Ultra-Processed Food Might Accelerate Cognitive-Decline

Photo: Benjamin DeYoung, Unsplash

UPF Junk Food Gives A Whole New Meaning To, “I Don’t Mind”:

Swanson may have had only good intentions when they wanted to make Thanksgiving dinner accessible to all in 1953.

But ever since that first set of turkey & sides were put into an aluminum tray, things have gotten steadily worse.

Because not only have obesity rates gone up a lot since then, but the rate of people consuming ultra-processed foods today is also increasing.

Worst of all, is that !SCIENCE! is finding that UPFs don’t just make you fat, like they did to the Amazon tribesmen who got “gifts” shipped-in from Nestle.

UPFs are like dietary plutonium. Not only are the after-effects weird, they look like they’re occurring in some of the worst ways…

The Short Answer:

Processed food may be convenient, but it’s surprisingly unhealthy.
It seems to be correlated with an increasing list of health problems.
Things were probably not this bad when the first processed foods came out.
A few studies have shown the downsides, including a good one from the UK.
518 out of 72,000 subjects there developed dementia after the age of 65.
The lowest UPF consumption group only got 9% of their calories from it.
The highest consumption group got 28% of their calories from it.
Based on study %s, the team calculates every 10% increase in consumption equals a 25% increase in the risk for accelerated cognitive-decline & dementia.
However, something like the reverse can be true also.
Subjects who reduce their high-consumption of UPFs could reduce their risk of dementia by 19% to start.
Another metric is that for each half-apple-sized portion exchanged from UPFs to healthy food, the risk goes down by 3%.
Many of the additives, coloring agents, food packaging chemicals, and high-levels of fat, salt, sugar, and Omega-6 oils are the likely culprits.
For example, consumption of canola oil, soybean oil, and added sugar are all associates with increased inflammation.
Inflammation can make it from your GI tract eventually into your brain.
UPF ingredients can also screw up your gut microbes and hurt your health that way, too.
Cooking your own food at home out of the most unprocessed ingredients with olive oil when needed will always be healthier.

Read on to find out the details…

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Everything Seemed More Innocent In The 50s, Including Dinner:

Shelf-stable food may have sounded like a great idea at first.

Produce food at factory-scale with low spoilage so it’s affordable to all TV-watchers with their little fold-out tray-tables.

Especially if the food-stabilizing factor was limited to just freezing.

But ever since 1953, the joys of modern chemistry and packaging have really taken-off.

And the whole host of innovations put into food that doesn’t need to be fresh seems to have come back to bite us.

Researchers Investigate UPF’s Brain Impact Bummers:

To that end, researchers have examined not only the effects of UPFs on our waistlines,

But how they affect our brains, too.

U.F’s Sarah Burke looked at two studies on what that impact means for brain health.

And it looks like consumption of this class of food may worsen age-related cognitive decline and possibly, Dementia.

One study in Brazil that lasted 8 years had modest rates of increase in cognitive-decline.

But the one that really highlighted the difference was done in the UK.

The Really Interesting Results Come In From The UK, Guv’nor:

In that work, about 72,000 subjects were followed across 10 years.

These people, aged 55 at the start of the study did not have dementia, but 518 of them did at the end.

Out of the four groups these subjects were divided into, the lowest-consumption group only ate 9% of their calories as ultra-processed.

While the top quarter of consumers had 28% of their calories from that category.

After controlling for several factors, the researchers found that for every 10% increase in UPF consumption, the risk of dementia went up by 25%!

The Team Also Finds You Can Substitute And Improve!:

However, on the other side of that, all is not lost!

Using the biobank data to estimate, if the people from the highest-risk group would reduce their consumption of UPFs by 10% their risk of dementia would go down by 19%.

(why it’s not the full 25% may depend on many factors)

Another easy measure of change was offered by the main study author who suggested just swapping in about half an apple for 1 serving of something like fish sticks or a chocolate bar could reduce someone’s risk of dementia by 3%.

That’s a pretty big change for just 1/2 an apple.

What Is In UPFs That Makes Them So Dangerous?:

So why is this happening?

Well, UPFs are full of fat, salt, sugar, additives, preservatives, coloring, and packaging chemicals.

The oils that are used to stabilize them may have concentrations of fatty-acids that are too high compared to those in nature.

Two good examples of this are soybean oil and canola oil, both of which move your Omega-6/Omega-3 balance so far out of whack that they may cause inflammation.

Inflammation, Inflammation, Spreading All Across The Nation…:

This might be similar in some way to how many medical pros have been saying for a few years to get your vitamins from your food.

Because the ones in the pills may be too concentrated, un-buffered, and too easily overdosable.

It’s also possible that metabolism of anything like a fast-carbohydrate or an added-sugar may cause inflammation that makes its way into your brain.

Not only that, it could also result in more inflammation by causing fat-storage which results in overproduction of hormones by your bodyfat.

Excesses of salt also cause you to store fat.

And many of these components could change your gut microbes in several different ways.

One one final note that’s a bit more out there, just like the problems with BPA, there is no guarantee that the packaging, especially if heated, isn’t also harmful to your brain or waistline either.

Head For The Produce Section Instead!:

So in that way, it’s not hard to see that the UK data researchers have a point.

By reducing your exposure to UPFs, you have at least seven different ways to reduce inflammation in your body.

-Just from diet alone!

And remember from the depression studies, that a likely channel for this dementia angle is that inflammation elsewhere in the body can make it into the brain.

-Not to mention what screwed up gut microbes are going to make you feel like, since they’re responsible for a huge percentage of the feel-good chemicals in your body & brain.

So unless you simply must have one, put down that Swanson TV Dinner and whip up your meals from the more raw ingredients cooked in olive oil instead.

Your body and brain will thank you!