A bad food or a bad dude.

If you’re the singer-songwriter for a bluesy rock-and-roll band hoping for that first big hit, which one are you writing about? In 1982, George Thorogood chose the latter, and it led to a song so well-known that it’s been called “a staple of classic [rock-and-roll] radio.”

“Bad to the Bone.”

But what if Thorogood had the same hope today and was as concerned about proper nutrition as fellow singer-songwriter Lenny Kravitz? Then he’d write about any food that’s ultra-processed.

And he’d title the new tune: “Bad for the Bones.”

While the lyrics of that song probably wouldn’t mention any study published in the March issue of the British Journal of Nutrition, one found there clearly shows that eating too much ultra-processed food is indeed (and sing it with me, please) “B-B-B-Bad. Bad for the bones.”

Prior to the study conducted at Tulane University, others had shown how an increase in the consumption of UPFs is b-b-b-bad for you because it decreases the overall nutritional quality of your diet and makes it easy to gain unwanted weight. Both of which increase your risk various health problems, such as type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, cancer, obesity, and inflammatory bowel disease.

Additionally, a greater consumption of UPFs has been linked to a heightened risk of osteoporosis.

As co-author of the Tulane study, Lu Qi, MD, PhD, notes in a press release about it, however, theirs is the first to directly examine the relationship between UPFs and bone health. To do so, Qi and colleagues analyzed data provided by 163,855 Brits on five separate occasions over the course of five years using the Oxford WebQ questionnaire.

That’s an online survey that asks participants which of the listed items they had to eat and drink on the previous day and in what amount. It takes about 12 minutes to complete and is often used as an assessment tool in large-scale studies that collect data over an expanse of time.

When the researchers tallied up UPFs intake, they found these Brits — 96 percent White, 55 percent female, and an average of 56 years of age at the study’s start — consumed on average 8.1 servings of UPFs on the selected days. After making adjustments to account for “potential residual cofounding factors” like the time of year; the amount of alcohol consumed; dietary supplement, glucocorticoid, or anti-osteoporosis medication use, they divided the participants into low, middle, and high groups based on their UPFs consumption.

Next they checked the participants’ medical health records and discovered that in comparison to those in low group of UPFs consumption, those in the high group “exhibited a marked decrease” in overall total body bone mineral density — and specifically in three areas especially susceptible to breaking: the femur at the neck and trochanter, and the spine between L1 and L4. The researchers crunched the numbers some more and, as Elizabeth Pratt explains in a Healthline article, found “for every 3.7 additional servings of UPFs consumed, the risk of hip fracture increased by 10.5 percent.”

Qi and colleagues say the increase in hip fractures is “likely multifactorial,” a combination of the high content of the added sugars, salts, and unhealthy fats in UPFs; the lack of vitamins and minerals in them that are “vital” for bone metabolism and maintenance; a possible disruption of the gut microbiota, as well as an increase of fat storage in the marrow of the bones from consuming them. What Dr. Peter Attia says about hip and femur fractures sustained by those 65 and older is likely — to borrow the word he uses in his bestselling book, “Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity” — to “stagger” you.

“Up to one-third of people over 65 who fracture their hip are dead within a year. [Yet] even if a person does not die from the injury, the setback can be the functional equivalent of death in terms of how much muscle mass and, hence, physical capacity is lost during the period of bed rest.”

To add to that bit of gloom and doom, now consider what Qi and colleagues found staggering enough to incorporate in their paper’s conclusion. That the “marked decrease” in overall total body bone mineral density found in the femurs and spines of those Brits who ate the most UPFs “was [even] more marked among participants under 65 years and those who were underweight.”

So breaking a hip from a tumble down stairs or a slip in the bathtub or even a crash on a bicycle is not only an older-people or an overweight-person problem. Not if younger and normal-weight people eat the way typical Americans eat and consume about 55 percent of their daily calories from UPFs.