Ultra-Processed People Quotes

“It’s not food. It’s an industrially produced edible substance.”
― Chris van Tulleken, Ultra-Processed People: Why Do We All Eat Stuff That Isn't Food… and Why Can't We Stop?

“The food security that many of us enjoy is the product of a system of production that has kept costs low by destroying wild land and not paying for the costs of atmospheric carbon. These approaches will, ironically, create huge food insecurity. This is happening already around the globe, but nowhere more directly than in the areas of the Amazon that have been deforested to grow soy.”
― Chris van Tulleken, Ultra-Processed People: Why We Can't Stop Eating Food That Isn't Food

“At present around 80 per cent of the world’s farmland is used to graze animals or to produce crops to feed to animals. The combined weight of animals bred for food is now ten times the combined weight of all wild mammals and birds put together.27, 28”
― Chris van Tulleken, Ultra-Processed People: Why We Can't Stop Eating Food That Isn't Food

“We might think of flavour as frivolous, but there’s a school of thought that says artificial flavouring is the problem when it comes to obesity and overconsumption. Since I did my diet, it’s the word ‘flavouring’ that I avoid more than any other in food. Flavourings signal that something is UPF, and the need for flavouring tells us a lot about some of the ways UPF does us harm.”
― Chris van Tulleken, Ultra-Processed People: Why We Can't Stop Eating Food That Isn't Food

“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.”
― Chris van Tulleken, Ultra-Processed People: Why We Can't Stop Eating Food That Isn't Food

“But the main reason that I don’t think we can reformulate UPF to make it better for us is that it is designed to be purchased and consumed in the largest possible quantities. And a food that is consumed less will never sell as well as a food that’s consumed more.*”
― Chris van Tulleken, Ultra-Processed People: Why We Can't Stop Eating Food That Isn't Food

“This is the science behind how UPF affects the human body: • The destruction of the food matrix by physical, chemical and thermal processing means that UPF is, in general, soft. This means you eat it fast, which means you eat far more calories per minute and don’t feel full until long after you’ve finished. It also potentially reduces facial bone size and bone density, leading to dental problems. • UPF typically has a very high calorie density because it’s dry, and high in fat and sugar and low in fibre, so you get more calories per mouthful. • It displaces diverse whole foods from the diet, especially among low-income groups. And UPF itself is often micronutrient-deficient, which may also contribute to excess consumption. • The mismatch between the taste signals from the mouth and the nutrition content in some UPF alters metabolism and appetite in ways that we are only beginning to understand, but that seem to drive excess consumption. • UPF is addictive, meaning that for some people binges are unavoidable. • The emulsifiers, preservatives, modified starches and other additives damage the microbiome, which could allow inflammatory bacteria to flourish and cause the gut to leak. • The convenience, price and marketing of UPF urge us to eat constantly and without thought, which leads to more snacking, less chewing, faster eating, increased consumption and tooth decay. • The additives and physical processing mean that UPF affects our satiety system directly. Other additives may affect brain and endocrine function, and plastics from the packaging might affect fertility. • The production methods used to make UPF require expensive subsidy and drive environmental destruction, carbon emissions and plastic pollution, which harm us all.”
― Chris van Tulleken, Ultra-Processed People: Why We Can't Stop Eating Food That Isn't Food

“Each year, globally, Coca-Cola produces 3 million tonnes of plastic waste, and we know that almost none of this is recycled.60 A staggering 91 per cent of all the plastic waste ever produced has not been recycled and has either been burned, put into landfill or is simply in the environment.61”
― Chris van Tulleken, Ultra-Processed People: Why We Can't Stop Eating Food That Isn't Food

“Another existential threat to human life caused by UPF but not mentioned on the packaging is antibiotic resistance.”
― Chris van Tulleken, Ultra-Processed People: Why We Can't Stop Eating Food That Isn't Food

“Inland rain requires trees. Rain clouds on their own cannot travel more than 400km from the sea, so rain in the centre of a continent – the very rain that creates the central forest of the Amazon for example – requires continuous forest to the coast. Around half the rain that falls on the Amazon comes from its trees. As every school geography student knows, water evaporates from the sea, then falls as rain on coastal forest. Those trees ‘breathe out’ water vapour, which creates new clouds that travel further inland in so-called ‘flying rivers’. Crucially, this is how water reaches the soy and corn plantations in central and western Brazil. Once you destroy the forest you get less rain. A 2019 study showed that the rainy season in the state of Mato Grosso had become a month shorter in a decade,41, 42 and many of the major soy farms in Brazil are now suffering from the very drought that they have caused.”
― Chris van Tulleken, Ultra-Processed People: Why We Can't Stop Eating Food That Isn't Food

“The British Nutrition Foundation is funded by almost every food company you can think of, including Coca-Cola, Nestlé, Mondelēz, PepsiCo, Mars, Danone, Kerry and Cargill.38”
― Chris van Tulleken, Ultra-Processed People: Why We Can't Stop Eating Food That Isn't Food

“And the nature of UPF means that the manufacturing process typically cannot allow for concern for the environment or high standards of animal care. It encourages excess consumption of food and necessarily diminishes our knowledge about its origins. If you buy fresh beef or chicken, it will often say on the pack grass-fed’ or ‘corn-fed’. People often want to know which farm it came from. But very few people ask about what the chicken in their prepacked UPF sandwich was fed on, although this is, it turns out, an important question to ask.”
― Chris van Tulleken, Ultra-Processed People: Why We Can't Stop Eating Food That Isn't Food

“The word ‘sustainable’ has no formal meaning with any independent body. Sustainability criteria are largely set by industry and, in general, the designation just means that a farm growing it can’t clear new forest.”
― Chris van Tulleken, Ultra-Processed People: Why We Can't Stop Eating Food That Isn't Food

“In pursuit of making this quantity of food, agribusinesses have invested in a handful of high-yield crops and products,¶ typically grown or produced on land that should be tropical forest, using agrochemical inputs – fertilisers, pesticides, herbicides, and lots and lots of fossil fuel of course. Supported by government subsidies, this approach has led to a global glut of commodity crop production, and declining food diversity.”
― Chris van Tulleken, Ultra-Processed People: Why We Can't Stop Eating Food That Isn't Food

“the signals that tell you to ‘stop eating’ haven’t evolved to handle food this soft and easily digested, so soft that it’s essentially pre-chewed.”
― Chris van Tulleken, Ultra-Processed People: Why Do We All Eat Stuff That Isn't Food… and Why Can't We Stop?

“Here is the inexorable logic of all industrial food: to reduce the time workers require for a meal.”
― Chris van Tulleken, Ultra-Processed People: Why We Can't Stop Eating Food That Isn't Food

“Sugar and salt are the two greatest food additives in terms of driving appetite, which is why they are nearly universal in UPF, whether it’s beans or pizza. So, high sugar content is one of the properties of UPF that drives weight gain.”
― Chris van Tulleken, Ultra-Processed People: Why We Can't Stop Eating Food That Isn't Food

“Removing industry from the table will require a cultural shift before any shift in legislation. It will gradually become shameful for activists to work with the UPF industry as the understanding spreads that the companies are as responsible for diet-related disease as the tobacco industry is for smoking-related disease.”
― Chris van Tulleken, Ultra-Processed People: Why We Can't Stop Eating Food That Isn't Food

“Factory farming and UPFs are two sides of the same industrial food coin,’ Percival said. ‘And then, of course, lots (though not all) of that factory farmed meat is subsequently turned into UPF.’ The result of this is that, of the thousands of different strains of plants and breeds of animals that have been cultivated since the birth of agriculture, just twelve plants and five animals now make up 75 per cent of all the food eaten or thrown away on earth.14-17”
― Chris van Tulleken, Ultra-Processed People: Why We Can't Stop Eating Food That Isn't Food

“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. This is true even for the pharmaceutical industry, which operates in an extraordinarily regulated research environment in which regulators have absolute power over how products are sold and can inspect every data point from every experiment. Compared with the pharma industry, the regulation of food company research, including the studies and papers cited here, is virtually non-existent. Manufacturers of soft drinks have been very successful at exploiting this lack of regulation.”
― Chris van Tulleken, Ultra-Processed People: Why We Can't Stop Eating Food That Isn't Food

“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.”
― Chris van Tulleken, Ultra-Processed People: Why Do We All Eat Stuff That Isn't Food… and Why Can't We Stop?

“sugar (including honey) can harm the body, not because it increases your insulin levels, but because it rots your teeth and makes you eat more food.”
― Chris van Tulleken, Ultra-Processed People: Why We Can't Stop Eating Food That Isn't Food

“Some people think that UPF is just lousy food in terms of nutrition and that it’s eaten by people who eat generally poor diets. But when you correct for all that, the effects on death and depression and weight and heart attacks remain the same.’ It is the ultra-processing, not the nutritional content, that’s the problem.”
― Chris van Tulleken, Ultra-Processed People: Why Do We All Eat Stuff That Isn't Food… and Why Can't We Stop?

“The third external cost that I want to touch on is how UPF harms the environment through production and use of plastic.”
― Chris van Tulleken, Ultra-Processed People: Why We Can't Stop Eating Food That Isn't Food

“So dominant is soy as industrial animal feed that the average person in the UK or Europe consumes approximately 61kg of soy per year, largely in the form of animal products such as chicken, pork, salmon, cheese, milk and eggs.36 Only 20–30 per cent of imported soy is ‘certified sustainable’ (and we have already discussed how little that means). So, if you live in the UK, there is a tennis court of land producing soy in the tropics just for you, and most of it comes from places like Brazil and Argentina where ecosystems that affect global climate are being destroyed.**”
― Chris van Tulleken, Ultra-Processed People: Why We Can't Stop Eating Food That Isn't Food

“None of the UPF snacks and discretionary products are necessary for human diet, meaning that many of the environmental impacts could be avoided.”
― Chris van Tulleken, Ultra-Processed People: Why We Can't Stop Eating Food That Isn't Food

“For these commodity crops to be profitable, they need to be turned into something, and there are two options (or three, if you count biofuel): ‘You can force the crops through a factory-farmed animal to produce meat, or process them into an aggressively marketed UPF.”
― Chris van Tulleken, Ultra-Processed People: Why We Can't Stop Eating Food That Isn't Food

“On the grey, tinned, ultra-processed diet, people ate an average of 500 calories more per day than those on the unprocessed diet, and they gained weight in line with that. Perhaps even more surprisingly, participants actually lost weight when they were on the unprocessed diet, even though they could eat as much of it as they liked.”
― Chris van Tulleken, Ultra-Processed People: Why Do We All Eat Stuff That Isn't Food… and Why Can't We Stop?

“Não quero fechar a Coca-Cola, mas parece incontroverso sugerir que publicações respeitáveis de saúde não deveriam publicar pesquisas financiadas pela Coca-Cola mais do que deveriam publicar pesquisas de saúde financiadas pela indústria do tabaco (Serôdio, McKee & Stuckler, 2018). Quaisquer trabalhos financiados por ela deveriam ser desconsiderados.”
― Chris van Tulleken, Ultra-Processed People: Why We Can't Stop Eating Food That Isn't Food

“the case for the ongoing production of synthetic fat: Heavy workers cannot take in enough calories unless a fair proportion of them is in the form of fat ... This is especially important for those working the long shifts of modern industry without a rest pause for a full meal. The increase of fat consumption in all industrial countries during the last 100 years is, therefore, not a matter of taste only but a necessity of modern life, so I think it a good thing to continue research on synthetic fat. Here is the inexorable logic of all industrial food: to reduce the time workers require for a meal. I think about this every time I see a lunch-break meal deal. UPF crisps, UPF fizzy pop, UPF sandwich.”
― Chris van Tulleken, Ultra-Processed People: Why We Can't Stop Eating Food That Isn't Food