I scan all sorts of medical information sources to write these Health Tips. The usual ones that every doctor should be reading (JAMA, Medscape, etc.), but I don’t miss the New York Times and the Washington Post. I often find something I might have missed elsewhere.
This article from the Times startled me, but it did not surprise me. In this study, researchers in the U.S. tracked the diet diaries of 10,000 patients and found that when 60% or more of the caloric intake came from ultra-processed foods (UPFs), those individuals were more than likely to also have chronic problems with anxiety and depression.
The article went on to mention how two years earlier, researchers in Brazil followed 11,000 diet diaries and reported that high amounts of UPFs eaten over years were associated with “global cognitive decline”, which included delayed word recall, poor executive function, and poor word recognition. While they acknowledged “normal” age-related changes in brain function, a lifetime chowing down UPFs presses the ‘fast-forward’ button on brain decline.
Let’s pause here and define our terms. What constitutes an ultra-processed food? From the Brazilian researcher herself:
“Ultra-processed foods include ingredients that are rarely used in homemade recipes — such as high-fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated oils, protein isolates and chemical additives, like colors, artificial flavors, sweeteners, emulsifiers, and preservatives,” said Eurídice Martínez Steele, a researcher in food processing at University of Sao Paulo, Brazil.
In other words, to spot UPFs you must: (1) read every label and if you can’t easily pronounce a word, then you’ve likely spotted a UPF, (2) as you’re reading, if you see an ingredient that you don’t use in your kitchen, it’s a UPF.
Unless this is your kitchen:
