People who consume large amounts of ultra-processed foods (UPFs) tend to be biologically older, regardless of the nutritional quality of their diet, according to a recent study.

Unlike chronological ageing, the number of years someone has lived since birth, biological ageing happens on a cellular level.

Being biologically older could make people susceptible to an increased risk of various diseases like lung disease, cancer, diabetes, dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.

Researchers from Italy analysed data from over 22,000 participants in the Moli-sani Study, a large European cohort designed to study risk factors for chronic diseases, to determine the effects of UPFs on the human body’s biological age.

“Our data show that a high consumption of ultra-processed foods not only has a negative impact on health in general, but could also accelerate ageing itself, suggesting a connection that goes beyond the poor nutritional quality of these foods,” Simona Esposito, first author of the study and researcher at the Institute for Research, Hospitalisation and Health care (IRCCS) Neuromed, said in a statement.

What are the health effects of ultra-processed foods?

Ultra-processed foods are products made with substances that are rarely used in home cooking and often contain additives like dyes, preservatives, flavour enhancers, and sweeteners.

Examples include ice cream, mass-produced bread, certain breakfast cereals, fruit-flavoured yoghurts, meat substitutes, and some alcoholic beverages.

Higher consumption of these foods has been linked to an increased risk of health issues such as high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, heart attacks, strokes, and even early death, according to the British Heart Foundation.

For the purposes of this study, researchers analysed 36 blood biomarkers from the participants and the results of a food frequency questionnaire detailing their dietary habits, including their consumption of ultra-processed foods.

Using this data, the researchers estimated each participant’s biological age, then looked at the difference between it and their real age.

What did the study find?

Published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, the study found that the high consumption of heavily processed foods was linked to an acceleration in biological ageing.

The researchers noted that these results were “weakly explained by the poor nutritional composition of these highly processed foods” and that other mechanisms may be behind it.

“Besides being nutritionally inadequate, being rich in sugars, salt and saturated or trans fats, these foods undergo intense industrial processing that actually alters their food matrix, with the consequent loss of nutrients and fibre,” Marialaura Bonaccio, nutritional epidemiologist at the IRCCS Neuromed, said in a statement.

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