“Ultra-Processed People – the Science Behind Food That Isn’t Food” by Chris Van Tulleken, 2023
This is a scientific look at the over-processing of food –
specifically ‘ultra-high processed food’ (UPF).
The author, who was a biologist and is now a food scientist, takes a
look at the various foods available to people across the world and claims that
60% of the calories ingested in the U.S. and U.K. are from UPFs. He becomes a guinea pig for studying how this
affects the body, based on work by a Brazilian scientist Carlos Monteiro, and
goes on a diet of 80% UPFs - sort of a ‘Super
Size Me.’ He’s a conventional
person, a bit of a food addict, someone who is still eating the same food he
ate as a child and had never read an ingredient list until this
experiment. (!)
What the statistics show is that poor workers across the
world are eating UPFs due to their cheapness.
This is a class issue and another form of malnutrition. Cheap toxic
snacks and fast food have replaced real food in countries like India, Mexico
and Nigeria for many, not to mention the U.S. and U.K.. 90% in the U.K. eat ‘ready to eat’ microwave
meals from Big Food like Nestle’s laughably-named Lean Cuisine.
Tulleken's a pretty naïve fellow, and for him the realization
that ‘profit’ might affect the manufacture and sale of foods is some kind of ‘light bulb’ moment. After all, he’d not seen the concept in the
science literature. UPFs are additives
and ingredients that are cheaper than the original ‘natural’ sources; they
preserve the food for transport and long shelf life; they are addictive and widespread;
they focus on unhealthy fats, sugars and salts; they’re low-fiber, branded and
convenient. Like many mainstream
scientists, he only studies one tree in the food forest. He begins to understand the role of money,
corporations and how quick ‘food’ gets workers back to work faster. He’s
oblivious to vegan and vegetarian approaches or other food threats to health.
So let’s take a look at what he discovers in his ‘one tree.’ It’s a pretty fascinating look.
Ultra-Processed
Non-Food
Monteiro gave Tulleken the idea that profit, not nutrition, was the key point, something unheard of in capitalist nutritionally analysis. Monteiro developed a NOVA system that categorized the level
of processing as a way to understand worsening health impacts of foods,
with UPF the worst level at #4. Synthetic factory ‘frankenfood’ ingredients at
this level are “refined, bleached,
deodorised, hydrogenated and interesterified, hydrolysed, modified … moulded,
extruded and pressured.” They are
flavoured, colored, preserved, emulsified and stabilized. Molecules and
ingredients are broken down in industrial processes, creating new
compounds. It’s reflected in that long
list of strange ingredients on the labels of UPFs that you’d never use in home
cooking. Tulleken’s first point is that margarines sold in mainstream
supermarkets are full of UPFs – one of the first products manhandled by food engineering.
The next is that ‘low-fat’ and ‘zero-fat’ products are filled with
these ingredients and processed through these methods too.
Tulleken discovers many more studies that back up the NOVA
conclusion about ultra processing. The
health results of level #4 UPFs are obesity and strong links to death, diabetes,
heart disease and cancer, among others. The mental health effects possible are
depression, dementia and Alzheimer’s. The few scientific papers critical of
this negative view list scientists linked to food companies like Nestle, or
diet and nutrition organizations funded by corporate food conglomerates, like
the falsely ‘independent’ Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. They are one outfit key in crafting
‘Dietary Guidelines’ for the U.S., along with others like the American
Nutrition Association, which trumpets their links to food corporations.
Tulleken goes into a history
of the first synthetic food – fat from coal – developed in Nazi Germany during
the war. He has another on the 3 ages of
food, concluding with the idea that eating is no longer a purely instinctive
survival drive, as the body and intellect work to make us ‘self-regulating’
eaters. Studies have shown that hedonic
pleasure is driving some over-eating, but evidence is coming out that UPF’s
override the body’s ability to regulate intake.
Experiments
& Studies
Tulleken contests the idea that fat, salt or sugar are the
main problems and also takes on the ‘low-carb’ keto craze. Studies have shown there are no differences
re weight gain or loss in low-carb diets v. carb ones. Tulleken oddly does not distinguish between
complex and simple carbs, as UPF’s do have ultra-simple, low fiber carbs, i.e. mush. Humans have been eating different forms of
carbohydrates since the beginning of time, and obesity has only recently become
a mass problem.
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| A food 'swamp' |
Tulleken takes on another explanation, the lack of
exercise, as it’s been going down for years due to the change of jobs in
‘advanced’ capitalist countries. A study
tried to show that people are actually eating less in the U.K. and the U.S. but
still gaining weight, so it could only be exercise that was the culprit. He notes a caveat in the study – the amount
of calories eaten were being under-reported by participants by about 30% or
more. Other studies showed that
hunter-gatherers in Tanzania used about the same amount of calories as a
housewife in Liverpool. This is because
the body allocates calories to many functions… with the housewife probably
having more energy put into stress. So
exercise reduces stress, anxiety and depression, but does not alter
weight. There is also ‘stress eating,’
which is more common among low-income workers.
He discovered that many studies on exercise are funded by the sugar
industry, mainly Atlanta’s Coca-Cola Company.
They seek to blame consumers’ lack of activity as the source of their
problems, not their shitty drinks. Coke
has a huge number of hidden and not so hidden researchers on their payroll.
Studies on genes versus ‘will-power’ have shown that the food
environment is key. He describes
areas of town that are ‘food swamps’
full of many fast food outlets, with advertising, cartoon characters and
advergames directed at working-class children and teenagers. He concludes that the main cause of obesity
in these situations, no matter the genes, is poverty.
Back
to the Guinea Pig
After 3 weeks of the UPF diet, Tulleken starts to dislike
what he’s eating because of all the information he’s received from experts. Previously he’d been gobbling it down, even
having snacks in the middle of the night.
He realizes he’s eating garbage.
As one scientist told him “Most
UPF is not food Chris. It an
industrially-produced edible substance.” I myself label this stuff ‘shit food’ in my
mind, which helps too. His children were also gobbling down the UPF products
he’d brought into the home and he wonders what a lifetime of this stuff will do
to them. He begins to feel anxious, has bad dreams and poor sleep, gets
constipated and at the end, gains 6 Kg. (13.2 lbs.) in weight after a month. He immediately quits the diet.
Tulleken realizes that it is not food that is addictive, it
is UPFs, and he was easily lured. He
discusses how ‘texture’ – specifically softness and dry density – allow people
to eat quickly and eat more than they need.
He compares real sourdough bread from a good bakery to the UPF kind in a
super market. One is more expensive and
very chewy, the other is soft mush and cheap, like the U.S. versions of good old Wonder
Bread©. The latter type is not actually
a bread, as the EU has noticed, it’s an ‘edible
substance.’ Because of overly-processed soft food, human jaws have actually
become smaller recently, creating dental issues around molars and tooth crowding. Chemical ‘flavorings,’
odors and colors are added to UPFs to fool customers because industrial
processing destroys the actual colors, tastes and smells of real food proteins,
carbs and fats. Micro-nutrients are also
missing, which is a form of malnutrition.
Additionally, common emulsifiers, gums and industrial sugars harm the
gut biome, key to digestion, made by outfits like ADM. A U.K. potato crisp product by Pringles was declared
by the company not actually made mostly of potatoes – this to avoid a V.A.T. tax.
Another sorry fact is that UPF foods
destroy traditional diets across the world. The negative list is long.
 |
| Industrial cooking |
Regulate
This!
In the U.S. more than 10,000 additives are allowed in food, far more than the EU. Many never were tested and some additives have been banned in the EU that are still used in the U.S. Tulleken describes the many flaws and
evasions of the U.S. FDA testing process, which allows toxic additives to be
introduced into the food chain. The
latest development is that companies are now allowed to self-regulate
their ingredients under a ‘self-determination’ rule finally adopted in 2016. 98.7% of additives are self-regulated and not
checked by the corporate-captured FDA. There
is now, in effect, no UPF regulation in the U.S. – it is voluntary. Tulleken eventually comes around to the environmental
problems with industrial animal agriculture, palm oil, the unsustainability of
UPFs, habitat destruction due to grazing, toxic ingredients in animal feed and
then praises agro-ecology. Shareholders
and owners hold the power in nearly all food companies and
their only consideration is profit. Tulleken
eventually calls for more regulation as the solution to UPFs. Good luck on that. His main personal suggestion is to go 'cold turkey' on all UPFs. Just read the labels' 45 ingredients...
This is mass-market capitalist food, engineered for
maximum profits no matter the effect on people, with the state and politicians hand in hand
with the industry. Tulleken implies that
UPFs are linked to the unequal social class system we live in. It’s another form of ‘environmental’ racism
and classism, not just some odd issue relevant to hippies and ‘the crunchy
granola set,’ as the reactionary slander goes.
In fact many mass-market granola products are now loaded with UPF
ingredients. Just read the label.
P.S. - The Guardian reports (10/7/23) on links between food giants and U.S. 'nutrition' groups: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/oct/06/us-government-nutrition-panel-report
The Guardian also reports on UPF links to food addictions: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/oct/10/addiction-to-ultra-processed-food-affects-14-of-adults-global-study-shows
*Tulleken Talk on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QOTBreQaIk
Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box,
upper left, to investigate our 16 year archive, using these terms:
“Salt Sugar Fat,” “Animal, Vegetable, Junk,” “Foodopoly,” “A Foodies
Guide to Capitalism,” “Vegan Freak,” “Kraft-Heinz,” “Oneness vs. the 1%”
(Shiva); “John Bellamy Foster,” “Civilization Critical.”
And I bought it at May Day Books!
Red Frog
September 25, 2023
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