Ultra-Processed People: Why Do We All Eat Stuff That Isn't Food… and Why Can't We Stop?

by Chris van Tulleken

Another existential threat to human life caused by UPF but not mentioned on the packaging is antibiotic resistance. Suzi Shingler nearly single-handedly runs the Alliance to Save our Antibiotics, an NGO trying to make sure that when you get a urinary tract infection or a skin infection you don’t die because it’s impossible to treat with existing antibiotics. Treating even minor infections in UK hospitals (my day job) is increasingly difficult because there is so much resistance to antibiotics.fn9 This is because antibiotics have become a routine part of animal care, and the microbes in the animals’ guts become resistant to them. We have been worrying about family doctors ‘overprescribing’, or giving antibiotics for viral infections (when they’re needed only for bacterial infections) for a long time. But this accounts for a trivially small amount of antibiotic use. The place we use the most is on industrial farms, typically to compensate for chronic failings in animal welfare.

A worth to remember fact.

The emulsifiers, preservatives, modified starches and other additives damage the microbiome, which could allow inflammatory bacteria to flourish and cause the gut to leak.

and they are everywhere!

We are ultra-processed people not just because of the food we eat. Many of the other products we buy are engineered to drive excess consumption; our phones and apps, our clothes, our social media, our games and television. Sometimes these can feel like they take much more than they give. The requirement for growth and the harm it does to our bodies and our planet is so much part of the fabric of our world that it’s nearly invisible. You may find that abstinence from some of these other products is helpful too.

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Over the past two years, up to the time of writing, the SMC has produced responses to sixteen published scientific papers about UPF. Over 70 per cent of the comments are from ‘experts’ with ongoing or previous financial relationships with companies that make UPF.

In the UK, poverty is estimated to cost the government around £78 billion per year in increased healthcare, education, policing, criminal justice, and social care costs and lost tax revenues.43 This is more money than it would cost to end it. So, it’s not just morally right to end poverty, it is way more cost-effective to do so than to spend money fixing the lives it shatters.

It’s soft and typically calorie dense, so you eat it at a rate that your body can’t keep up with when it comes to feeling full. Things like protein isolates, refined oils and modified carbohydrates are absorbed so quickly they may not even reach the part of the gut that sends the fullness signal to the brain. They’re not things you have evolved to eat. Some of the additives are well known to cause harm – be particularly aware of emulsifiers and artificial sweeteners. Emulsifiers can thin the mucus lining of the gut, allowing faecal bacteria to leak into the blood stream and inflaming your whole body. The non-nutritive sweeteners that tell your body sugar is coming but don’t supply any calories seem to cause metabolic stress and changes to the microbiome. Other additives that affect the microbiome are maltodextrins, modified starches and lots of the gums and thickeners. Flavour enhancers (glutamate, guanylate, inosinate and ribonucleotides on ingredient lists) drive excess consumption. Again, they tell your body a lie about the nutritional content of the food you’re eating when they’re added out of context.

upf:

Is it real food, made to nourish you, or is it an industrially produced edible substance made to turn your health into money for someone else?