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Study highlights further dangers of ultra-processed foods

Further research has highlighted the dangers of consuming ultra-processed foods. Researchers from Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, China, discovered that the risk of hypertension, other cardiovascular events, cancer, digestive diseases, mortality and more, increased with every 100g of ultra-processed foods consumed each day.

The team conducted a review of 41 prospective cohort studies spanning the Americas, Europe, Asia and Oceania, assessing the association between ultra-processed foods and health outcomes prior to April 2024. Taken together, the studies involved a total of 8,286,940 adult patients aged 18 years or older from the general population (30.8% of whom were male and 69.2% were female).

“Ultra-processed foods are characterised by high sugar, high salt, and other non-nutritive components, exhibiting low nutritional density yet high caloric content,” said Xiao Liu, MD. “This nutritional imbalance contributes to a wide range of adverse health outcomes.

Emerging evidence suggests a dose-response relationship between ultra-processed food consumption and negative health outcomes – meaning the more ultra-processed foods consumed, the greater the health risk. Therefore, reducing ultra-processed foods intake, even modestly, may offer measurable health benefits.”

School dinners help picky eaters, study shows

Having school dinners rather than packed lunches could encourage picky eating 13-year-olds to eat a wider variety of foods, according to a new University of Bristol study.

The researchers found that the picky children were less likely than their non-picky peers to have meat or fish sandwich fillings, and more likely to have fillings such as marmite, peanut butter or cheese spread. They were also less likely to eat fruit or salad in packed lunches.

However, when picky children ate school dinners, they did not avoid meat, fish or fruit. They ate a wider variety of foods and made more similar choices to those of their peers.

The findings were published in the Journal of Human Nutrition and Dietetics.

Vitamin D supplements may counteract ageing

A new study has revealed that vitamin D supplements may help to counteract the ageing process.

The study was carried out by researchers at Mass General Brigham and the Medical College of Georgia, and the results were published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. The findings from the VITAL randomised controlled trial revealed that vitamin D supplementation helps maintain telomeres, which are protective caps at the ends of chromosomes that shorten during ageing and are linked to the development of certain diseases. The study was a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of vitamin D3 (2,000 IU per day) and omega-3 fatty acid (1 g per day) supplementation.

It involved 1,054 participants who were tracked for five years.

Compared with taking a placebo, taking vitamin D3 supplements significantly reduced telomere shortening over four years, preventing the equivalent of nearly three years of ageing compared with the placebo. Omega-3 fatty acid supplementation had no significant effect on telomere length throughout the follow-up.

“Our findings suggest that targeted vitamin D supplementation may be a promising strategy to counter a biological ageing process, although further research is warranted,” said Haidong Zhu, PhD, first author of the report and a molecular geneticist at the Medical College of Georgia, Augusta University.

Multiple chronic illnesses could increase depression risk

People with multiple long-term physical health conditions are at a greater risk of developing depression, a study has shown.

Researchers from the University of Edinburgh used data from more than 142,000 people in the UK Biobank study to examine how physical illnesses interact to influence the risk of depression. Participants were aged 37-73 years and had at least one chronic physical condition but no history of depression.

Scientists used statistical clustering techniques to group individuals by their physical illness profiles and tracked how these clusters related to later diagnoses of depression. One group, which included people experiencing the highest rates of physical illness also showed the highest risk of developing depression. People with both heart disease and diabetes were also found to be at high risk, as were those with chronic lung conditions like asthma or COPD – chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

In the highest-risk groups, about one in 12 people developed depression over the next 10 years, compared with about one in 25 people without physical conditions.

Lauren DeLong, lead author and PhD student at the University of Edinburgh’s School of Informatics, said: “We hope our findings inspire other researchers to investigate and untangle the links between physical and mental health conditions.”

The study was published in the journal Nature Communications Medicine.