A study, led by Monash University in Australia, has shed light on a particularly alarming consequence—the acceleration of biological ageing resulting from the excess consumption of ultra- processed foods (UPFs).
The study is published in the journal ‘Age and Ageing’, Biological age refers to how old a person seems based on various molecular biomarkers, compared to chronological age, which is the number of years a person has lived.
A person’s biological age is a relatively new way of measuring a person’s health, and can be traced back to 2013, when geneticist Steve Horvath developed the epigenetic clock, which measures DNA methylation levels.
DNA methylation is a process that modifies the function of genes. A second generation of epigenetic clocks was developed a few years later that incorporated environmental variants such as smoking or chronological age.
Among these was the PhenoAge and GrimAge clocks. A person with a healthy lifestyle may have a biological age younger than their chronological age, while poor lifestyle choices, such as a diet high in UPFs, can accelerate biological ageing.
