These food items are making you age faster, finds study

This report follows another recent study conducted by the University of California that found that added sugar accelerates biological aging, even if it’s part of a healthy diet.

Moneycontrol News

November 07, 2024 / 20:29 IST

The findings, published this week in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, found that food that undergo intense industrial processing, lose their nutrition. (Representational image: Unsplash)

A recent study has linked 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 one's cells and tissues) is influenced by genetics and lifestyle habits such as diet and exercise and the study--conducted on Italians--found that middle-aged and elderly participants who got more than 14 percent 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, the New York Post reported.

The findings, published this week in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, found that food that undergo intense industrial processing, lose their nutrition.

“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,” the publication quoted nutritional epidemiologist and study co-author Marialaura Bonaccio as saying.

“This can have important consequences for a series of physiological functions, including [sugar] metabolism and the composition and functionality of the gut microbiota,” she added. “Also, [UPFs] are often wrapped in plastic packaging, thus becoming vehicles of substances toxic to the body.”