A major heart study led out of UCLA is putting some hard numbers behind that nagging feeling you get in the snack aisle: every extra daily serving of ultraprocessed food is tied to a measurable bump in cardiovascular disease risk. The uptick is modest per serving but starts to look serious across the way many Americans actually eat, and the increase appears especially steep for Black participants.
Key findings from the cohort
The analysis drew on 6,531 adults ages 45 to 84, followed for about 83,870 person-years in the long-running Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA). Researchers found that each additional daily serving of ultraprocessed food was associated with a hazard ratio of 1.051 for incident cardiovascular disease (95% CI 1.011–1.093). In plain language, that means a small but statistically significant increase in risk with every extra serving.
The cohort included 3,438 women and 3,093 men and was racially diverse: roughly 39% White, 27% Black, 22% Hispanic and 12% Chinese. On average, people reported eating 4.38 servings of ultraprocessed foods per day, with the lowest quintile around 1.14 daily servings and the highest quintile about 9.30. Ultraprocessed items made up about 28% of all daily servings overall. The full results appear in JACC: Advances.
How the study defined ultraprocessed foods
Rather than counting grams of sugar or fat alone, investigators sorted foods by how heavily they are industrially processed, using established “ultraprocessed” frameworks. That catchall category typically includes packaged snacks, sugary drinks, ready-to-heat meals and other highly engineered grocery staples.
The team relied on detailed dietary questionnaires and exposure mapping within the well-characterized MESA cohort, which enrolled participants from six U.S. field centers and is coordinated through the NHLBI MESA program. Public health reviews outline the NOVA-style approach many researchers now use to classify processing levels, while MESA documentation describes how the cohort was built and followed.
Why race and place mattered
One of the more sobering findings: the link between ultraprocessed food and heart trouble did not fall evenly across the population. Study authors report a significant interaction with Black race. For every 10% rise in the share of ultraprocessed food in daily intake, Black participants saw a larger increase in incident cardiovascular disease risk than non-Black participants, about a 12.3% versus 7.9% relative increase.
Senior investigator Michael Shapiro summarized the pattern bluntly: “We observed a clear, graded association between higher ultraprocessed food intake and increased risk of cardiovascular events.” He also pointed to bigger forces shaping those numbers, emphasizing that structural issues like neighborhood food access and targeted marketing likely amplify risk in certain communities. Those comments and added context were reported by TCTMD.
Which products drove most of the signal
When researchers broke intake down by product type, sugary ultraprocessed items stood out as the most consistently linked to higher cardiovascular risk. Compared with the bottom 20% of consumers, people in the top quintile had about a 66% higher relative risk of cardiovascular disease. And it was not just the heaviest consumers: everyone outside the lowest quintile had roughly a 41% higher relative risk in the models reported by the authors.
Those subgroup and dose-response results are detailed in the JACC: Advances paper.
What clinicians and policy groups are saying
The timing of the MESA analysis is not accidental. Federal advisory panels and major cardiovascular groups have been loudly debating how much food processing itself, separate from calories and nutrients, should influence dietary guidance. Recent reviews of nutrition controversies have singled out ultraprocessed products as likely culprits in worsening cardiometabolic health.
Context from the American College of Cardiology and related reviews underscores that processing level is a useful, if imperfect, lens for population-level advice and targeting public-health action. ACC summarizes those debates and the current fault lines in the nutrition world.
What’s next — and what this means for readers
Lead author Amier Haidar, MD (UCLA), is slated to present the findings at the American College of Cardiology 2026 Scientific Sessions in New Orleans, where clinicians and researchers will get a closer look at the methods and have a chance to argue over the implications in person.
For everyone else staring down a pantry full of boxes and bags, experts suggest starting with small, realistic shifts. Swapping a packaged snack for fruit, choosing whole grains more often and cooking a few more meals at home remain straightforward ways to tilt the odds in your favor on cardiometabolic risk. That kind of advice lines up with consumer-facing guidance on additives and heart health. Harvard Health offers reporting and practical tips along those lines.
Bottom line
The MESA analysis adds another brick to a growing wall of observational evidence tying ultraprocessed foods to cardiovascular harm, while also spotlighting unequal effects across communities. Researchers and policymakers alike say that tackling food access, marketing and the broader food environment will be central to easing the burden of diet-related heart disease.
