Ultraprocessed foods up risk of frailty in older women

Regular consumption of ultraprocessed foods (UPF) seems to heighten the risk of frailty in older women, reveals a study.

The authors followed a total of 63,743 women aged >60 years from the Nurses’ Health Study (cohort study) for at least 26 years. They assessed diet every 4 years using food frequency questionnaires and estimated intakes of UPF and unprocessed or minimally processed foods (UMF) using the Nova classification.

The Alternate Healthy Eating Index (AHEI) 2010 was used to assess diet quality. A multivariable adjusted Cox proportional hazard model was used to explore the relationship of UMF and UPF with frailty.

Overall, 15,187 incident cases of frailty occurred over the follow-up period. The highest vs the lowest quintile of UMFs had a reduced risk of frailty (hazard ratio [HR], 0.86, 95 percent confidence interval [CI], 0.83‒0.95; p_trend<0.001). However, after the adjustment for AHEI-2010, this association was no longer statistically significant.

On the other hand, UPFs showed a direct association with frailty risk (HR, 1.31, 95 percent CI, 1.23‒1.39; p_trend<0.001), and this persisted even after the adjustment for AHEI-2010. The direct association between UPF and frailty remained among women at the highest category of the AHEI-2010 (highest vs lowest quintile: HR, 1.40, 95 percent CI, 1.24‒1.57; p_trend<0.001).

Among the UPF components, a higher risk of frailty was observed with each serving per day of artificial and sugar-sweetened beverages; fat, spreads, and condiments; yogurt and dairy-based desserts; and other UPFs. Of note, processed whole grains did not correlate with frailty.

“Higher intake of UPF is associated with a higher risk of frailty in older females,” the authors said. “This is not explained by a lower diet quality contributed by UPFs.”