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From 2000 to 2013, per capita sales of these products increased by 26.7% in 13 countries.
Mexico is in third place among the countries that consume the most ultra-processed foods.
In the Region, almost 60 percent of the inhabitants, some 360 million people, are overweight.
Today we live in a world where people want to be more aware of where what they consume on a daily basis comes from, which is why many brands have focused on providing consumers with more natural and sustainable products. A new study presented at the 2022 Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in San Diego, revealed that if ultra-processed foods make up more than 20 percent of a person’s daily caloric intake, you could be on your way to cognitive decline.
With the Covid-19 pandemic, people have changed their way of living, so everything they consume or buy from a brand is included. In this sense, data from a study developed by the Integrated System in Prospecting Network Analysis and Dissemination of Consumption Patterns (SIRPAC), has found that 87 percent of consumers increasingly consider knowledge of food more important, both its origin, as well as its mode of production, and other cultural aspects.
According to study Ultra-processed foods and beverages in Latin America: sales, sources, nutrient profiles and regulatory implications prepared and presented by the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) and the World Health Organization (WHO), Mexico is only below Chile in the sales of products with high caloric content and low nutritional content.
Given this, it is worth mentioning that ultra-processed foods refer to edible products that are prepared industrially from substances derived from other foods. They do not have any complete food, but long lists of ingredients such as the hydrogenation or frying of oils, the hydrolysis of proteins or the refining and extrusion of flours or cereals.
Cognitive impairment and ultra-processed foods
The study presented at the 2022 Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in San Diego, United States, detailed that ultra-processed foods can not only increase our risk of obesity, heart and circulatory problems, diabetes and cancer, but they have a strong link with cognitive decline.
According to the study carried out thanks to a follow-up of more than ten thousand Brazilians for 10 years, it indicates that this cognitive deterioration may include the areas of the brain involved in executive functioning, that is, the ability to process information and make decisions.
It also explains that the men and women who ate the most ultra-processed foods “They had a 28 percent faster rate of global cognitive decline and a 25 percent faster rate of decline in executive function compared to people who ate the fewest excessively processed foods.”
The scientific study included cognitive tests from the beginning and the end, which included “immediate and delayed word recall, word recognition and verbal fluency, and the participants were asked about their diet.”
For her part, the co-author of the study, Dr. Claudia Suemoto, adjunct professor of the division of geriatrics at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of São Paulo, explained that “in Brazil, ultra-processed foods represent between 25 percent and 30 percent of total calorie intake. We have McDonald’s, Burger King and we eat a lot of chocolate and white bread. It is not very different, unfortunately, from many other Western countries.”
“58 percent of the calories consumed by US citizens, 56.8 percent of the calories consumed by the British and 48 percent of the calories consumed by Canadians come from ultra-processed foods,” Suemoto said.
For her part, Natalia Gonçalves, co-author of the study and researcher at the Department of Pathology at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of São Paulo, reported that “people who consumed more than twenty percent of their daily calories from processed foods had a 28 percent faster decline in global cognition and 25 percent faster executive functioning compared to people who ate less than twenty percent.”
In this sense, being aware of the nutritional properties, seasonality and conservation of what is ingested is what is known as “responsible consumption”, a habit that has a direct consequence on health and generates a lower environmental impact in the world.
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