Ultra-processed foods linked to faster biological aging

Edited by Manasi Talwadekar

November 20, 2024

Consumption of ultra-processed foods (UPFs), such as soft drinks, processed meats, and sweet or salty packaged snacks, is associated with accelerated biological aging, as measured by 36 blood biomarkers, and factors other than low nutritional content may be at fault.

METHODOLOGY:

Previous studies have reported an association between high UPF consumption and some measures of early biological aging, such as shorter telomere length, cognitive decline, and frailty, but the relationship is largely unexplored until now, including exactly how UPF may harm health.
To examine the association between UPF consumption and biological aging, the researchers conducted a cross-sectional analysis of 22,495 participants (mean chronological age, 55.6 years; 52% women) from the Moli-sani study in Italy, recruited between 2005 and 2010.
Dietary intake was assessed using a food frequency questionnaire covering 188 different foods, each classified into one of four groups based on the degree of processing, ranging from minimally processed foods, such as fruits, vegetables, meat and fish, to UPFs.
UPF intake was determined by weight, using the ratio of UPF to total food and beverage weight (g/d), and participants were categorized into sex-specific quints based on the proportion of UPF in their total dietary intake. Diet quality was also assessed using the Mediterranean diet score.
Biological age was calculated using a deep neural network approach based on 36 circulating blood biomarkers, and the mean difference between mean biological and chronological age was analyzed.

TAKE AWAY :

The mean difference between participants' biological and chronological ages was −0.70 years.
Higher UPF consumption was associated with accelerated biological aging compared with the lowest consumption (regression coefficient, 0.34; 95% CI, 0.08-0.61), with a mean difference between biological and chronological ages of -4.1 years and 1.6 years in those with the lowest and highest consumption, respectively.
The association between UPF consumption and biological aging was not linear ( P = 0.049 for nonlinearity). The association tended to be stronger in men than in women, but this was not statistically significant.
Inclusion of the Mediterranean diet score in the model slightly attenuated the association by 9.1%, indicating that low nutritional content was likely to explain a small part of the underlying mechanism.

IN PRACTICE:

"Our results showed that the UPF-biological aging association was weakly explained by the poor nutritional composition of these highly processed foods, suggesting that biological aging might be mainly influenced by non-nutritive food characteristics, which include altered food matrix, contact materials, and neoformed compounds," the authors wrote.

SOURCE :

The study was led by Simona Esposito, Epidemiology and Prevention Research Unit, IRCCS Neuromed, Isernia, Italy. It was published online in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition .

BOUNDARIES :

The cross-sectional design of the study limited the ability to determine the temporal direction of the association, and the observational nature of the study limited the ability to establish causality between UPF consumption and biological aging. The use of self-reported dietary data may have introduced recall bias. The study population was limited to adults from central-southern Italy, which may affect the generalizability of the results.

PUBLICATIONS:

The study was conducted within the framework of the project funded by the European Union National Recovery and Resilience Plan Next Generation “Age-It — Ageing well in an ageing society”. The analyses were partially funded by the Italian Ministry of Health. The authors have declared no conflicts of interest.

This article was created using multiple editorial tools, including AI. Human editors reviewed this content before publication.