Ultra-Processed People: Why We Can't Stop Eating Food That Isn't Food

by Chris van Tulleken

Our calories increasingly come from modified starches, from invert sugars, hydrolysed protein isolates and seed oils that have been refined, bleached, deodorised, hydrogenated – and interesterified. And these calories have been assembled into concoctions using other molecules that our senses have never been exposed to either: synthetic emulsifiers, low-calorie sweeteners, stabilising gums, humectants, flavour compounds, dyes, colour stabilisers, carbonating agents, firming agents and bulking – and anti-bulking – agents.

UPF has a long, formal scientific definition, but it can be boiled down to this: if it’s wrapped in plastic and has at least one ingredient that you wouldn’t usually find in a standard home kitchen, it’s UPF.

(it’s another rule of thumb that almost every food that comes with a health claim on the packet is a UPF).

since 1960, the US National Health surveys have recorded an accurate picture of the nation’s weight. They show that – in white, Black and Hispanic men and women of all ages – there was a dramatic increase in obesity, beginning in the 1970s.8 The idea that there has been a simultaneous collapse in personal responsibility in both men and women across age and ethnic groups is not plausible.

Diet-related diseases come from the collision of some ancient genes with a new food ecosystem that is engineered to drive excess consumption and that we currently seem unable, or perhaps unwilling, to improve.

Policies in the UK and almost every other country have failed to solve obesity because they don’t frame it as a commerciogenic disease – that is, a disease caused by the marketing and consumption of addictive substances.

I feel strongly that to make choices we all need accurate information about the possible risks of our food, and that we should be less exposed to aggressive, often misleading marketing.

‘Processes and ingredients used to manufacture ultra-processed foods are designed to create highly profitable (low-cost ingredients, long shelf life, emphatic branding) convenient (ready-to-consume) hyperpalatable products liable to displace freshly prepared dishes and meals made from all other NOVA food groups.’

‘Food, not nutrients, is the fundamental unit in nutrition’, and it pointed out an as-yet unexplained phenomenon: that a number of good studies had identified foods, such as whole grains, nuts, olives and oily fish, that seemed to reduce chronic disease risk, but that the benefit of the relevant nutrient – beta-carotene, fish oil, vitamin B, etc – vanished as soon as they were extracted from the food and taken instead as a supplement.

In short, there aren’t any supplements that work for healthy people. Beneficial nutrients only seem to help us when we consume them in context. Fish oil doesn’t benefit us, but oily fish do. It seems unbelievable, I know. There’s no supplement, vitamin or antioxidant that decreases risk of death, or even of disease of any kind in healthy people.

If you can understand that outside the context of possible deficiency vitamins supplements don’t work, then you have begun to understand that food and food extracts are not the same.

It is the ultra-processing, not the nutritional content, that’s the problem.

Increasing intake of UPF by 10 per cent was associated with a 25 per cent increase in the risk of dementia and a 14 per cent increase in the risk of Alzheimer’s disease.

because processing is not factored into our national guidelines, it’s perfectly possible for someone to eat a high-UPF diet that is actually relatively low in fat, salt and sugar. Such a person’s diet would be healthy according to the guidance, while according to the evidence it would probably cause health problems.

‘Young people have a right to grow up in environments where healthy food is the default option, where it’s attractive, accessible and affordable.’