High ultra-processed food consumption linked to increased dementia risk, study finds
https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/high-ultra-processed-food-consumption-linked-to-increased-dementia-risk/Open linkView original on sh.itjust.worksSyndicated from the fediverse. Read and engage on the original instance.
View original on sh.itjust.workshttps://hsph.harvard.edu/news/high-ultra-processed-food-consumption-linked-to-increased-dementia-risk/Open linkView original on sh.itjust.works
22 replies
That's a huge effect.
I'm not surprised of course, but it's always good to have up to date and more corroborating evidence.
I'll have to delve more into the studies but I'm curious what the mechanisms they've indicated. They point out that bacon was one of the worst offenders, which may track with high nitrates (absent of counteracting antioxidants) and the high saturated fat.
Second to this, I'm curious if it's not just what you're eating, but what you're not eating instead. I suspect we'll see more cases of malnutrition in the likes of long-term GLP-1 users who while they may eat less like a smoker, they are also not necessarily adding positive nutrients to their diet either.
Everybody tells you that UPF is bad and you should not eat too much or none at all. I’m on board. But in what timeline do I find the extra prep time to make every family meal and snack from scratch?
The science is telling us it’s bad. But we need affordable solutions at the societal level to give people who want to banish UPF a fighting chance.
Not to mention a lot of UPF is fortified with vitamins a lot of people would not get enough of otherwise.
(Obviously not all UPF is fortified, but every time I see someone cutting it from their diets they just replace it with something like chicken and rice, because, it can honestly be a hassle to find decent fresh produce)
My child and I both have strong food aversions and my wife is vegetarian, I do all the cooking and we eat very little "junk". But there has been times I couldn't even find all the ingredients to make salsa without taking a 40 mile one way trip to the "big city".
What food do you give your family?
I would love to make things like pasta and bread and all manners of cookies and muffins from scratch. I do these things when time permits (never pasta) but to do them all competes with chores, home improvements, showing up for my kid, etc.
I'm sorry. I'm not the most familiar with cooking especially for other people. When I wrote my previous comment I hadn't read the definition of cat 4 yet. I'd assume it's a tussle with how food with multiple ingredients (even salads with croutons) ending up in cat 4? I thought those kinds of things would be cat 3.
I don’t think the current definitions are particularly useful. I’m not an expert but I think there’s a marked difference between an emulsifier that interacts with your gut lining and a more benign additives.
IMO the food industry has been unable to agree on a more useful definition of UPF because of corporate interests.
That's the vibe I got too.
I am pretty sure they are ultra processed even when you make It yourself.
The definition seems pretty broad tbh
What is "ultra -processed food?"
Is bacon really considered ultra-processed?
They need to quantify which aspects are relevant, because "ultra-processed" doesn't mean much on its own if they aren't telling me what specifically is bad about it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova_classification
Bacon doesn't really have "multiple" ingredients. I don't get where it fits into this scale. I didn't see any references to meat throughout this list.
It's important to note that dementia symptoms possibly start as early as age 30. Just very mild.
And some of the hallmark early symptoms is a lack of motivation and difficulty with multi step procedures.
It's likely people struggling to be motivated to cook or find it difficult to prepare a meal turn to frozen dinners because they are much easier to cook.
Sleeping disruptions also associated with dementia. It's normal to sleep a little less at night as we get older but sleeping only 5 or 6 hours a night isn't really normal. As you can imagine, reduced sleep creates more day-time fatigue. Further reducing motivation and attention to prepare meals.
Whenever I see these kinds of studies linking some behavior or activity with dementia, it's always important to ask which came first. Is there a interaction effect or a one way effect.
Similar research:
Claims like dental plaques and tartar being associated with dementia.
Is it :
Someone's poor dental hygiene causes dementia or dementia causes poor dental hygiene ?
I acknowledge that processed food isn't very healthy. Probably increases risk for a lot of gastro problems and nutrition deficiency.
But in this case, probably the dementia was independent.
Pretty strong evidence that Alzheimer's starts very early in life. Only shows cognitive symptoms much later.
It can only good happen.
It's so hard to feel bad for people who still think ut's okay to eat factory meat day in day out.
That is not an ultra-processed food.
Sausages and things like that definitely fall in the ultraprocessed foods category
No, but it is also bad. Just a different category of food and a different category of bad.
And irrelevant to the current post
It's as relevant as people decide it is.