BATON ROUGE — A new paper by a Baton Rouge researcher in the Annual Review of Nutrition is taking a close look at what science knows about ultraprocessed foods and how they might affect the brain as people age.

Owen Carmichael from LSU's Pennington Biomedical Research Center is the lead author of the review, which brings together research on ultraprocessed foods, brain health and cognitive aging. The paper looks at findings from both human and basic research to see what is known about possible links between diet and the aging brain.

Ultraprocessed foods are common in modern diets and are made using industrial processes. They often contain refined ingredients, added sugars, fats, sodium and other additives. Research has linked higher consumption of these foods with different health outcomes, and scientists are now asking if there could be similar effects on brain health.

The review explores several ways diet could influence the aging brain, including effects on metabolism, inflammation and vascular health. It also looks at evidence connecting ultraprocessed food consumption with cognitive performance and dementia. The authors stress that finding a link does not prove cause and effect.

Some studies have found that people who eat more ultraprocessed foods may have poorer cognitive outcomes, but researchers are still working to figure out how much of this is due to the foods themselves and how much is related to other factors like overall diet or lifestyle.

"A lot of people inside and outside of science are worried about the effects that food processing and artificial food additives might have on health, but it is hard to know what reported health effects are real and which ones are not," Carmichael said. "This review gives us an opportunity to step back and look at all the evidence we know of that suggests that ultraprocessed foods could affect the brain."

Carmichael is the Director of Biomedical Imaging at Pennington Biomedical, where his research focuses on how health behaviors and metabolic health affect Alzheimer's disease and brain aging.