← brief for 2026-09-03 · Nutrition & lifestyle

Associations of Plant- and Animal-Sourced Ultra-Processed Foods and Incident CKD in the Cardiovascular Health Study.

Key takeaways

Researchers followed 2,661 adults aged 65 and older in the Cardiovascular Health Study to see who developed kidney disease. They split ultra-processed foods, meaning heavily manufactured packaged foods, into plant-based ones and animal-based ones, measured in servings per day from diet questionnaires. The point was to test whether the plant kind is any safer for the kidneys than the animal kind. This is an observational study, so it can only show a link, not prove that the food caused the kidney disease, and the published summary available here stops before the numbers.

Who did this work

Hill CM · Feinberg A · Rebholz CM · Lemaitre R · Fretts AM · Wiggins KL · Sotoodehnia N · Floyd JS · Lidgard B · Bansal N · Psaty BM · Kim H

Source

Article · PubMed, CKD progression and prevention · 2026 Sep 2
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42684835/