The Lancet

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Health

Media Wildly Misrepresents Findings of UPF Study in The Lancet to Slander Plant-Based Foods

Earlier this week, a study was published in The Lancet examining the health impacts of plant-sourced ultra-processed foods (UPFs). The results showed that while unprocessed plant-based foods decrease cardiovascular disease risk, ultra-processed plant-sourced foods may have the opposite effect. However, the study has attracted a slew of misleading coverage from mainstream media outlets, with some articles giving the impression that the UPFs in the study were predominantly meat alternatives. For example, a clickbait headline in The Telegraph falsely declared “Vegans are slowly killing themselves”, with the subheading “There’s nothing healthy about ultra-highly processed fake ‘meat’ products”. Unsurprisingly, the writer of the article is a dairy farmer. In reality, plant-based meats represented just 0.2% of the diets of the study participants, while foods such as packaged …

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