High ultra-processed food consumption linked to increased dementia risk | Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
hsph.harvard.edu
Eating a diet high in ultra-processed food, particularly processed meat, may increase the risk of dementia.
  • puppinstuff@lemmy.caEnglish
    101·
    13 days ago

    Everybody tells you that UPF is bad and you should not eat too much or none at all. I’m on board. But in what timeline do I find the extra prep time to make every family meal and snack from scratch?

    The science is telling us it’s bad. But we need affordable solutions at the societal level to give people who want to banish UPF a fighting chance.

    • 1D10@lemmy.worldEnglish
      41·
      12 days ago

      Not to mention a lot of UPF is fortified with vitamins a lot of people would not get enough of otherwise.

      (Obviously not all UPF is fortified, but every time I see someone cutting it from their diets they just replace it with something like chicken and rice, because, it can honestly be a hassle to find decent fresh produce)

      My child and I both have strong food aversions and my wife is vegetarian, I do all the cooking and we eat very little “junk”. But there has been times I couldn’t even find all the ingredients to make salsa without taking a 40 mile one way trip to the “big city”.

  • daannii@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    9 days ago

    It’s important to note that dementia symptoms possibly start as early as age 30. Just very mild.

    And some of the hallmark early symptoms is a lack of motivation and difficulty with multi step procedures.

    It’s likely people struggling to be motivated to cook or find it difficult to prepare a meal turn to frozen dinners because they are much easier to cook.

    Sleeping disruptions also associated with dementia. It’s normal to sleep a little less at night as we get older but sleeping only 5 or 6 hours a night isn’t really normal. As you can imagine, reduced sleep creates more day-time fatigue. Further reducing motivation and attention to prepare meals.

    Whenever I see these kinds of studies linking some behavior or activity with dementia, it’s always important to ask which came first. Is there a interaction effect or a one way effect.

    Similar research:

    Claims like dental plaques and tartar being associated with dementia.

    Is it :

    Someone’s poor dental hygiene causes dementia or dementia causes poor dental hygiene ?

    I acknowledge that processed food isn’t very healthy. Probably increases risk for a lot of gastro problems and nutrition deficiency.

    But in this case, probably the dementia was independent.

    Pretty strong evidence that Alzheimer’s starts very early in life. Only shows cognitive symptoms much later.