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Every study covered on this subject, newest first.
Dutch researchers sequenced 4,526 stool samples from 714 mother and infant pairs, from twelve weeks of pregnancy to the baby's first birthday, and matched bacterial strains between them. The mother's own gut was the major reservoir for the infant's gut strains, with only occasional transmission from the vaginal or breast milk microbiomes. Home birth barely registered, mattering about as much as how long the pushing stage lasted.
Nature · Sinha et al. · University of Groningen and University Medical Center Groningen · 12 August 2026 · PMID 42587158
Among 5,301 US adults aged 55 and over followed for about nine years, a low-carbohydrate eating pattern tracked with lower dementia risk and a low-fat one did not. But splitting each pattern by food quality reversed the picture within it: plant based and higher quality versions tracked with less dementia, animal based and lower quality versions with more. Inherited risk did not change the pattern.
The American Journal of · Chen et al. · Zhejiang University School of Medicine and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health · 7 August 2026 · PMID 42567320
Rather than treating ultra-processed food as one category, German researchers broke it into nine groups of specific additives and followed 101,560 UK Biobank participants for a median of ten and a half years. Only four of the nine additive categories tracked with new hypertension. Five showed no association at all, and three specific additives ran the other way.
European Heart Journal · Krost et al. · Justus-Liebig University of Giessen · 3 August 2026 · PMID 42545878
Two hundred and forty seven Australian adults at raised risk of type 2 diabetes. Half got a nine hour window, half got individualised dietetic guidance, both got the same three hours of telehealth contact. The trial wrote down in advance how much worse the window was allowed to be.
Diabetologia 69(9):2458 to 2471 · Parr et al. · the Mary MacKillop Institute for Health Research at Australian Catholic University · 6 June 2026 · PMID 42251202
Published on 5 June 2026, this UK Biobank analysis of 124,836 adults found that people sticking closely to a healthy plant based pattern had lower rates of death, type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease whether that pattern was high or low in ultra processed food. The authors read this as diet quality mattering more than processing level.
The Lancet Regional Health · Thompson et al. · Queen's University Belfast · 5 June 2026 · PMID 42294356
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