Photo credit: CBC
Most people have food in their fridges and cupboards that they know isn’t the healthiest choice.
CBC News reports that a box of chocolate chip cookies you grab for a bedtime snack. Instant noodles for when you can’t be bothered to make dinner. Or that bag of ketchup chips you grabbed on a late-night stroll home from the bar.
But it’s not just guilty pleasures. Nearly half of the calories Canadians consume – 45.7 per cent on average, according to Statistics Canada – come in the form of ultra-processed foods (UPFs) and include everything from breakfast cereals to frozen foods.
Over the years, research has shown that UPFs can negatively impact everything from our weight to our cardiovascular health, and could even be linked to some types of cancer.
But a new study co-authored by two professors at Hamilton’s McMaster University, published Thursday by JAMA Network Open, signals that our brains could also suffer as a result of consuming too many foods produced to be cheap and ready-to-eat.
The authors say that the people with the highest intake of UPFs in their diets may face an increased likelihood of experiencing changes to the brain that could serve as precursors for stroke, dementia and cognitive decline.
People wouldn’t necessarily be aware of these potential harms, says study co-author Russell de Souza, an associate professor at McMaster’s Mary Heersink School of Global Health and Social Medicine.
But he says the findings could encourage people to shift their eating habits now, before experiencing serious consequences later in life.
De Souza and co-author Dr Sonia Anand, a vascular medicine specialist, examined the diets and brain MRI scans of more than 8,700 Canadian adults, with a median age of about 58, and divided them into four groups, from those with the lowest UPF intake to those with the highest.
The latter cohort consumed nearly 45 per cent of their calories from UPFs, or the equivalent of 16 servings a day, which they self-reported in a survey listing 150 to 170 food items consumed in the past year.
By comparison, the group with the lowest consumption got 15 per cent of their daily calories from UPFs, equal to three servings.
Anand, a professor of medicine and epidemiology at McMaster, says they analyzed the scans of higher-risk participants and found that their UPF-heavy diets were associated with increased body fat and visceral fat – the kind stored deeper in the body and around the organs.
Anand says the MRIs of the higher-risk group showed changes to the brain similar to silent strokes, a type of stroke that doesn’t present any noticeable symptoms but damages the tissue.
These injuries add up over time and make it more likely that people could develop neurological problems, such as vascular dementia, says Dr Michael Hill, a neurologist and professor at the University of Calgary who is not affiliated with the study.
While the damage a UPF-heavy diet may do can’t be reversed, Hill says dietary changes can reduce further progression.
He says the findings are consistent with a growing body of evidence about the health impacts of UPFs.
Anand notes that not everyone has the time or money to prepare high-quality food, which she says is a systemic issue that would require government interventions to reduce the amount of UPFs available and make healthy food more affordable.
It’s also a matter of improving health literacy, which she says would increase awareness about the repercussions of consuming too many UPFs.
Canada, she says, could follow the lead of other countries that have successfully minimized the consumption of UPFs. One such country, Chile, implemented mandatory front-of-package labels for UPFs that are high in sugar in an effort to curb childhood obesity.
She says there are things individuals and governments can do, “and we need both to happen to make Canadians healthier.”
