I doubt there’s anyone who wouldn’t want to slow aging.

Yet, many of the choices we make each day actually accelerate aging, including choices like skipping out on exercise and not getting enough sleep.

However, as bad as these are, when it comes to sending our biological clocks into overdrive, the foods we eat could be the worst offenders.

That’s because according to a massive research study out of Italy, eating a certain type of food can make you biologically older than your actual chronological age.

Anything but natural

The study compared food frequency questionnaires of over 22,000 participants to over thirty different blood biomarkers that measure biological age. Unlike chronological age which is calculated exclusively by the date of your birth, biological age reflects the actual conditions inside your body, including those of your organs, tissues and systems.

Basically, biological aging is your body’s “internal clock”, which can tick faster or slower than the years marked on the calendar, because it reflects the true state of your health — and whether it’s sped up your internal clock.

Specifically, the researchers set out to determine how each participant’s consumption of ultra-processed foods affected their biological aging.

So what are ultra-processed foods?

The easiest way to think of them is as foods that are made in part or entirely with substances you wouldn’t normally find in your kitchen. This could be things like hydrolysed proteins, maltodextrins, hydrogenated fats, as well as dyes, preservatives, anticaking agents, flavor enhancers and artificial sweeteners.

Examples of ultra-processed foods include obvious ones like packaged snacks and sugary drinks. But they can also be foods that seem harmless like the sandwich bread you buy at the grocery store, meat alternatives, and even fruit yogurts and some breakfast cereals.

Aging accelerated

Unfortunately, these foods it turns out that when it comes to health and longevity, these foods are anything but harmless…

In fact, the study showed that people who ate high levels of ultra-processed foods experienced a significant acceleration of their biological aging.

“Our data show that a high consumption of ultra-processed foods not only has a negative impact on health in general, but could also accelerate aging itself, suggesting a connection that goes beyond the poor nutritional quality of these foods,” said lead researcher, Simona Esposito.

Although this makes it clear that ultra-processed foods and healthy aging simply don’t go together, the exact mechanisms of why these foods are so harmful to our health aren’t quite as clear.

However, nutritional epidemiologist, Marialaura Bonaccio, explains it this way, “Besides being nutritionally inadequate, being rich in sugars, salt and saturated or trans fats, these foods undergo intense industrial processing that actually alters their food matrix, with the consequent loss of nutrients and fiber. This can have important consequences for a series of physiological functions, including glucose metabolism, and the composition and functionality of the gut microbiota. Also, these products are often wrapped in plastic packaging, thus becoming vehicles of substances toxic to the body”.

In other words, these foods, which are anything but natural, are made worse by the toxic packaging they come in, setting off a cascade of health problems in our bodies and accelerating the ticking of our biological clocks.

Choices for healthier aging

The good news?

It’s not that hard to avoid the foods that accelerate aging.

Foods to skip include:

• White foods – White breads, pastries, pasta, rice and sugar should be a hard pass.
• Sandwich and breakfast meats – Ultra-processed meats are not typically found in the butcher section of the grocery store. They look very different from their original meat source and include lunch meat, hotdogs, bacon, sausage, jerky, canned meat and any other meat that has been processed to change its shape, flavor and freshness.
• Sweetened beverages – Cut out sugar-sweetened or artificially sweetened beverages, including soda, energy drinks, sweet tea and fruit juice.
• Packaged, ready-to-eat foods – Packaged snacks and ready-to-eat meals are loaded with unnatural ingredients and wrapped in plastics that can leach into your body.

And if you really want to turn back the clock, try these six secrets to exceptional aging that studies have proven work.

Sources:

High consumption of ultra-processed foods linked to accelerated biological aging — EurekAlert!