By Kevin Kolodziejski
A bad food or a bad dude.
Which of these two are you writing about if, instead of a cyclist, you’re a songwriter for a rock-and-roll band looking for that first big hit?
If you’re back in 1982 and George Thorogood, you chose the latter — and it’s an astute move. It leads to a song so well-known it’s now considered a staple of classic rock-and-roll radio. But it’s not 1982, and you’re not Lonesome George. You are, however, as convinced as Lenny Kravitz that eating ultra-processed food is really bad for you. Kravitz, whose “Greatest Hits” album has sold over 10 million copies, by the way, still has six-pack abs as he approaches 62.)
Which is why you don’t write as Thorogood did about breaking thousands of women’s hearts, but of consuming thousands of Pop-Tarts (mostly Frosted S’mores), though you do borrow heavily from his bluesy song. For example, instead of your head nurse fearing Thorogood as an infant and warning the other nurses to “leave this one alone,” she cautions everyone that a toaster pastry compulsion is (and sing it with me, please) “B-B-B-B Bad. Bad for the bones.”
Bad for the Bones
While there’s little chance your tune ever gains the same enduring acclaim as Thorogood’s, it very well could live on, albeit in infamy, for it could serve as the anthem for crash-prone cyclists everywhere. Especially if your song cites a study published in the March 2026 issue of the British Journal of Nutrition — after mentioning another one from 2009 in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise about bone mineral density and cyclists.
The 2009 study compared total body, lumbar spine, and dual proximal femur bone mineral density in 32 male cyclists who had ridden between 7 and 22 hours a week for an average of 9.4 years with 30 “body-mass matched” males. It found the cyclists had a “significantly lower” amount of bone mineral density in their spines despite their calcium intake being “significantly higher.” Subsequent studies have corroborated this black mark upon cycling. While it strengthens the heart and many other muscles, if you cycle as your only form of exercise, it will have the opposite effect on your bones.
The 2026 study finds consuming UPFs weakens them too. Though this is not the first time a study has reached that conclusion.
What Makes This Study Different
Prior to this study conducted at Tulane University, others had shown an increase in the consumption of UPFs is b-b-b-bad for you because it decreases the overall nutritional quality of your diet while making it easy to gain weight. Both of which increase your risk various health problems, such as type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, cancer, obesity, and inflammatory bowel disease. Additionally, a greater consumption of UPFs has been linked to a heightened risk of osteoporosis. As Lu Qi, MD, PhD, co-author of the Tulane study, notes in a press release, however, theirs is the first study to directly examine the relationship between UPFs and bone health.
To do so, Qi and colleagues analyzed data provided by 163,855 Brits on five separate occasions over the course of five years using the Oxford WebQ questionnaire. That’s an online survey that asks participants which of the listed items they had to eat and drink on the previous day and in what amount. It takes about 12 minutes to complete and is often used as an assessment tool in large-scale studies that collect data over an expanse of time.
When the researchers tallied up UPFs intake, they found these Brits — 96 percent White, 55 percent female, and an average of 56 years of age at the study’s start — consumed on average 8.1 servings of UPFs on the selected days. After making adjustments to account for “potential residual cofounding factors” like the time of year; the amount of alcohol consumed; dietary supplement, glucocorticoid, or anti-osteoporosis medication use, they divided the participants into low, middle, and high groups based on their UPFs consumption.
Next they checked the participants’ medical health records and discovered that in comparison to those in low group of UPFs consumption, those in the high group “exhibited a marked decrease” in overall total body bone mineral density — and specifically in three areas susceptible to breaking during cycling crashes: the femur at the neck and trochanter, and the spine between L1 and L4. The researchers crunched the numbers some more and, as Elizabeth Pratt explains in a Healthline article, found “for every 3.7 additional servings of UPFs consumed, the risk of hip fracture increased by 10.5 percent.”
What’s the Cause of the Increase in Hip Fractures?
Qi and colleagues say it’s “likely multifactorial,” a combination of the high content of the added sugars, salts, and unhealthy fats in UPFs; the lack of vitamins and minerals in them that’s “vital” for bone metabolism and maintenance; a possible disruption of the gut microbiota, as well as an increase of fat storage in the marrow of the bones from consuming them. I say the conclusion of this paper will make you realize that breaking a hip from a tumble down stairs or a slip in the bathtub or even a crash on a bicycle is not only a concern for older and overweight people. Not if younger and normal-weight people eat the way typical Americans eat and consume about 55 percent of their daily calories from UPFs.
For it notes that the “marked decrease” in overall total body bone mineral density found in the femurs and spines of those Brits who ate the most UPFs “was [even] more marked among participants under 65 years and those who were underweight.”
Kevin Kolodziejski began his writing career in earnest in 1989. Since then he’s written a weekly health and fitness column and his articles have appeared in magazines such as “MuscleMag,” “Ironman,” “Vegetarian Times,” and “Bicycle Guide.” He has Bachelor and Masters degrees in English from DeSales and Kutztown Universities.
A competitive cyclist for more than 30 years, Kevin won two Pennsylvania State Time Trial championships in his 30’s, the aptly named Pain Mountain Time Trial 4 out of 5 times in his 40s, two more state TT’s in his 50’s, and the season-long Pennsylvania 40+ BAR championship at 43.
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