I do it. You do it. Let’s call it drawing the dietary line and use “Super Size Me,” the 2004 Academy Award nominee for Best Documentary Feature about the guy who eats nothing but McDonald’s food for 30 days, to explain it.

Between bites of a Big Mac one night, the guy, Morgan Spurlock, agrees with his vegan-chef girlfriend, Alex Jamieson, that the all-McDonald’s diet is damaging his health. Jamieson then gives all sorts of ethical and medical reasons for Spurlock to become a vegan after his 30-days of dietary debauchery.

Spurlock’s response: “I like bacon. I love pork chops. Ham is the greatest thing ever.”

Now the nutritional value and relative healthiness of “the other white meat” is not the point here. What is, is that after the documentary, Spurlock will eat far healthier than most Americans - even though he won’t give up eating three of the processed meats procured from pigs.

That’s where he draws his dietary line.

Where do you draw yours?

But a better question might be, if need be or logic dictates it, will you redraw yours?

**********

Even though a paper published about it in the February 2019 issue of Current Developments declares “there is little consistency either in the definition of ultra-processed foods or in examples of foods within this category,” most use the term as the Harvard Health website does, as foods “made mostly from substances extracted from [other] foods, such as fats, starches, added sugars, and hydrogenated fats. They may also contain additives like artificial colors and flavors or stabilizers.”

Frozen meals, soft drinks, hot dogs, cold cuts, fast food, packaged cookies, cakes, and salty snacks comprise Harvard Health’s list of prime examples.

While it’s quixotic pie in the sky for me to advise you to eliminate all the aforementioned foods from your diet, it’s crackpot crazy for you to do as many Americans do: have these foods that are so low in nutrition yet so high in calories dominate your diet.

Yet according to a 2015 study published in The BMJ, Americans receive more than 57 percent of their calories from ultra-processed foods - which contain about 90 percent of the added sugars they consume.

Without a doubt, eating these low-in-nutrition, high-in-calories ultra-processed foods that spike your blood sugar (ultimately creating rather than abating hunger) makes it far easier to gain weight. Moreover, a National Institutes of Health study published in the May 2109 issue of Cell Metabolism suggests that it occurs quickly.

Researchers had 20 subjects stay on site for 28 days to closely monitor all food consumed. For half of the time, the 20 either ate ultra-processed or minimally processed foods for their meals and snacks each day.

The subjects were instructed to “eat as much or as little as they wanted” and “reported that the diets both tasted good and were satisfying.” The ultra-processed and minimally processed meals had the same number of calories, sugars, fiber, fat, and carbohydrates.

The average weight gain during the 14 days of eating ultra-processed foods was 2 pounds. Yet the subjects lost an average 2 pounds in 2 weeks when eating as much minimally processed food as they liked.

Additionally, a review published in the December 2017 issue of Current Obesity Reports found 80 percent of the prior research linked a higher consumption of ultra-processed foods to a higher likelihood of being overweight or obese.

But there is another reason to severely limit the ultra-processed foods you consume. Even if eating them liberally is not leading to weight gain, it’s causing you to age quicker than you should.

Proof of this is in your telomeres.

Telomeres are bits of DNA at the ends of your chromosomes that protect your cells but shorten with time. When they become too short, cells die from a lack of protection.

The more cells die, the more likely you are to contract diseases and age.

Last June, The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition published a study performed at the University of Navarra in Pamplona, Spain that revealed the shortening of telomeres “increased dramatically” based on the number of servings of ultra-processed foods consumed in a day.

Using DNA analysis and self-reported food consumption from 886 individuals whose average age was nearly 68, the researchers found that those who averaged more than 3 servings of ultra-processed foods per day were 82 percent more likely to have dramatically shortened telomeres than those who averaged under 2 servings per day. Even those whose average was just above 2 servings a day (up to 2.5) were 29 percent more likely to have this happen.

The researchers also uncovered a correlation between higher ultra-processed food consumption and hypertension, depression, and early death.

So here’s a final question to consider: Now that you know how ultra-processed foods age you, is it time to redraw your dietary line?