So much for aging like fine wine.
Yet another study links ultra-processed foods (UPFs) like packaged snacks, sugary drinks, mass-produced bread, fruit yogurt, some breakfast cereals and meat alternatives to accelerated biological aging.
Biological age — the age of our cells and tissues — is influenced by genetics and lifestyle habits such as diet and exercise.
The middle-aged and elderly Italian study participants who got more than 14% of their daily calories from UPFs seemed to be biologically older than their chronological age, which is the number of years they’ve been alive.
UPFs have long earned a poor reputation for being filled with calories, sugar, fat and salt.
“Besides being nutritionally inadequate, being rich in sugars, salt and saturated or trans fats, [UPFs] undergo intense industrial processing that actually alters their food matrix, with the consequent loss of nutrients and fiber,” nutritional epidemiologist and study co-author Marialaura Bonaccio explained.
“This can have important consequences for a series of physiological functions, including [sugar] metabolism and the composition and functionality of the gut microbiota,” Bonaccio added about the balance of bacteria, viruses and fungi in our digestive system. “Also, [UPFs] are often wrapped in plastic packaging, thus becoming vehicles of substances toxic to the body.”
Bonaccio’s team directed the 22,500 study participants to fill out a food questionnaire and they measured 36 biomarkers in their blood to compute their biological age.
The findings were published this week in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
The results follow a recent University of California, San Francisco study that found that added sugar accelerates biological aging, even if it’s part of an otherwise healthy diet.
High amounts of sugar in the blood can damage cells, leading to chronic inflammation, which has been tied to obesity, heart disease, diabetes, liver disease and various types of cancer.
Recent studies have found that UPFs comprise around 60% of the typical American’s daily caloric intake.