Junk food addiction growing among people in their 50s and 60s

Washington (dpa) – People born between 1960 and 1975 and living in high-income countries are increasingly likely to show signs of being hooked on highly processed food that they were the first generation to be exposed to as children. A University of Michigan (UM) team found that 21% of women and 10% of men in this age bracket "meet criteria for addiction to these ultra-processed foods" after carrying out a study of around 2,000 people aged between 50 and 80. "Ultra-processed food addiction appears to be prevalent among older adults in the United States, particularly among women who were in adolescence and early adulthood when the nutrient quality of the US food supply worsened," the team said in a paper published in the journal Addiction. "Today’s older adults were in a key developmental p