Ultra-Processed Foods and Human Health: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Prospective Cohort Studies.

"Conflicts of interest All authors have no conflict of interest to declare. Declaration of interests The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper."

"Funding The present analyses have been supported by a research grant from MUR (Project ALIFUN ARS01_00783). The funder had no role in the study design, collection, analysis, and interpretation of data, in the writing of the manuscript and in the decision to submit the article for publication."

"This study was conducted according to the 2020 Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines []. A systematic literature search was conducted in PubMed/MEDLINE, ISI Web of Science, and Scopus through April 1, 2023, with no language or date restrictions. Search terms were a combination of free-text terms and controlled vocabulary related to UPF and cardiovascular disease risk factors, including (ultra-processed food OR ultraprocessed food OR ultra processed OR processed food OR NOVA OR nova food classification OR nova food OR NOVA food classification system) AND (intake OR consumption OR eating) AND (obesity OR overweight OR body weight OR blood pressure OR hypertension OR systolic OR diastolic OR inflammation OR dyslipidemia OR LDL-cholesterol OR HDL cholesterol OR triglycerides OR cholesterol OR diabetes mellitus OR type 2 diabetes mellitus OR diabetes). The reference lists of retrieved articles were manually searched for additional studies. Both longitudinal and cross-sectional studies were included. The present study protocol was submitted to the International Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews database (PROSPERO) under registration number CRD42023418668."