”

The good news is it’s never too late to change your eating habits, and no change is too small.

“It’s been shown if you take one bite of say a processed meat or ultraprocessed food, replace that with some unprocessed food or a healthier choice ― you know vegetables and black beans ― after a year or two, that will actually lower your risk of heart attack and stroke,” Kopecky said.

Of the four levels of food processing, the most processed are termed ultraprocessed foods. These foods have many added ingredients, such as sugar; salt; fat; and artificial colors, preservatives or stabilizers. The ingredient list sometimes has words that sound like chemicals. Examples are obvious foods like soft drinks, hot dogs, cold cuts, fast food, packaged snacks and cookies, but can also include canned baked beans, low-fat fruit yogurt, packaged bread, ready-made pasta sauces and breakfast cereals.