Experts warn ultra-processed foods linked to reduced muscle health

Eating a diet dominated by ultraprocessed foods like cookies and fries has long been tied to harms for many areas of human health.

Now, researchers say people who regularly eat a lot of ultraprocessed foods need to worry about another health hazard: poor muscle health.

Eating ultraprocessed foods is linked to a higher amount of fat in the thigh muscles, researchers at the Radiological Society of North America warned in a recent study. And that’s true regardless of how many calories you consume, how much you work out and what your genetic history is.

Higher amounts of this fat also raises the risk for knee osteoarthritis, they say. The common chronic degenerative joint disease can lead to cysts or permanent bone spurs, according to the Cleveland Clinic.

“Osteoarthritis is an increasingly prevalent and costly global health issue,” Dr. Zehra Akkaya, a consultant for U.C. San Francisco’s Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging, said in a statement. “It constitutes one of the largest non-cancer-related health care costs in the United States and around the world. It is highly linked to obesity and unhealthy lifestyle choice.”

Using MRI imaging and data from the decade-long Osteoarthritis Initiative, the researchers looked at the thighs of more than 600 adults who had a diet that was 41 percent ultraprocessed.

Participants also answered more than 100 questions about their food and drink intake, saying if they ate ultraprocessed food “every day” or “never.”

Nearly 400 of the adults were considered to be overweight and 149 were living with obesity. That left them at a higher risk of knee osteoarthritis.

The scans showed how much fat each person’s muscles stored – and that people with poorer diets were worse off.

However, more research is still needed to say for sure that the ultraprocessed foods were the cause.

What is known is that eating ultraprocessed foods is linked to weight gain and obesity and that obesity leaves people vulnerable to knee osteoarthritis.

Even being just 10 pounds overweight has been shown to increase the force on the knee by 30-60 pounds with each step, according to the Johns Hopkins Arthritis Center.

About 33 million adults have osteoarthritis, according to federal data, and the National Center for Health Statistics found in 2006 that more than a third of U.S. adults suffered from knee osteoarthritis.

More of them were women and nearly half of people with the condition will have a total knee replacement done during their lifetime, according to the Osteo Arthritis Action Alliance.

So, what’s the fix?

Well, overweight women have nearly four times the risk of knee osteoarthritis. For men, the risk is five times greater, the Johns Hopkins Arthritis Center says.

While ultraprocessed foods make up a whopping 60 percent of the U.S. diet, even small amounts of weight loss can make a difference.

“For a woman of normal height, for every 11 pounds of weight loss, the risk of knee osteoarthritis dropped by greater than 50 percent,” the center says.

That means eating more fruits, vegetables and lean meats, as well as devoting more time to physical activity.

“Addressing obesity is a primary objective and frontline treatment for knee osteoarthritis, yet the findings from this research emphasize that dietary quality warrants greater attention, and weight loss regimens should take into account diet quality beyond caloric restriction and exercise,” said Akkaya.