inflammation<\/a>, and vascular injury.<\/p>\nThe brain may be affected by vascular brain injury (VBI) years before clinically detectable cognitive impairment develops. VBI, including white matter hyperintensities (WMHs) and covert brain infarcts (CBIs), is considered an early manifestation of cerebrovascular disease. However, relatively few studies have examined UPF intake together with detailed measures of body fat and MRI-defined VBI.<\/p>\n
The investigators therefore assessed whether higher UPF consumption was associated with body fat percentage, visceral adipose tissue (VAT), hepatic fat fraction (HFF), VBI, and cognitive performance. They hypothesized that higher UPF intake would be associated with greater adiposity and VBI, potentially before measurable cognitive deficits became apparent.<\/p>\n
Canadian researchers examine diet and brain health in 8,783 adults<\/p>\n
The study was a cross-sectional secondary analysis of participants from the Canadian Alliance for Healthy Hearts and Healthy Minds (CAHHM) and the Prospective Urban and Rural Epidemiology-MIND (PURE-MIND) studies. The analysis included 8,783 adults aged 35 to 69 years without cardiovascular disease. The mean age was 57.7 years, 56.6% of participants were female, and the mean BMI was 27.0.<\/p>\n
Participants completed validated food-frequency questionnaires assessing habitual food and beverage consumption during the preceding year. Approximately 37% of participants reported hypertension, and about 17% dyslipidemia, with approximately 5% reporting diabetes.<\/p>\n
The main outcomes were body fat percentage (measured by bioelectrical impedance), VAT and hepatic fat (assessed using MRI), VBI (defined as the presence of at least one covert brain infarct or a high burden of white matter hyperintensities on brain MRI), and cognitive performance measured by the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MOCA) and Digital Symbol Substitution Test (DSST).<\/p>\n
The models adjusted for potential confounders including age, sex, study center, ethnicity, income, education, physical activity, smoking, diabetes, hypertension, dyslipidemia, and total energy intake.<\/p>\n
Ultraprocessed foods supplied 42% of daily calories<\/p>\n
UPF intake was expressed as servings per 2,000 kcal per day and divided into four quartiles. On average, UPFs accounted for approximately 42% of participants’ total daily energy intake.<\/p>\n
Participants in the lowest quartile consumed a median of 3.1 UPF servings per 2,000 kcal per day, compared with 12.8 servings in the highest quartile. Higher UPF intake was associated with adverse socioeconomic and lifestyle factors, and a poorer cardiometabolic profile, with increased energy intake and a different dietary profile overall.<\/p>\n
In the lowest quartile, about 16.5% of daily food servings came from UPFs, compared to 45% in the highest quartile. Conversely, the proportion of daily food servings from minimally processed foods decreased from 68.6% in the lowest UPF quartile to 41.5% in the highest.<\/p>\n
Higher UPF intake linked to greater body and visceral fat<\/p>\n
Higher UPF intake was associated with greater overall and visceral adiposity. The fully adjusted model showed that in the highest UPF quartile, body fat percentage was on average 1.7 percentage points higher than in the lowest quartile. The VAT volume was also 5.7 mL greater.<\/p>\n
Continuous analysis showed that each 5 servings per 2,000 kcal\/day was associated with a 0.9 percentage-point increase in body fat percentage, and 4.0 mL greater VAT volume.<\/p>\n
The associations were strongest among participants with obesity. Among those with BMI of at least 30, body fat percentage was progressively higher across increasing UPF quartiles. In contrast, significant associations were not observed among participants with BMI below 30.<\/p>\n
UPF intake was not significantly associated with hepatic fat fraction in the primary analysis.<\/p>\n
Higher UPF intake linked to 40% greater brain injury odds<\/p>\n
Higher UPF consumption was also associated with greater odds of VBI. Compared with participants in the lowest quartile, those in the highest quartile had 40% higher odds of VBI. The prevalence of VBI was 8.1% in the lowest UPF quartile and 11.3% in the highest.<\/p>\n
Individual associations with WMHs and CBIs were directionally similar but less robust and sometimes failed to reach significance.<\/p>\n
In continuous analyses, each additional 5 UPF servings per 2,000 kcal per day was associated with 16% higher odds of VBI and 21% higher odds of CBIs, but not high WMH burden.<\/p>\n
However, the association with VBI was not robust across sensitivity analyses. When UPF consumption was expressed as the percentage of total food servings or total energy intake, rather than servings per 2,000 kcal per day, the associations were no longer statistically significant. Thus, the evidence for a relationship with vascular brain injury was less robust than that for adiposity.<\/p>\n
The association between UPF intake and VBI did not change substantially even after adjusting for body fat percentage and VAT, suggesting that it is not entirely driven by adiposity.<\/p>\n
Higher UPF consumption shows no consistent cognitive association<\/p>\n
In contrast to the findings for adiposity and VBI, higher UPF consumption was not associated with poorer cognitive performance. Both MOCA and DSST scores were similar across UPF quartiles, with generally high scores, consistent with a largely cognitively healthy middle-aged population.<\/p>\n
Some secondary analyses suggested lower odds of poor cognitive performance with higher UPF intake. A small positive association with MOCA scores also emerged after additional adjustment for adiposity and VBI. However, the primary continuous cognitive analyses were largely null.<\/p>\n
The investigators therefore specifically caution against interpreting these secondary findings as evidence that higher UPF consumption improves cognition. They suggest that the unexpected direction may reflect residual confounding, measurement error, ceiling effects, statistical bias from adjusting for potential intermediate factors, or chance findings from multiple analyses.<\/p>\n
UPF associations with body fat differed between sexes<\/p>\n
Exploratory analyses suggested that some associations differed by sex. Each increase in UPF quartile was associated with a larger increase in body fat percentage among women than men.<\/p>\n
Similarly, the odds of VBI were 78% higher among women but no association was observed among men, when the highest UPF quartile was compared with the lowest. The authors emphasize that these sex-specific analyses were not prespecified primary analyses, and as such the findings need to be replicated.<\/p>\n
These findings add to existing evidence linking UPF consumption with greater adiposity and metabolic dysfunction. Although adiposity may represent a plausible pathway connecting UPF intake with cerebrovascular injury, the study could not establish this mechanism, and the association with VBI persisted after additional adjustment for body fat and visceral adipose tissue.<\/p>\n
The lack of association with cognitive performance has several possible explanations. There may be a ceiling effect. Alternatively, subclinical cerebrovascular injury may predate overt cognitive deficits, especially those that can be picked up by screening platforms.<\/p>\n
Another possibility is the presence of high cognitive reserve in this sample, most of whom were highly educated. Finally, White Europeans predominated in the highest UPF category, and the MOCA scores may not be sensitive enough to capture differences related to ethnic and linguistic diversity in the study sample.<\/p>\n
Single-visit study cannot establish whether UPFs cause brain injury<\/p>\n
The study cannot establish the causality of the observed association between UPF intake and adiposity or VBI. All measurements were obtained at a single baseline visit, so temporality cannot be established and reverse causation remains possible.<\/p>\n
Dietary intake was estimated using a single food-frequency questionnaire covering the previous year, which may not have captured long-term exposures to these factors.<\/p>\n
UPFs also represent a heterogeneous category rather than a well-defined exposure, with different UPFs potentially having differing associations with health outcomes. In addition, the NOVA classification was retrospectively applied to the food intake data by the investigators.<\/p>\n
Finally, the cognitive tests might have missed small cognitive declines in this highly educated population. The White European predominance in the highest UPF quartile might reflect residual sociocultural or food-environment bias, limiting generalizability.<\/p>\n
Higher UPF intake linked to fat accumulation and vascular changes<\/p>\n
Among middle-aged Canadian adults without cardiovascular disease, higher UPF intake was associated with greater body fat and visceral adipose tissue and with higher odds of MRI-defined subclinical vascular brain injury. UPF consumption was not associated with cognitive performance.<\/p>\n
The strongest and most consistent finding was the association between higher UPF intake and greater total and visceral adiposity. The association with VBI was weaker and dependent on the definition of UPF exposure.<\/p>\n
Longitudinal studies are needed to determine whether higher UPF consumption precedes vascular brain injury and whether such injury ultimately contributes to cognitive decline.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Could what’s on your plate affect your brain before your memory shows any signs of trouble? A study…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":933834,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[49449,24232,64,63,1362,44548,4379,202816,1835,1298,4382,1295,4081,137,1624,337,260147,40847],"class_list":["post-933833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-adipose","tag-appetite","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-brain","tag-cardiometabolic","tag-cardiovascular-disease","tag-cerebrovascular-disease","tag-diabetes","tag-diet","tag-dyslipidemia","tag-food","tag-frequency","tag-health","tag-inflammation","tag-research","tag-ultraprocessed-food","tag-vascular"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/933833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=933833"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/933833\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/933834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=933833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=933833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=933833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Assortment](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/ImageForNews_849015_1792410337116429.jpg\")
<\/a>Study: Ultraprocessed Food Intake and Adiposity, Vascular Brain Injury, and Cognition in Middle-Aged Adults<\/a>. Image credit: monticello\/Shutterstock.com<\/p>\n