Carlos Augusto Monteiro
Professor Monteiro's academic background includes a degree in Medicine, Residency, and a Master's in Preventive Medicine, a Doctorate in Public Health, all completed at USP, and a postdoctoral degree at the Institute of Human Nutrition at Columbia University. His career as a researcher and advisor (he has already trained dozens of master’s and doctoral students) was spent in the Department of Nutrition at the Faculty of Public Health at USP, where he has been a Full Professor since 1989 and Professor Emeritus since 2023. Between 1990 and 1992, he worked at the WHO Nutrition Unit in Geneva and was a visiting professor at the universities of Bonn and Geneva. He was scientific coordinator of...
Ultra-Processed Foods: A Convincing Explanation from Brazilian Researchers for the Pandemic of Obesity and other Food-Related Chronic Illnesses.
This conference will combine narrative and systematic reviews with original analyses and metaanalyses to assess three hypotheses about a dietary pattern based on ultra-processed foods. The first hypothesis—that this pattern is globally displacing long-established diets centered on whole foods and their culinary preparation as dishes and meals—is supported by decades of national food intake and purchase surveys and recent global sales data. The second—that this pattern results in deterioration of diet quality, especially in relation to chronic disease prevention—is confirmed by national food intake surveys, large cohorts, and interventional studies showing gross nutrient imbalances; overeating driven by high energy density, hyper-palatability, soft texture, and disrupted food matrices; reduced intake of health-protective phytochemicals; and increased intake of toxic compounds, endocrine disruptors, and potentially harmful classes and mixtures of food additives. The third and final hypothesis—that this pattern increases the risk of multiple diet-related chronic diseases through various mechanisms—is substantiated by more than 100 prospective studies, meta-analyses, randomized controlled trials, and mechanistic studies, covering adverse outcomes across nearly all organ systems. The totality of the evidence supports the thesis that the displacement of long-established dietary patterns by ultraprocessed foods is a key driver of the escalating global burden of multiple diet-related chronic diseases. Finally, policy actions and broader public health strategies to promote, protect, and support diets based on fresh and minimally processed foods, and to prevent the displacement of these foods by ultraprocessed foods, will be specified.