Kiesha Dosanjh
Scientists have discovered a link between eating processed food and the risk of dementia in a new study.
The study, which was conducted by Monash University in Australia, and has recently been published in Alzheimer’s & Dementia: Diagnosis, Assessment & Disease Monitoring, involved examining the cognitive health and diets of more than 2,100 middle-aged and older adults in Australia without dementia.
They found that just a 10% increase in ultra-processed foods (UPFs) was linked to a drop in attention span and a higher dementia risk in middle-aged and older adults.
A 10% increase is a relatively small amount, and equates to adding just one standard bag of chips into your daily diet.
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“For every 10 per cent increase in ultra-processed food a person consumed, we saw a distinct and measurable drop in a person’s ability to focus,” lead author Dr Barbara Cardoso stated. “In clinical terms, this translated to consistently lower scores on standardized cognitive tests measuring visual attention and processing speed," she added.
In the USA, 53% of all calories consumed are said to be Ultraprocessed foods, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states.
In the recent study, there was no direct link found between UPFs and memory loss, although attention span is the foundation for a number of important brain operations.
Participants ate a healthy Mediterranean diet during the study, and therefore it was discovered that the increase of UPFs are not counteracted by an otherwise healthy diet.
But what are UPFs and what food and drinks include them? Well, UPF stands for Ultra-processed foods and are used to describe foods which have been through more processing than other foods.
These include ingredients that would not be found in a typical home, such as preservatives and sweeteners and are found in foods such as chips, chocolate and ice cream.
“These additives suggest the link between diet and cognitive function extends beyond just missing out on foods known as healthy, pointing to mechanisms linked to the degree of food processing itself,” Dr Cardoso added.
It’s not the only recent study done on the effects of UPFs, and many experts warn against the negative impact they can have on the body.
Last month, public health expert Dr Van Tulleken spoke out on The Diary of a CEO podcast, in which he said UPFs had now 'overtaken tobacco as the leading cause of early death on planet Earth'.
"There is a decade of evidence now that is extremely clear that it is ultra-processed food that is responsible, not just for pandemic weight gain and obesity, but also for a long list of other health problems,” he said.
He later argued that UPFs should be treated as ‘an addictive substance’.