A new study suggests there may be a connection between eating processed foods and an increased risk of dementia.
Researchers from Monash University in Australia analysed diet and cognitive data from more than 2,100 middle-aged and older Australians who did not have dementia. The findings were recently published in Alzheimer’s & Dementia: Diagnosis, Assessment & Disease Monitoring.
The team reported that a relatively small rise in ultra-processed food (UPF) intake was associated with poorer attention and a higher dementia risk among the adults studied.
Specifically, they found a 10 percent increase in UPFs was linked to a measurable reduction in attention, alongside increased dementia risk.
To put that 10 percent shift into context, it’s roughly comparable to adding a standard bag of chips to your daily intake.
“For every 10 per cent increase in ultra-processed food a person consumed, we saw a distinct and measurable drop in a person’s ability to focus,” lead author Dr Barbara Cardoso stated. “In clinical terms, this translated to consistently lower scores on standardized cognitive tests measuring visual attention and processing speed,” she added.
In the United States, UPFs make up a large share of daily intake. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says 53 percent of all calories consumed come from ultra-processed foods.
In this particular research, scientists did not identify a direct association between UPFs and memory loss. However, the authors noted that attention is a core function that supports many other brain processes.
Participants also followed a healthy Mediterranean-style diet during the study, and the results indicated that the extra UPFs were not simply offset by otherwise nutritious eating patterns.
So what counts as a UPF? The term “ultra-processed foods” generally refers to products that have undergone extensive industrial processing compared with minimally processed foods.
They often contain additives you wouldn’t usually find in a standard home kitchen, such as preservatives and sweeteners, and are common in items like chips, chocolate, and ice cream.
“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,” Dr Cardoso added.
The study adds to a growing body of research examining potential downsides of UPFs, with a number of health specialists cautioning about their broader impacts.
Last month, public health expert Dr Van Tulleken spoke out on The Diary of a CEO podcast, in which he said UPFs had now ‘overtaken tobacco as the leading cause of early death on planet Earth’.
“There is a decade of evidence now that is extremely clear that it is ultra-processed food that is responsible, not just for pandemic weight gain and obesity, but also for a long list of other health problems,” he said.
He later argued that UPFs should be treated as ‘an addictive substance’.