While it’s common knowledge that frozen foods and packaged snacks aren’t the best for our health, many of us still consume them due to their convenience. However, new research suggests these foods could not only contribute to weight gain and other health issues, but they might also speed up our ageing process.
Scientists have discovered that individuals who eat more ultra-processed foods (UPFs) show signs of accelerated biological ageing compared to those who consume fewer of these heavily manufactured products. This revelation comes from a team at Italy’s IRCCS Neuromed Mediterranean Neurological Institute, who analysed data from over 2,000 adults.
UPFs include items like packaged snacks, fizzy drinks, reconstituted meat products, and instant noodles. These foods are typically high in additives, artificial colours, sweeteners, and preservatives that you wouldn’t normally find in your home kitchen.
As reported by GloucestershireLive, statistics from 2023 reveal that around 57 percent of the food consumed in the UK is classified as ultra-processed. The study, published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, revealed that participants whose diets contained the highest proportion of UPFs (more than 14 percent of total food consumed by weight) showed an acceleration in biological ageing of about four months compared to those who ate the least amount of UPFs.
While this may not seem significant, it can have a substantial cumulative effect over years or even decades. The study disclosed that among the participants, processed meat products emerged as the largest segment of ultra-processed food (UPF) consumption, representing 17.6 percent. Following closely were cakes and pastries at 14.2 percent, with fruit drinks trailing at 10.9 percent.
Those with a higher intake of UPFs tended to be younger, more well-educated, and predominantly city residents. Despite being physically less active and having less chronic diseases at the start of the study, these patterns might reflect the cohort’s younger demographics.
Study co-author Marialaura Bonaccio provided her insights: “The mechanisms through which ultra-processed foods can be harmful to human health are not yet entirely clear. Besides being nutritionally inadequate, being rich in sugars, salt and saturated or trans fats, these foods undergo intense industrial processing that actually alters their food matrix, with the consequent loss of nutrients and fibre.
“This can have important consequences for a series of physiological functions, including glucose metabolism, and the composition and functionality of the gut microbiota. Also, these products are often wrapped in plastic packaging, thus becoming vehicles of substances toxic to the body.”
Recent studies have highlighted serious health concerns, such as heart disease, cancer, and diabetes, linked to the consumption of ultra-processed foods (UPFs). Nonetheless, experts advise that it isn’t necessary to cut UPFs out completely, but rather to lessen their consumption and opt for minimally processed alternatives whenever feasible.
“This study prompts us once again to re-evaluate the current dietary recommendations that should also include warnings on limiting the intake of ultra-processed food in our daily diet,” commented Licia Iacoviello, director at IRCCS Neuromed’s Epidemiology and Prevention Research Unit. She further added: “Actually, some nutrient-dense packaged foods can be classified as ultra-processed, and this suggests the need of guiding people towards dietary choices that address also the degree of food processing.”
The research involved 22,495 adults from Italy’s Molise region who, from 2005 to 2010, provided detailed insights into their eating habits by completing food frequency questionnaires with 188 different items, focusing particularly on ultra-processed foods categorized according to the NOVA classification system.
Scientists have sorted foods based on how much they’ve been processed, using the NOVA classification system to zero in on ultra-processed foods. They employed an advanced artificial intelligence method to examine 36 distinct blood biomarkers, which allowed them to generate a “biological age” score to contrast with the actual age of the study participants.