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

by Chris van Tulleken

hydrolysed protein isolates

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).

UPF damages the human body and increases rates of cancer, metabolic disease and mental illness, that it damages human societies by displacing food cultures and driving inequality, poverty and early death, and that it damages the planet.

UPF doesn’t cause heart disease and strokes and early death simply because it causes obesity. The risks increase with the quantity of UPF consumed irrespective of weight gain. Additionally, people who eat UPF and don’t gain weight have increased risks of dementia and inflammatory bowel disease, but we don’t tend to blame patients for having these problems. So, obesity gets a special mention because it is unique among diet-related diseases – in fact unique among almost all diseases – because doctors blame patients for having it.

Weight gain is not inevitably associated with increased risk of health problems and the risk of death is in fact lower for many people who live with overweight than for those who live at a ‘healthy’ weight.