Ultra Processed People

Book Review: Ultra Processed People by Chris van Tulleken

Pringles are everything that is wrong with food in our world today. Pringles are gross. If you ever wondered how they get that uniform shape, it’s because they are less than 40% potato and are made from a slurry that is injected into a mold in the manufacturing process. It’s an ultimate example of ultra processed food. You take something as simple as the potato chip, a sliced potato, fried and salted, and process the living hell out of it to result in something that looks and tastes almost but not quite like the thing you started with.

Why do we do this? Profits, of course. What other reason is there?

Unfortunately, there is a lot of evidence that our breaking down natural foods into component parts, then putting them back together with chemistry to maximize shelf life (and profits) ruins the nutritional benefits of the food. It also hacks our system by bypassing millions of years of evolution in how we digest and process nutrients. It is very likely a primary factor in the rise of obesity and related health problems.

Ultra Processed Food makes up well over ½ the calories consumed in England. I assume it’s at least that bad in the US. The author goes into the science of what UPF food is, and why it exists. He explores what it may be doing to our health. He follows the money to show that much of the “science” promoting ultra processed foods is funded by the food industry. All that “fat is the real villain” stuff of the last 40 years? That was Coca-Cola Inc. diverting attention from themselves. Backed by 40 or 50 pages of end notes, this is a well documented exploration of our manipulation of the food system, the reasons for it, and the unforeseen (or just ignored) consequences of that manipulation.

A few takeaways for me include:

I’ve always been a sugar = sugar guy and not bought the hype that HFCS is any worse than table sugar. I might have been wrong about that.

Likewise, I’m definitely rethinking my relationship with artificial sweeteners. I’m not worried about getting cancer from them. But the idea that the fake sweet taste triggers your system to expect sugar, and when it doesn’t arrive that triggers a follow-on craving for sugar, has legs. I had quit diet soda pre-pandemic, but starting drinking it again when we are all stuck at home dealing with all that shit. I think it’s time to wean myself off it again.

Also, globally, we stopped growing food and switched to growing raw ingredients for UPF. The global food supply is really built on about 12 components, beef, chicken, pork, soy, corn, rice, etc. If you have a diversified food system and a plague or weather takes out one component, the world can adjust. What we are doing is practically begging the universe to drop in a microbe or bug that takes out the global rice or corn supply over a couple of years. Climate change only increases the odds of that happening.

The author is a medial doctor (infectious disease) but he stops short of giving direct dietary advice. But I think everything in this book supports what Micheal Pollan suggested with The Omnivore’s Dilemma years ago. Eat food your grandparents would recognize, not too much of it, and mostly plants.