United States: Ultra-processed foods (UPFs) are generally considered unhealthy and have been associated with adverse cardiovascular outcomes and diabetes, and the new study hints that UPFs might cause chronic insomnia in certain individuals.
What are UPFs?
UPFs can be any staple food product forming part of the human diet that has additives and preservatives to improve their tastes, prepared in large proportions, or those whose shelf life has been improved.
They also differ from foods such as fruit or vegetables, which normally come in their natural state and can be taken as they are.
How was the research conducted?
The study involved 38,570 adults and was conducted by the French Sorbonne Paris Nord University team in connection with the NutriNet-Santé project that compared the characteristics of meal patterns with sleep indicators.
The findings of the report were published in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.
According to Marie-Pierre St-Onge, a nutrition and sleep scientist at Columbia University in the US, “At a time when more and more foods are highly processed, and sleep disturbances are rampant, it is important to evaluate whether diet could contribute to adverse or good quality sleep,” as sciencealert.com reported.
St-Onge and her associates identified an important, albeit moderate, statistically significant, direct positive relationship between UPF consumption and chronic insomnia incidence after excluding the confounding effects of multiple sociodemographic, lifestyle, diet quality, and mental health covariates.
In total, the participants in the study consumed 16 percent of their daily energy from UPFs, while 19.4 percent of the cohort said they suffered from chronic insomnia; the results showed that such students were more likely to consume UPFs in their diets.
In addition, the results found a marginally higher odds ratio in the male group. The study did not address repeat measures cross-sectionally, and the measure of outcome was self-reported, though the large sample size implies that this is an association that should be pursued in the future.
As epidemiologist Pauline Duquenne from Sorbonne Paris Nord University said, “It is important to note that our analyses were cross-sectional and observational in nature, and we did not evaluate longitudinal association,” as sciencealert.com reported.
Moreover, “While data do not establish causality, our study is [the] first of its kind and contributes to the existing body of knowledge on UPF,” Duquenne added.
Furthermore, the researchers added, “In the future, prospective epidemiological as well as clinical and experimental research could advance knowledge about causality and mediation pathways,” as written in their published paper.