A daily bag of chips may seem harmless, but a new study suggests even that small habit could chip away at your ability to concentrate.
The findings also suggest the issue may extend beyond day-to-day focus, with ultra-processed foods (UPFs) potentially adding to dementia-related risk even in people who otherwise eat well, as the researchers explain in a news release.
What’s happening?
Poorer attention and processing speed were associated with higher intake of ultra-processed foods in a Monash University-led study of more than 2,100 dementia-free Australians in middle and older age, conducted with Deakin University and the University of São Paulo.
Participants got about 41% of their daily energy from ultra-processed foods, nearly matching the Australian average of 42%, the researchers said in the release.
Even among people who otherwise followed healthy diets, including a healthy Mediterranean diet, higher intake of ultra-processed foods was associated with poorer performance on standardized tests of visual attention and processing speed.
“To put our findings in perspective, a 10% increase in UPFs is roughly equivalent to adding a standard packet of chips to your daily diet,” lead author Dr. Barbara Cardoso said in the release. “For every 10% increase in ultra-processed food a person consumed, we saw a distinct and measurable drop in a person’s ability to focus.”
The study appeared in Alzheimer’s & Dementia: Diagnosis, Assessment & Disease Monitoring, an Alzheimer’s Association journal.
Why does it matter?
Attention plays a major role in learning, decision-making, and problem-solving, so a decline in focus can affect many parts of everyday life.
Although the study did not find a direct association with memory loss, researchers did connect greater ultra-processed food intake with more dementia risk factors, including high blood pressure and obesity.
Those are conditions that can often be addressed earlier to help protect brain health. Attention and processing speed support many other cognitive tasks.
The findings suggest diet is not only about calories, fat, or whether an eating pattern seems generally “healthy.” The way food is manufactured may also affect the body and the brain.
Ultra-processed foods are everywhere. Soft drinks, packaged snacks, and ready-made meals are often cheap, convenient, and heavily marketed, making them difficult to avoid.
What can I do?
This study does not mean one snack will determine your future brain health, but it does suggest that gradually cutting back on ultra-processed foods could reduce exposure.
“Food ultra-processing often destroys the natural structure of food and introduces potentially harmful substances like artificial additives or processing chemicals,” Cardoso noted in the release.
Swapping a packaged snack for fruit, nuts, yogurt, or other minimally processed options may help reduce overall exposure.
Researchers said the negative effects showed up even in people whose diets were otherwise high in quality, including those who ate plenty of vegetables and whole grains.
“These additives suggest the link between diet and cognitive function extends beyond just missing out on foods known as healthy, pointing to mechanisms linked to the degree of food processing itself,” Cardoso concluded.
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