- This book is a powerful polemic about what the food we are putting in our body is causing us harm – and the book argues that the main reason for this is the ultra-processed food that has flooded our environment.
- Until the 1920s pretty much all babies had milk followed by the introduction of the same types of food that parents had mash down or blended and made much softer until the 1920s. Now we are consuming ultra-processed foods (UPF) that makes up as much as 60% of our diets in the UK and USA. UPF is mostly food that is wrapped in plastic and has at least one ingredient that you wouldn’t usually find in a standard kitchen. Another rule is if it comes with a health claim, it’s probably UPF. Some of it is junk food but it also includes many types of bread as well as biscuits and shop brought cakes.
- It is almost uncommon and extremely rare for any animal to be obese although some animals such as seals might require high levels of fat to keep them warm when they're in the deep sea. It was once remarkable rare for humans to be obese until 1900’s and in 1950 only 1% of the population was overweight – 50 years later, it is now almost 30% and growing in the UK.
- UPF damages the human body and increases rates of cancer, metabolic disease and mental illness, damages human societies by displacing food cultures and driving inequality, poverty and early death. It is also damaging the planet.
- Children in the UK and the USA with the highest rates of UPF are not only heavier than their peers, but they’re also shorter too.
- The author began this book by doing a BBC program called ‘what are we feeding our kids’ which shows how our foods have changed from only eating about 20% of UPF to many teenagers making up 80% of their food being UPF and some eating 100%. Van Tullken then ate a diet of 80% UPF foods for 4 weeks and the change in both his weight and mental status showed dramatic changes. You can see some clips of this on YouTube and they are worth watching.
- UPF foods are made up of stabilisers, emulsifiers, gums, lecithin, glucose, a range of different oils including palm oil which is having massive impacts on our climate – large swaths of forests are cut down to grow these crops and reductions in trees stops carbon capture.
- Appetite works by the hypothalamus regulating appetite through the chemical signals it receives from several hormones – most notably ghrelin (which stimulates hunger and is found in the stomach) and leptin (which is found in fat cells and tells you when your full and don’t need to eat any more). UPF seems to override the hormone leptin and we then eat more of this food. Damage to the hypothalamus in experiments carried out on mice and rats will determine whether they gorge themselves to death or starve to death. However, ultra-processed foods can override system that regulates your body including the pleasure that we get from this food. And we are no longer in control.
- If you give a child Coco-Pops cereal (from a box that states that 50% of your daily vitamin D and 30% less sugar), children will wolf it down. The main reason for the rapid increase in overweight and obesity throughout the word, especially since the 1980’s is due to the production and consumption of UPF foods and drinks and the increase in fat-sugar-salt ratios that make you become addicted to these foods.
- SUGAR AND ORAL CARE: The author looks at some interesting findings regarding UPF and that the most significant reason for not having sugary drinks and foods is that it will make you want to eat more. Sugar is the number one cause of people having anaesthesia in the hospital to have their teeth extracted in three-year olds and above and it's causing high levels of tooth decay and come to these in children due to the amount of sugars they are now consuming through ultra-processed foods and drinks such as Coca-Cola and confectionery and yet none of these carry any kind of health warnings that they will cause tooth decay and gum disease. The other thing about sugar is that it makes you want to eat more and is one of the biggest drivers in human appetite. You can carry out an experiment with a child and offer them one set of cereal without sugar and one with sugar, and the cereals with sugar are the ones that they will eat and consume at much higher levels. Sugar causes early death more than any other single food item in the world. We have health warnings on tobacco and when 10% of 3-year-olds and a quarter of all 5-year-olds are having some form of tooth decay, we should be doing something about this. Sugar drinks destroy your teeth and supply sugars that feed bacteria living in the mouth. In England more than 10% of 3-year-olds and a quarter of 5-year-olds have tooth decay. Almost 90% of hospital tooth extractions among children younger than five are due to preventable tooth decay, and tooth extraction is the most common hospital procedure in children aged 6 to 10. The most common operation we do in children - ahead of fixing bones broken on trampolines, hernia repairs and appendix removal - is for rotten teeth. And in the USA the statistics are even worse. The dental crisis is almost entirely due to UPF. And the main reason is because we eat them constantly. Their marketed is treats and snacks. UPF is why dental carries cause suffering in up to 90% of school age children in industrialised countries. And yet no can of fizzy drink anywhere in the world carries a warning about the risks of oral disease and the risks of early death.”
- Just looks at the benefits of exercise to lose weight and most of the information that we have seems to come from companies such as Coca-Cola that promote healthy exercise to lose weight. However, the evidence shows that this is just not the case. Exercises so many benefits but in regard to losing weight, we burn the same number of calories just by being inactive as we do from exercise due to how we metabolise foods. It's the food that we are eating that is causing us to gain weight and this book argues that it's mainly ultra-processed foods in particular that are causing this to occur.
- ENVIORNMENT: although genetics are an important factor in how we might gain weight, it is also important to consider the role of the environment. When we are surrounded by so much junk food and stores that often sell nothing more than this product, then it is difficult for people to resist these kinds of foods.
- Another important factor is that young people no longer have access to youth clubs in the UK so they tend to hang out in fast food joints where they will also consume ultra-processed foods in high numbers as they have nowhere else to go.
- The food environments that we grew up in or having a significant impact on health and the food that we consume. These play more an impact in how much weight we gain rather than our genes. When we are surrounded by junk food, get advertisement through games and apps as well as places to hang out in, this is one of the most important factors that is driving one in three people to become obese and have diet related illnesses that are preventable. Another factor that will influence what we eat is stress and particularly the hormone cortisol which seems to have an impact on driving increased appetite. These types of foods people often seem to rely on, but it seems to be exasperating problems rather than as a solution to stress. Extreme stress and extreme poverty alongside the environment where we are surrounded by UPF are causing increased rates of obesity and food consumption. And the marketing of these foods has an impact on what we eat also.
- POVERTY: 1 million people in the UK don't have a fridge and over 3 million don't have a freezer which means that UPF are easy to store and easy to cook. Foods such as organic Ella food pouches for infants can last up to two years before they are able to eat in regard to their best before date.
- Some have also argued that UPF’s are not food but it’s an ‘industrially produced edible substance’. When we heat the plastic on the packaging there has been some research to say that this is contributing to reduced fertility and penis size shrinkage.
- With 40% of Americans overweight and many desperate to do something about it but when you're addicted to these types of food, this causes difficulties in consumption reduction. In America 90% of Americans alcohol drink but only 13% have an addiction problem to alcohol. But UPF do have a massive potential to make people addicted to these kinds of foods. People crave UPF rather than real food.
- Another significant factor is it UPF make money because no one can make money out of advertising succulent vegetables, fruits and fish but they can make lots of money out of advertising unique ultra-processed foods which isn't real food, and you can sell it and make a lot of money. Another important factor is the reward systems in your brain that make you want to eat at a McDonald's burger or a Pringles pack is that you feel you can't stop eating because it's causing your appetite regulation to not work. You're driven to eat this kind of food. And the system hasn't yet evolved to manage how to deal with these kinds of foods, so we're just driven to eat more and more. It's damaging both our health and our mental well-being.
- FLAVOURINGS are another factor and you can easily fool people into thinking that what they're eating is good for them.
- HOW WE DEVELOP TASTES PREFERENCES: All taste preferences are learnt. There have also been tests carried out on mothers who are given carrot milk to drink when they are pregnant in control studies well other pregnant women in the last trimester of pregnancy and others just drank water. When the babies were born the mums that had carrot puree as opposed to just drinking water, those babies had a greater preference in wanting to have carrot puree. What parents eat in pregnancy can have an impact on a baby's preference once they're born. These preferences start to occur even when we aren't yet born. If parents in pregnancy or consuming UPF, it will be impacting on the preferences once the child is born. And just giving supplements can have an impact so that if you're eating calcium in large quantities will impact on your ability to absorb zinc. For the majority of essential nutrients, we really need to be eating natural foods or just processed foods such as tin fish or milk.
- It's interesting to note that Coca-Cola is actually quite a bitter drink, but it then also allows large amounts of sugar to be added to the drink which makes you want to drink more. There's an interesting paradox of our age that Coca-Cola can sometimes be cheaper than just drinking bottled water, but this is because larger amounts of Coca-Cola are consumed and bought rather than water, which causes it to be sold at a cheaper price.
- SWEETNERS: a lot of people start to have artificial sweeteners, but they can have just as much of an impact in causing diabetes and other health related issues. There appears to be some research that they disrupt the microbiome in the gut which is such an important factor in what we are eating. If you give artificial sweeteners such as sucrose to rats, it alters both the brain chemistry and the gut microbiome and causes early death in rats.
- EMULISIFERS: The same sort of emulsifies that you might find in shampoo and detergent are being added to UPF and they appear to be stripping the microbiome and you got it healthy bacteria. In many ways it can be compared to the effects of smoking on your body. And the gut is the single most important part of the body after the brain and the immunology system, and yet we are causing considerable harm.
- UPF’s are also destroying the planet.
- SUMMARY:
- The destruction of food by physical chemical and thermal processing means food is generally soft. This means you eat it fast, which means you eat far more calories per minute, and you don't feel full after you finished. This potentially reduces facial bone size and bone density, leading to dental problems.
- UPF typically have 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.
- UPF is often micronutrient deficient come which may also contribute to excess consumption.
- The mismatch between taste signals from the mouth and the nutrient content in some UPF alters metabolism and appetite in new 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.
- Emulsifiers, preservatives, modified starches and other additives damaged microbiome, which could allow inflammatory bacteria to flourish and cause the gut to leak.
- The convenience, price and marketing of UPF urges us to eat constantly and without thought, which leads to more snacking, less chewing, faster eating, increase consumption and tooth decay.
- The additives and physical processing mean that UPF affects our satiety system directly and 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 subsidiary and drive environmental destruction, carbon emissions and plastic pollutions, which harm a soul.
- One of the ways we can think about UPF is to the asking yourself if this is what you want to eat and to think about how this food will make you feel after you've eaten it. Do you really want to be eating industrialised processed edible substances or real food that will benefit both your health, your mental status, and the planet that we live in on.
- The most important takeaway message of this book is that it isn't really your fault that we are eating this food it is a fault of the companies that are both making, manufacturing, and advertising these foods that are causing you harm. And the companies know it.
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Popular highlights in this book
‘Most UPF is not food, Chris. It’s an industrially produced edible substance.’Highlighted by 2,087 Kindle readers- ‘Processes and ingredients used to manufacture ultra-processed foods are designed to create highly profitable (low-cost ingredients, long shelf life, emphatic branding) convenient (ready-to-consume) hyperpalatable products liable to displace freshly prepared dishes and meals made from all other NOVA food groups.’Highlighted by 1,308 Kindle readers
- 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.Highlighted by 1,142 Kindle readers
From the Publisher
About the author
The true hidden dangers of ultra processed foods!
Ultra-Processed People by Dr. Chris Van Tulleken opened my eyes to just how much of my diet is made up of ultra-processed foods (UPFs) and how damaging they are to our health. One quote that stuck with me was, "By 2017, there were more overweight people in the world than there were underweight." This staggering fact highlights the global impact of UPFs, and it’s clear that it’s not just about poor choices, but a system dominated by food corporations more interested in profit than our well-being.Van Tulleken shows how these companies make addictive, nutritionally void foods and use deceptive marketing to sell them as healthy. His personal experiment of eating UPFs for 30 days and the rapid decline in his health was eye-opening. This book has made me much more conscious about what I eat, and I now regularly check ingredients to avoid these harmful products.Ultra-Processed People is an essential read for anyone who wants to understand the hidden dangers in our food and the role big corporations play in shaping our diets.
Top reviews from other countries
amw
Wake up call to how what the standard american (or western) diet is doing to our bodies
Reviewed in the United States on 18 October 2024Furqan S.
Very informative about the food industry in general
Reviewed in Germany on 19 June 2024