"Industrially-produced edible substances..."

 “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. 

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