Cited by 1,971Consumer Attitudes and Food LabelingNutrition, Health and Food BehaviorNutritional Studies and Diet

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 62 of the 64 references it cites were found in a registry or an index; 13 of the 28 sources its claims cite were checked for support.

Ultra-Processed Diets Cause Excess Calorie Intake and Weight Gain: An Inpatient Randomized Controlled Trial of Ad Libitum Food Intake

Open access

Abstract

Summary We investigated whether ultra-processed foods affect energy intake in 20 weight-stable adults, aged (mean±SE) 31.2±1.6 y and BMI=27±1.5 kg/m2. Subjects were admitted to the NIH Clinical Center and randomized to receive either ultra-processed or unprocessed diets for 2 weeks immediately followed by the alternate diet for 2 weeks. Meals were designed to be matched for presented calories, energy density, macronutrients, sugar, sodium, and fiber. Subjects were instructed to consume as much or as little as desired. Energy intake was greater during the ultra-processed diet (508±106 kcal/d; p=0.0001), with increased consumption of carbohydrate (280±54 kcal/d; p<0.0001) and fat (230±53 kcal/d; p=0.0004) but not protein (−2±12 kcal/d; p=0.85). Weight changes were highly correlated with energy intake (r=0.8, p<0.0001) with participants gaining 0.9±0.3 kg (p=0.009) during the ultra-processed diet and losing 0.9±0.3 kg (p=0.007) during the unprocessed diet. Limiting consumption of ultra-processed foods may be an effective strategy for obesity prevention and treatment.

Overview

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1016/j.cmet.2019.05.008

Cites

62 of 62 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Nothing to recompute.

Verification

Claims the paper makes

13 of 28 cited sources checked · 5 supported · 0 flagged · accuracy not yet measured

Show all 77 claims

  • Probably not a substantial claim. 47
  • It may state two separate claims as one. 12
55 of 55
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Before this trial, no causal link between ultra-processed food intake and human obesity had been established, and no randomized controlled trial had tested whether reducing or increasing ultra-processed foods affects health.

    “no causal relationship between ultra-processed food consumption and human obesity has yet been established”
    “there has never been a randomized controlled trial demonstrating any beneficial effects of reducing ultra-processed foods or deleterious effects of increasing ultra-processed foods in the diet”
  • The authors state this as an assumption.

    The mean of the measured chamber periods was representative of the 24-hour period.

    “All chamber measurement periods were >23 hours and we extrapolated the data to represent 24hr periods by assuming that the mean of the measured periods was representative of the 24hr period.”
  • The authors state this as an assumption.

    Within-subject energy intake correlations were zero.

    “Using the conservative assumption that within-subject energy intake correlations were zero, over the 14-day diet period each subject was expected to have a mean energy intake with a standard error of about 130–160 kcal/d and the mean energy intake difference between the study diets was therefore estimated to have a standard error of about 190–230 kcal/d.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    Adherence to study diets cannot be guaranteed in free-living subjects.

    “However, current dietary assessment methods are insufficient to accurately or precisely measure energy intake outside the laboratory (Schoeller, 1990; Schoeller et al., 2013) and adherence to study diets cannot be guaranteed in free-living subjects.”
4 of 4

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Citations

Cites

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2 of the 64 references couldn’t be matched to a known paper.

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Metadata

Authors
Hall, K. D., Ayuketah, A., Brychta, R., Cai, H., Cassimatis, T., Chen, K. Y., Chung, S. T., Costa, E., Courville, A., Darcey, V., Fletcher, L. A., Forde, C. G., Gharib, A. M., Guo, J., Howard, R., Joseph, P. V., McGehee, S., Ouwerkerk, R., Raisinger, K., Rozga, I., Stagliano, M., Walter, M., Walter, P. J., Yang, S., & Zhou, M.
Affiliations
  • National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (US)
  • National Institutes of Health (US)
  • Singapore Institute for Clinical Sciences (SG)
  • National Institute of Nursing Research (US)
Corresponding author
Hall, Kevin D.
Venue
Cell Metabolism
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Published
2019-07
Volume
30
Issue
1
Pages
67-77.e3
ISSN
1550-4131 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W2946281272
Cited by
1,971
References
64
Citations by year
2026: 311 · 2025: 316 · 2024: 288 · 2023: 254 · 2022: 272 · 2021: 233 · 2020: 218 · 2019: 75
FWCI
183.71
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Cell Metabolism (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
  • Socio-Environmental Systems Modeling (acceptedVersion)
  • Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS) (submittedVersion)
Funders
National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases
Topics
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Consumer Attitudes and Food Labeling
  • Health Sciences › Nursing › Nutrition and Dietetics › Nutrition, Health and Food Behavior
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Nutritional Studies and Diet
Keywords
ultra-processed foods, energy intake, weight gain, ad libitum food intake, obesity prevention, obesity treatment, carbohydrate intake, dietary fat intake, protein intake
MeSH terms
Adult, Body Composition, Energy Intake, Dietary Fiber, Eating, Energy Metabolism, Female, Humans, Inpatients, Male, Weight Gain

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

A language model drew the claims from the paper on 2026-09-28, under version 3 of the claim definition (prompt extract-v3).

A second model labelled each claim on 2026-09-28 (model jev-1.13-20260917, definition revision gold-guideline-v0.2).

Cited sources are checked with a language model’s help (gpt-6-sol).

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

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