Association Between Ultra-Processed Food Consumption and Hypertension Incidence: Findings From RaNCD Cohort Project

Background: Ultra-processed food (UPF) consumption is increasing rapidly due to large-scale food production. Being a public health issue, hypertension is affecting 1.28 billion adults globally. This study investigates the link between UPF consumption and hypertension. Methods: We included 8150 participants at the risk of hypertension in the final analysis. UPF consumption was assessed using data from the available Food Frequency Questionnaire (FFQ), and the amount of UPF consumption of each participant in a day was assessed. Cox proportional models with covariates including age, sex, residence type, marital status, socioeconomic status, physical activity, familial history of hypertension, and fasting blood sugar were used to assess the association between UPF consumption and hypertension in the main model and sensitivity analysis. Age, residence type, and the third tertile of UPF interacted with time in our model, which was addressed accordingly. Results: The mean participant age was 46.25 years (47.58% male) with a mean follow-up of 7.65 years. The mean daily UPF intake was 88.07 g. During follow-up, 862 hypertension cases were recorded. After adjusting the main model for confounders, the hazard ratios for the second and third tertiles of UPF consumption were 1.13 (95% CI, p value) (0.96-1.32, 0.13) and 0.65 (95% CI, p value) (0.46-0.91, 0.01), respectively, compared to the first tertile. Conclusion: We found significant association between the third tertile of UPF intake and hypertension; moreover, we identified significant associations between hypertension incidence and some demographic factors, warranting further investigation.