I once heard a teacher say his job is “to lead the horses to water.” His indifference as to whether the herd drank or not bothered me terribly.

Yet as irksome as the analogy is, it can be reworked to reflect what teaching really entails.

If the job is in essence leading horses to water, then the herdsman absolutely needs to guzzle from the same trough. Voraciously. Again and again and — not simply to demonstrate how to do it.

It’s this figurative drinking from the trough that I probably enjoy most about my job. For when I do so, my students witness life-long learning, and what I’m most likely to be learning is something significant about myself.

I can remember one discussion about a quotation on happiness when many in the class guzzled heartily. The proof came in their comments.

One declared that happiness does not automatically occur after you accumulate the things you want; it comes from the adventures experienced getting them. Another offered that possessions, prestige, or power — the things most people equate to happiness — often keep you from it.

One girl wise beyond his years called happiness a conscious decision, but that holding to it requires work. That same girl then asked me what made me the happiest.

I said, “Progress.”

I answered quickly and without prior contemplation and then realized a sense of progress is also why I get such a kick out of creating this column. If I write well and you “drink it up,” you gain the type of knowledge that leads to the kind of progress that creates happiness.

With that said, you need to learn more about the pitfalls of ultraprocessed foods.

That consuming them has been linked to making you — and much of the world — fat is old hat. You read about that in a column published in August.

Now a French study published last month in JAMA Internal Medicine seriously ups the ante. It found as your consumption of ultraprocessed foods increases, something else does also.

Your likelihood of an early death.

The two-year study involving 44,551 adults over age 45 found that more than 14 percent of the total amount of food eaten by participants could be called ultraprocessed foods, items such as sugary drinks, many breads, ready-made meals, confectionaries, and processed meats.

Yet because ultraprocessed foods are usually loaded with calorically dense fats and added sugars, that 14 percent of the total amount constituted 29 percent of the total calories.

And that was only the average.

Many of the subjects who kept 24-hour dietary records as part of the research ate far more ultraprocessed food than that. The researchers considered that, crunched the numbers, and created quite a chilling stat.

Every 10 percent increase in the consumption of ultraprocessed foods increases the risk of dying from any cause by 14 percent. And this was true even after the researchers factored in the following about the subjects: body mass index, the overall amount of earnings, the degree of education, the frequency and intensity of exercise, and the number of other people living in the subjects’ homes.

Equally as unsettling is that prior research estimates nearly six out of every 10 calories consumed by the typical American comes from these ultraprocessed foods. In other words, a large part of America subsists on nutritionally void junk calories that make it far easier to pack on the pounds and develop medical conditions like hypertension, heart disease, and diabetes, all of which could very well contribute to premature death.

Yet there could be other factors inherent in ultra processed foods that shorten lifespan.

One is that they tend to rely heavily on additives, preservatives, and artificial colors. And while all of these have been deemed safe by the FDA, some experts still wonder whether the long-term use of many — or even just a few— is indeed healthy.

Additionally, method of preparation needs to be considered. Many ultra processed foods require cooking at high temperatures — either by the food processors or the consumers.

Such preparation can produce acrylamide, the same substance used in the manufacture of synthetic textile fibers, but when created through cooking could quite possibly be carcinogenic.

In short, the information presently available about ultraprocessed foods should motivate you to seek out strategies that — if not eliminate them — greatly reduce them from your daily diet. But since ultraprocessed foods are such timesavers and so convenient, the change is tough, unless you view it as an essential quality-of-life issue.

Think of it this way: While creating meals using mostly unprocessed or positively processed foods like milled whole grains, frozen or canned vegetables, and milk and milk products requires time, spending half an hour a day in the kitchen is far more beneficial to your overall health than using that same amount of time watching television or checking out what’s trending on social media.