Ultraprocessed foods may hurt muscle health, study finds

Health newsUltraprocessed foods may hurt muscle health, study findsPeople who ate diets that were high in ultraprocessed foods had more fat in between their muscles. Listen to this article with a free account00:0000:00Ultraprocessed foods are often high in calories and low in vitamins, minerals and nutrients needed to maintain muscle health.Shana Novak / Getty ImagesShareAdd NBC News to GoogleApril 14, 2026, 10:00 AM EDTBy Kaitlin SullivanEating too much ultraprocessed food could take a toll on muscle health, according to new research published Tuesday in the journal Radiology. Subscribe to read this story ad-free Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.Ultraprocessed foods, which include salty snacks, sugary drinks and fast food, make up the majority of calories in Americans’ diets. The negative effects they have on heart health and diabetes risk is well-established. “What is not so well-known is that diet also has a significant impact on musculoskeletal health,” said Dr. Thomas Link, chief of the musculoskeletal imaging section at the University of California San Francisco and the senior author of the study. Muscles store fat in two ways: in “streaks” of fat that sit between healthy muscles, called intermuscular fat, and in droplets stored in muscle fibers, called intramuscular fat. Everyone, regardless of weight or physical ability, has some of both types, but you typically won’t find thick streaks of intermuscular fat in extreme athletes, said Christopher Fry, co-director of the Center for Muscle Biology at the University of Kentucky.The difference is due to how the body uses fat in the muscles, said Fry, who wasn’t involved with the new research. In athletes, fat stored in muscle — predominantly in muscle fiber droplets — is an important energy reserve that the body taps into when a person exerts an extraordinary amount of energy. When those energy reserves aren’t being used or a person has a metabolic disease such as Type 2 diabetes, fat...