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

by Chris van Tulleken

Coca-Cola published a ‘transparency’ list of experts and projects it funded, but it proved to be less than transparent. For every author Coke disclosed,...

A team from Oxford and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine mapped the universe of Coca-Cola’s research funding, which involves almost 1,500 different researchers (probably not all direct grant recipients), corresponding to 461 publications funded by the brand. The researcher who has pu...

Coke began funding Blair, Hill and Katzmarzyk and others in 2010, but in 2011 and 2012 they were publishing papers saying they had no conflicts of interest.69 Funding from Coke for research on health constitutes a conflict of interest, and it has been argued in the academic literature that failure to disclose a conflict of interest should be viewed as serious research misconduct.

When any industry funds research, the findings are typically biased in favour of the funder73-78 – not in every single study, but overall this pattern is very consistent.

in May 2021, Coca-Cola funded the Latin American Nutrition and Health Study,82 which published results showing that inactivity was associated with weight status and in which the authors claimed that they had no conflict of interest to declare.

There is a growing body of brain-scan data showing that energy-dense, hyperpalatable food (ultra-processed but probably also something a really good chef might be able to make) can stimulate changes in many of the same brain circuits and structures affected by addictive drugs.

‘Most UPF is not food, Chris. It’s an industrially produced edible substance.’

Food addiction is, scientifically, very unfashionable, and with good reason.

There are two problems. For a start, because food contains such a wide range of molecules, how could any single combination be identified as addictive?

the biggest problem with considering food an addictive substance is that, logically, it leads to a strategy of abstinence when, of course, you can’t be abstinent from food.

Food just can’t be addictive.

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the psychiatric bible. It classifies problem use of an intoxicating substance as mild, moderate or severe using eleven diagnostic criteria.

If you meet more than six of the criteria, you have a severe problem.

‘the substance being taken in increasing amounts’ (tick), any ‘efforts to control use being unsuccessful’ (tick), ‘lots of time and effort being spent getting the substance’ (tick) and ‘the experience of cravings’

The crux of the matter is the ninth criterion: ‘Use of the substance is continued despite knowledge of having a persistent or recurrent physical or psychological problem that is likely to have been caused or exacerbated by the substance.’