Your Favorite Snack Could Be Messing With Your Focus

Food Focused: Ultra-processed foods have racked up quite a reputation for being bad for your heart and waistline. But new research published in Alzheimer’s & Dementia: Diagnosis, Assessment & Disease Monitoring suggests they may also be affecting your ability to focus, and the effect shows up even if the rest of your diet is fairly solid.

The Study: Researchers analyzed data from more than 2,000 Australian adults aged 40 to 70 and tracked their dietary habits and cognitive performance. People who ate more ultra-processed foods scored lower on attention tests than those who ate less of them. Attention scores dipped for every 10% increase in ultra-processed food calories, while scores estimating future dementia risk increased. Crucially, those links remained even after accounting for the overall eating of the participants.

The Takeaway: The food processing itself appears to matter, not just the absence of better foods. Cutting back on your most processed staples, especially sugary drinks and packaged deli meats, which research has shown is particularly problematic for cognitive health, may be worth considering.

Keep in Mind: This study captured a snapshot in time, so it can’t prove that ultra-processed foods directly cause cognitive changes; it only shows that the association is worth paying attention to.