Eating 'Junk' Or Ultra-Processed Foods Can Speed Up Aging At Cellular Level

The fast-paced lifestyle of many today led to eating more junk or processed foods. However, caution must be practiced when reaching for a bag of chips as a number of researchers found that consuming junk foods or having a diet high in processed foods like instant noodles, packaged bread or buns, chips, soda, and chocolate bars, can speed up aging at the cell level.

Those who consumed over three servings of ultra-processed foods (UPF) daily were at high risk of having shortened telomeres, or the protein structures that cap the chromosome's ends. Telomeres also function as chromosome protector and may be used as an aging indicator.

UPFs are those foods made of a blend of sugars, oils, starch, fats and proteins that contain small amounts of, if any, natural or whole foods. They are often industrially manufactured and usually contain emulsifiers, artificial flavorings and colorings, as well as additives that increase their shelf-life. These properties mean that these food types are nutritionally inadequate as compared to less or non-processed alternatives.

The researchers presented their findings Tuesday in the ongoing online European and International Conference on Obesity. They also published their study "Ultra-processed food consumption and the risk of short telomeres in an elderly population of the Seguimiento Universidad de Navarra (SUN) Project" earlier this year in the peer-reviewed American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

The research team, led by Amelia Marti and Maria Bes-Rastrollo, both scientists and professors at the University of Navarra in Pamplona, Spain, examined the suspected relationship between regular diets high in processed foods and shrinking telomeres. In their study, which involved 241 women and 645 men having an average age of 67.7 years, the researchers observed that with a surge in their consumption of UPFs, their risk of having shortened telomeres also increased.

The researchers explained that there are 23 pairs of chromosomes in each human cell, with every one of them containing genetic codes, Science Alert reported. Although there is no genetic information within the telomeres itself, they are crucial in keeping the chromosomes stable and reliable.

Researchers also explained that as people get older, the telomeres get shorter considering that each time a cell divides, a part of the telomere also gets lost. This is why telomere length is regarded as a marker of biological age. The study's authors cautioned, however, that while the connection between the regular consumption of ultra-processed foods and shortened telomeres is strong, the causal relationship remains speculative.

The researchers also found a link between regular consumption of processed meals and hypertension, obesity, depression, and premature death. They said that participants in the study who consumed more processed foods are also the ones less likely to observe heart-healthy foods like those found in Mediterranean diets.