Study shows eating ultra-processed meals is associated with an increased risk of developing dementia

A recent study discovered that people who consume the most ultra-processed meals are more likely to develop dementia than those who consume the least.

Scientists, including those from Lund University in Sweden, have pointed out that ultra-processed foods such as soft drinks, chips, ice cream, sausage, packaged bread, flavored cereals, canned tomatoes and baked beans, ketchup, and mayonnaise are low in protein and fiber and heavy in added sugar, fat, and salt. These foods also contain a large amount of added sugar.

According to a study that was just published in the journal Neurology, people who replace certain items in their diet with alternatives that are either not processed at all or are processed only to a limited degree have a lower chance of developing dementia.

“Ultra-processed foods are meant to be convenient and tasty, but they diminish the quality of a person’s diet. These foods may also contain food additives or molecules from packaging or produced during heating, all of which have been shown in other studies to have negative effects on thinking and memory skills,” study author Huiping Li said in a statement.

“Our research not only found that ultra-processed foods are associated with an increased risk of dementia, but it also found that replacing them with healthy options may decrease dementia risk,” Dr. Li added.

Based on information obtained from the UK Biobank, an enormous database that contains health information on half a million people in the UK, researchers evaluated the state of health of 72,083 people who were at least 55 years old as part of the study.

According to the researchers, the people who participated in the study were followed for an average of ten years and did not have dementia when the study began.

They answered at least two questions about what they ate and drank the previous day, and they will continue to participate in follow-ups until March 2021.

At the end of the investigation, the scientists discovered that 518 of the people who were evaluated had been diagnosed with dementia.

The amount of ultra-processed food that people ate was then calculated by the researchers, and this number was compared to the grams per day of other foods in order to establish a percentage of the participants’ daily diet.

In addition, they put each person into one of four equal groups based on how much ultra-processed food they ate as a percentage of their overall diet.

According to the findings of the research, people who fell into the lowest category consumed around 225 grams worth of ultra-processed foods each day, which is approximately one tenth of their daily diet.

In contrast, individuals who fell into the highest group consumed ultra-processed foods at a rate of 28 percent of their daily diet, which is equivalent to 814 grams per day.

According to the findings of experts, the category of foods that contributed the most to the high consumption of ultra-processed foods was beverages, followed by sweet goods and dairy products.

Only a little more than one hundred of the 18,021 participants in the lowest group had dementia, whereas one hundred fifty of those in the highest category had developed the neurological disorder.

After taking into account other characteristics such as age, gender, and medical history, researchers found that people’s chances of developing dementia increased by a quarter of a percentage point for every ten percent that their daily consumption of ultra-processed foods increased.

While the researchers are quick to point out that their findings do not prove that eating such foods causes dementia, but rather serve only as a link, they did say that a person’s risk of developing dementia could be reduced by a fifth if they replaced just one tenth of the ultra-processed foods they consumed with unprocessed or minimally processed alternatives, such as fresh fruit, vegetables, legumes, milk, and meat.

“It’s encouraging to know that small and manageable changes in diet may make a difference in a person’s risk of dementia,” Dr Li said, adding further research is needed to confirm the findings.