Roughly 60 percent of the calories in the average American
diet come from highly processed foods. We’ve known for decades that eating such
packaged products — like some breakfast cereals, snack bars, frozen meals, and
virtually all packaged sweets, among many other things — is linked to unwelcome
health outcomes, like an increased risk of diabetes, obesity, and even cancer.
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But more recent studies point to another major downside to
these often delicious, always convenient foods: They appear to have a
significant effect on our minds, too.
Research from the past 10 or so years has shown that the
more ultra processed foods a person eats, the higher the chances that they feel
depressed and anxious. A few studies have suggested a link between eating UPFs
and increased risk of cognitive decline.
What’s so insidious about these foods, and how can you avoid
the mental fallout? Scientists are still working on answers, but here’s what we
know so far.
Which items qualify?In 2009, Brazilian researchers put food on a four-part
scale, from unprocessed and minimally processed (like fruits, vegetables, rice
and flour) to processed (oils, butter, sugar, dairy products, some canned
foods, and smoked meats and fish), and ultra processed.
“Ultraprocessed foods include ingredients that are rarely used
in homemade recipes — such as high-fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated oils,
protein isolate, 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 in Brazil. This
classification system is now used widely by nutrition researchers.
UPFs make up a majority of the packaged foods you find in
the frozen food aisles at grocery stores and on the menu at fast-food
restaurants — 70% of the packaged foods sold in the United States are
considered ultra processed. They’re increasingly edging out healthier foods in
people’s diets and are widely consumed across socioeconomic groups.
“Ultra processed foods are carefully formulated to be so
palatable and satisfying that they’re almost addictive,” said Dr. Eric M.
Hecht, a public health researcher at the Schmidt College of Medicine at Florida
Atlantic University. “The problem is that in order to make the products taste
better and better, manufacturers make them less and less like real food.”
The effect on mental health
Recent research has demonstrated a link between highly
processed foods and low mood. In one 2022 study of over 10,000 adults in the
United States, the more UPFs participants ate, the more likely they were to
report mild depression or feelings of anxiety.
“There was a significant increase in mentally unhealthy days
for those eating 60 percent or more of their calories from UPFs,” Hecht, the
study’s author, said. “This is not proof of causation, but we can say that
there seems to be an association.”
New research has also found a connection between high UPF
consumption and cognitive decline. A 2022 study that followed nearly 11,000
Brazilian adults over a decade found a correlation between eating
ultra processed foods and worse cognitive function (the ability to learn,
remember, reason and solve problems).
“While we have a natural decline in these abilities with
age, we saw that this decline accelerated by 28 percent in people who consume
more than 20 percent of their calories from UPFs,” said Natalia Gomes
Goncalves, a professor at the University of São Paulo Medical School and the
lead author of the study.
It’s possible that eating a healthy diet may offset the
detrimental effects of eating ultra processed foods.
The Brazilian researchers found that following a healthy
eating regimen, like the MIND diet — rich in whole grains, green leafy
vegetables, legumes, nuts, berries, fish, chicken, and olive oil — greatly
reduced the dementia risk associated with consuming ultra processed foods.
Those who followed
the MIND diet but still ate UPFs “had no association between UPF consumption
and cognitive decline,” Goncalves said, adding that researchers still don’t
know what a safe quantity of UPFs is.
It’s unclear why ultra processed foods might have this
effect. “Many high-quality, randomized studies have shown the beneficial effect
of a nutrient-dense diet on depression, but we still do not fully understand
the role of food processing on mental health,” said Melissa Lane, a researcher
at the Food & Mood Centre at Deakin University in Australia. However, there
are some clues.
Much of the research has focused on how poor gut health
might affect the brain. Diets that are high in ultra processed foods are
typically low in fiber, which is mostly found in plant-based foods like whole
grains, fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds.
Fiber helps feed the good bacteria in the gut. Fiber is also
necessary for the production of short-chain fatty acids, the substances
produced when it breaks down in the digestive system, and which play an
important role in brain function, said Wolfgang Marx, the president of the
International Society for Nutritional Psychiatry Research and a senior research
fellow at Deakin University. “We know that people with depression and other
mental disorders have a less diverse composition of gut bacteria and fewer short-chain
fatty acids.”
Chemical additives in UPFs might also have an impact on gut
flora. “Emerging evidence — mostly from animal studies, but also some human
data — suggests that isolated nutrients (like fructose), additives such as
artificial sweeteners (like aspartame and saccharin) or emulsifiers (like
carboxymethylcellulose and polysorbate-80) can negatively influence the gut
microbiome,” Marx said.
Poor gut microbiota diversity — as well as a diet high in
sugar — may contribute to chronic inflammation, which has been linked to a host
of mental and physical issues, Lane said. “Interactions between increased
inflammation and the brain are thought to drive the development of depression,”
she said.
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