As Europe prepares its Safe Hearts Plan, the bloc has an important opportunity to address cardiovascular disease (CVD) as the serious, structural public health challenge it is. But if policymakers are to make meaningful progress, they should resist reducing heart health to an anti-UPF crusade and instead focus on solutions that help people stay active, eat varied diets in moderation, and receive personalised nutritional support. Against this backdrop, the continent’s medical community has once again turned its attention to an easy and familiar target: ultra-processed foods (UPFs). Published on 6 May, a new European Society of Cardiology consensus statement advises heart patients to cut back on UPFs and favour home-cooked meals, associating them with CVD alongside a list of related health risks.
Tellingly, Tracy Parker, a senior dietitian at the British Heart Foundation, has responded to this latest missive by asserting that consumers cannot be expected to shoulder the UPF-avoidance burden alone, and that governments must play a stronger role in shaping healthy food choices.
Yet this top-down approach is unlikely to provide the right answer, particularly considering the evidence base on which it rests is not nearly as solid as the ESC suggests. Indeed, even Parker concedes the largely observational nature of research linking high UPF intake to heart disease.
UPFs’ overlooked role in food systems
Beyond its paternalistic bent, the call from Europe’s cardiologists to prioritise home-cooked meals misses the point that for many working families, cooking from scratch is not feasible every day. While nutritionists such as Dr Kawther Hashem of Queen Mary University of London may acknowledge that “this can be difficult,” such caveats do little in the way of providing realistic alternatives for those juggling long commutes, irregular hours, frequent work travel or limited access to fresh ingredients.
This is where UPFs can serve a practical and often positive role, offering accessible nutrition when time, mobility or proximity to fresh food become constraints. Convenience is only part of the picture, with many processed products also providing safety, reliability and affordability advantages that matter deeply for lower-income households, communities living in food deserts and even populations in conflict-affected areas. In this respect, the ESC’s advice appears detached not only from most people’s daily schedules, but from their economic realities as well.
Indeed, UPFs such as canned vegetables, beans or fish often come at a lower price point than fresh products, helping those facing food poverty amid the rising cost of living to access a balanced diet with key nutrients. What’s more, processing methods such as pasteurisation reduce the risk of foodborne illness and contamination in dairy products and fruit juices, while in a Europe grappling with inflation, strained household budgets and fragile supply chains, longer shelf lives and easier storage offer vital food security benefits.
Digging deeper on UPF science
Naturally, none of this is to discount fresh food or home cooking, but to recognise that, despite the incessant bashing, UPFs play an essential and underappreciated role in the European food system. Accordingly, they should remain a complement to fresh, home-cooked meals, which of course should remain a pillar of a healthy, balanced diet. But beyond acknowledging their value for working families and those in particularly complex living situations, it is also worth asking whether the science casting UPFs as a major cardiovascular threat is truly settled.
As Timothy Caulfield, Research Director of the Health Law Institute at the University of Alberta, has rightly noted, the media alarm around UPFs often runs well ahead of the evidence. For all the confident headlines, the research base still offers limited proof that UPFs themselves are directly causing specific health harms. Much of the literature remains observational, identifying associations that may matter but cannot firmly establish causality. This distinction is crucial, especially when the category itself remains dogged by a more basic problem: nobody defines them consistently.
Last year, a study from the University of Agder in Norway notably found that none of the UPF classification systems surveyed, including NOVA, UP3 and Siga, clearly specify the processing techniques – reinforcing earlier findings on the NOVA system that revealed a poor level of agreement among researchers when classifying different products as UPFs. Furthermore, another 2025 study concluded that many people remain unclear about what the term “processed food” actually applies to, meaning that sweeping policy action on UPFs risks creating significant confusion and poorly-informed choices at consumer level.
EU’s moment of truth
Against this backdrop of debate over UPFs, the EU is advancing its Safe Hearts Plan, with a final proposal expected later this year. The ambition is significant: the bloc’s first comprehensive push to improve cardiovascular prevention, detection and treatment, at a time when Europe’s leading cause of death remains among its most preventable health challenges
Yet that ambition risks being weakened if policymakers embed the UPF-CVD association too firmly in the plan before the evidence is strong enough to sustain it. A category that remains scientifically contested, inconsistently defined and poorly understood by consumers should not become the basis for far-reaching intervention. Cardiovascular policy needs a careful reading of the evidence, not a convenient shorthand for a much broader public health challenge.
This is why measures such as a UPF tax, initially floated by the Commission last year, would be a poor substitute for a more serious policy response. Europe does not need another blunt levy that signals action without changing the conditions that shape health outcomes. A credible Safe Hearts Plan should look more structurally at the food system itself: access to a broad range of affordable foods, better prevention and screening, and genuine opportunities for physical activity across all communities, not only the most affluent.
As the debate moves from medical guidance to public policy, the EU’s seriousness amid the CVD crisis must not be equated with sweeping dietary alarmism. If the Safe Hearts Plan is to make a meaningful difference, it must be grounded in strong evidence, practical support and respect for individual circumstances. Looking ahead, Brussels should develop a heart-health strategy that informs, empowers and genuinely helps people live healthier lives.
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