Too much red meat and too few vegetables may increase your body’s biological age

A diet of too much red meat and not enough fruit and vegetables could increase your body’s biological age and contribute to health problems. That is the result from research led by the University of Glasgow in cooperation with Karolinska Institutet, and published in the journal Aging.

The researchers have found that a moderate increase in serum phosphate levels caused by red meat consumption, combined with a poor overall diet, increases the biological age in contrast to the chronological age.

The study was led by researchers at the Institute of Cancer Sciences at University of Glasgow, in cooperation with researchers at the Department of Clinical Science, Intervention and Technology (CLINTEC) at Karolinska Institutet. It looked at participants from the most deprived to the least deprived in the NHS Greater Glasgow Health Board area, and also demonstrates that deprived males were the worst affected.

Participating researcher from KI was Peter Stenvinkel.

The research is part of the psychological, social, and biological determinants of ill health (pSoBid) study cohort, originally funded by the Glasgow Centre for Population Health.

This news article is an edited version of a press release from University of Glasgow.

Publication:

Accelerated ageing and renal dysfunction links lower socioeconomic status and dietary phosphate intake
Ruth McClelland, Kelly Christensen, Suhaib Mohammed, Dagmara McGuinness, Josephine Cooney, Andisheh Bakshi, Evangelia Demou, Ewan MacDonald, Muriel Caslake, Peter Stenvinkel, and Paul G Shiels
Aging, published online 26 April 2016.