What is your Pace of Aging, and how is it calculated

Biological aging is the idea that your body has a real age that can run faster or slower than the years on your birthday. Two people who are both forty can be aging at very different rates on the inside. The Pace of Aging score in Poma is a simple way to see how your daily food choices push that rate up or down.

What biological aging means

Your chronological age is fixed. Your biological age reflects the wear and repair happening in your cells, which is shaped by sleep, movement, stress, genetics, and diet. Food is one of the levers you touch most often, several times a day, which is why it is a useful place to focus.

What drives the pace

Three food related processes do most of the work, and they show up across our other guides.

• Chronic inflammation, kept elevated by refined carbohydrates, processed meat, and excess alcohol.
• Advanced glycation end products, formed when sugars bind to proteins, raised by sugary foods and high dry heat cooking.
• Oxidative stress, the cellular damage that antioxidants from colorful plants help keep in check.

For the full picture of which foods push these in each direction, see which foods make you age faster.

How Poma calculates your score

When you snap a photo of a meal, Poma identifies each ingredient and evaluates it against current nutritional science and your personal profile, including your age, weight, height, activity level, diet, and allergies. Each ingredient carries an effect on aging, and those effects combine into a single score for the meal. Your Pace of Aging reflects the recent trend across the meals you log.

Below 1.0x means your meals are trending toward slower aging. Above 1.0x means faster. The number moves as your choices move.

How to move it in the right direction

The same pattern that performs well for healthy aging also lowers the pace: more whole plants, fish, and healthy fats, and less sugar and ultra processed food. Better sleep and steady energy support it too, which is why what to eat for deeper sleep and how to eat for steady energy connect to the same goal.

How Poma fits in

Poma turns all of this into one number you can act on, plus scores for sleep, skin, and energy and full calorie and macro tracking. Instead of guessing, you see how each meal lands.

The takeaway

Your Pace of Aging is a simple readout of how your meals are trending, with below 1.0x pointing toward slower aging. You move it the same way you support your whole body: lean toward whole foods, keep the processed stuff occasional, and let small daily choices compound.

Sources

• Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, The Nutrition Source, Diet Review: Mediterranean Diet
• Harvard Health Publishing, Foods that fight inflammation
• World Health Organization, Healthy diet