A new index assessing the nutritional impact of almost 6,000 foods, found that every hotdog a person eats could shorten life by 36 minutes.
Experts at the University of Michigan said the index also measured the carbon footprint of each product, to better understand the impact of food on the planet.
The index accounted for all aspects of a product’s life cycle, including how it was produced, processed, consumed and disposed of, as well as how calorific and nutritionally beneficial a food was, explained the study’s author.
The researchers said: “For example, we found that, on average, 0.45 minutes are lost per gram of any processed meat that a person eats in the US.
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