How much junk food did you eat? A new test may soon tell
Counting how much ultra-processed food someone eats has always relied on diet questionnaires and personal honesty.But researchers at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), the world's largest medical research body, may have found a more objective way: by reading it in your blood and urine.In a new study published in PLOS Medicine, scientists have developed what they call a poly-metabolite score, a biomarker-based tool that can estimate how much of a person's energy comes from ultra-processed foods.advertisement
These include packaged snacks, soft drinks, ready-to-eat meals, and other industrially manufactured calorie-dense products and nutrient-poor products.This could be a breakthrough for nutrition research, which has long struggled with the inaccuracies of self-reported diet data.'The limitations of self-reported diet are well known. With metabolomics, we can get closer to an objective measure of food intake and also understand how diet may be impacting health," said Dr Erikka Loftfield, lead investigator and researcher at the National Cancer Institute.ALL ABOUT THIS SCOREThe NIH team looked at blood and urine samples for 12 months from two different groups: one observational study of 718 older US adults, and one clinical trial where 20 participants were fed two different diets, one high (80%) and one completely free (0%) of ultra-processed foods, each for two weeks.advertisementThe researchers found hundreds of tiny substances in the blood and urine, called metabolites, that were linked to how much ultra-processed food a person ate.Using machine learning, they created a special score called a poly-metabolite score that could tell how processed a person's diet was.These scores clearly showed the difference between when someone was eating mostly processed food and when they weren't, the study authors noted.WHY THIS MATTERSThe health risks of diets high in ultra-processed foods such as obesity, type 2 diabetes, and even some cancers are well documented.But quantifying how much people actually eat is tricky, especially when relying on memory-based food logs or questionnaires. People could forget, under-report, or misjudge portion sizes.This biomarker-based tool could make large-scale population studies more reliable and help uncover stronger links between diet and disease.LIMITATIONS OF THE SCOREWhile the findings are promising, researchers caution that the current results are based mostly on older American adults.The scores still need to be validated in more diverse populations with different eating habits and levels of ultra-processed food intake.Besides this, the study didn't check whether these scores are linked to diseases like cancer or diabetes. That's something the scientists want to study next, to see if people with higher scores (meaning they eat more ultra-processed food) are more likely to get these illnesses.advertisementFor now, though, the study marks a step toward more precise nutrition science and maybe one day, doctors won't need to ask what you eat.Your body might already have the answer.
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