The government and ASIC are demanding banks and financial service providers strengthen their scam and fraud defences. With this nefarious activity costing Australians $318 million in the past 15 months alone, the industry’s positive response has not come quickly enough.
With industry funds feeling the heat from APRA, it’s likely more members will look for a better option, especially if they are nearing or in retirement. Those choosing to do so need to tread warily.
Retirees warned: Consuming processed foods will accelerate ageing
Retirees wanting to slow their biological ageing need to urgently reassess their eating habits, with a research project revealing that consuming too much ultra-processed food, better known as convenience food, could speed up how quickly people age.
The project, led by Monash University and published in Age and Ageing, showed an association between increased consumption of ultra-processed foods and biological ageing. For every 10 per cent increase in consumption in ultra-processed food, the gap between biological and chronological age rises by 2.4 months.
These foods include the usual suspects such as chips, carbonated drinks, instant noodles, ice cream, chocolate, biscuits, ready-to-eat meals, sausages, burgers, chicken and fish nuggets, sweet or savoury packaged snacks and energy bars.
The cross-sectional study assessed data involving 16,055 people from the US aged between 20 and 79 whose health and lifestyles are comparable to Australia.
The findings underlined the importance of eating as many unprocessed and minimally processed foods as possible, said one of the report’s authors, Barbara Cardoso from Monash University’s Department of Nutrition, Dietetics and Food.
“The association between ultra-processed foods and markers of biological ageing was under-investigated, despite the obvious adverse health effects of these foods.
“The significance of our findings is tremendous, as our predictions show that for every 10 per cent increase in ultra-processed food consumption there is a nearly two per cent increased risk of mortality and 0.5 per cent risk of incident chronic disease over two years.”
The study, which used data from the US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, found that for each 10 per cent of energy intake by ultra-processed food, participants were 0.21 years biologically older, and this association between ultra-processed food intake and biological ageing remained significant after adjusting for diet quality and total energy intake.
This suggested the association could be due to other factors such as a lower intake of flavonoids or phytoestrogens, which occur in natural foods such as fresh fruit and vegetables, or higher exposure to packaging chemicals and compounds formed during food processing.
Adults with higher ultra-processed food tended to be biologically older, the study found.
“This association is partly independent of diet quality, suggesting that food processing may contribute to biological ageing acceleration. Our findings point to a compelling reason to target ultra-processed food consumption to promote healthier ageing,” it said.
The results also supported earlier research linking ultra-processed food consumption to ageing markers such as telomere length (a shorter telomere length is a sign of cell ageing), frailty, cognitive decline and dementia.
Cardoso said while the study participants were in the US, the relevance of the findings applied to Australians too, as on average, ultra-processed foods represented almost 40 per cent of total energy intake by Australian adults.
She said given the global population continued to age, demonstrating the adverse effects of ultra-processed foods reinforced the need for dietary-focused public health strategies to prolong a healthy life span.
“Our findings show that reducing ultra-processed foods in the diet may help slow the biological ageing trajectory, bringing another reason to target these foods when considering strategies to promote healthy ageing.”
