Ultra Processed People

by Chris van Tulleken - On the phenomenon of producing edible substances that often pass for food.

Ultra-processed People is a book about the current state of food processing. Most of the things that we eat, we buy at a store and it comes wrapped up in plastic or in a plastic container. Even the foods that pretend to be natural and unprocessed are often heavily processed and the truth of it only dawns when you start reading the list of ingredients on the label.

There is a classification of food developed by Carlos Montiero of Brazil called the NOVA system. This classifies food into 4 groups.

• Group 1 - Unprocessed or minimally processed foods (fruit, vegetables, eggs, meat, milk, etc.)

• Group 2 - Foods processed in the kitchen with the aim of extending their shelf life. In practice, these are ingredients to be used in the kitchen such as fats, aromatic herbs, etc. to be kept in jars or in the refrigerator to be able to use them later.

• Group 3 - Processed foods. These are the foods obtained by combining foods of groups 1 and 2 to obtain the many food products for domestic use (bread, jams, etc.) made up of a few ingredients

• Group 4 - Ultra-processed foods. They are the ones that use many ingredients including food additives that improve palatability, processed raw materials (hydrogenated fats, modified starches, etc.) and ingredients that are rarely used in home cooking such as soy protein or mechanically separated meat. These foods are mainly of industrial origin and are characterized by a good pleasantness and the fact that they can be stored for a long time.

Ultra-processed foods (UPF) are generally not foods at all. They are edible molecules developed in factories meant to resemble food. They are made this way because they bring down costs as compared to real food while deceiving our taste buds into thinking that it is food. And of course to generate a profit.

The author starts by analysing a store-bought ice cream that does not seem to melt on a hot autumn day in London. The ingredients include milk, sugar, cream, also Guar Gum, Locust Bean Gum, Xantham Gum and several emulsifying agents. The purpose of all these is to prevent the formation of ice crystals which makes it possible for the food to thaw and freeze over and over without losing its consistency. This ensures centralised production and ease of movement across large distances, which makes the product cheaper.

Xantham Gum is also used in your toothpaste and cleaning liquids. We are consuming that as food.

The processing makes it hard for our bodies to trigger the satiety hormones. What we are eating is not really food but they are molecules that mimic food. They are purely meant to satisfy our tastebuds and to make us believe that we are having delicious food. Once it goes past the tastebuds it is incapable of satisfying the other needs of the body and hence we do not feel we have had enough. This helps organisations sell insane quantities of this product which is an added advantage.

When you take that into consideration, obesity is something that happens to you, it is not your identity. Just like an accident is something that happens to someone who skis. Nobody would look down upon a person who happened to have an accident while skiing but society looks down on people who are obese and they are treated as if they brought this upon themselves through deficits of their character. An accident is beyond your control, obesity is worse. It is engineered.

What makes UPF different?

Ultra-processed foods are created with only one intention - higher profits. To sell the product to as large an audience as possible the food needs to be cheap. At the same time, it should have a high margin. The only way of achieving both these objectives is by getting rid of one of the biggest problems with food - shelf life. If you can produce a huge quantity of food in a centralised manner and also ensure that it is not affected by large temperature changes, you can create a highly profitable food business.

To achieve this shelf life, the companies use all kinds of chemicals that can arrest processes that result in food going bad. At the same time, every attempt is made to ensure the food is as appealing to the tastebuds as possible. Hence, you may have a chip that smells like bacon and when your body smells it, it is getting prepared to process proteins and fats and what it gets is carbohydrates and salts which have almost completely disintegrated on the tongue.

Food, normal food does not behave in this fashion.

UPF is a proxy for poverty

Since one of the greatest victories of UPF is that it is cheaper, this type of food almost always courts the poorer neighbourhoods of town. It is available in large quantities in poorer places. If McDonald’s really prided itself in making the best burger, they would be selling the burgers for more money not less. They keep coming up with cheaper meals because they know they are catering to the poorer class of society.

A study that gave participants the same food. One UPF version and another made with fresh produce found that UPF results in consumption of 500 calories more and leads to an increase in weight

Advertising as a proxy for unhealthy food

No natural food needs a cartoon to sell it. They don’t even advertise the health benefits. There will be no health benefits mentioned on the cover of raw chicken. All UPF will highlight the health benefits and use all kinds of tricks to sell it. Advertising is part of the equation. It enables products to be sold to people as a healthier solution.

Humans are not herbivores, carnivores or omnivores. We are incapable of eating anything other than fruits without cooking them first. Throughout our evolution, we have become Cusinivores. Experiments have shown that a person subjected to only uncooked food loses weight dramatically and is not able to absorb all of the nutrients that the food provides. A cooked steak makes it 25 times easier to absorb energy than eating it raw. Our digestive tract extends right from our gut all the way to the kitchen.

UPF is having an effect on our anatomy. Human faces keep becoming smaller. It is the reason many of us have crooked teeth, our jaws are unable to accommodate the teeth.

Animals are not told to balance calcium, iron and phosphorus in their diets. How do they do it? The instinct is natural.

They undertook a study where infants were allowed to choose from 12 different types of food every day and by themselves, they were able to balance their diets. The kids who came in with deficiencies chose the right foods to make up for it on their own. Our bodies know what they require and how to feed themselves the right food. We do not require willpower or guidance to eat right. The real problem is the environment that you are in. If the foods available are all natural and healthy then our bodies will make the right choices, if it is all UPF, our bodies are fooled into making the wrong choices. Potato Chips are not supposed to taste like onion. Oats are not supposed to taste like honey. All this engineering is catastrophic to our bodies’ ability to make choices.

If a person is thirsty all the time, you do not tell them to drink less water. You would ask them to get a blood test. You eat because the food triggers you to be more hungry not because you do not have control. The question that should be asked is why are people hungry all the time? Not shaming them for eating.

Fun Fact - The biggest reason for children to be given anaesthetics in the US and UK is tooth extraction. Most fizzy drinks have a PH value of 2 and it erodes the enamel. Drinking Pepsi and brushing your teeth would be like washing off a slurry of teeth enamel.

Eating is painted as a sign of a lack of willpower. But advertising is constantly bombarding you with food, tempting you to eat and telling you how great it is to eat. It is testing your willpower. I had written a piece about this long ago called Cruel Optimism addressing this specific issue. The worse the food the greater the advertising. Have you seen any branded spinach that is marketing the fuck out of itself?

UPF is low in fibre and it causes constipation. It is also quite dehydrated and leaves you dehydrated on the whole.

UPF also hacks the brain and causes the pleasure centres to be stimulated and has the same effect as drugs. It causes you to go back over and over to food. Thus when you turn food into a drug you can’t cure the person. Drug addicts are asked to abstain but you cannot abstain from food. And you cannot moderate the addictive substance. UPF is the greatest cruelty inflicted by humans.

Food Matrix

The food matrix is how a good is constructed. The purpose of the digestive system is to destroy the food matrix. Apple is 2.5% fibre and the rest of the 97.5% is juice. The way the fibre is arranged around the juice is the matrix.

In an experiment, participants were given apple juice, apple purée and whole apples. The participants who had the juice and purée saw higher spikes in insulin and then a crash below the initial state which made them want more food. Participants fed the whole apple saw a gradual rise in insulin and a gradual fall. The food made them feel full.

UPF is pre-chewed. They are made so soft that they break down even before they reach the intestine, so the satiety hormones do not get triggered and you are left feeling hungry even after eating. The mouth knows you ate but the rest of your digestion system does not.

They say you should chew what you eat 20 times before swallowing it. Just eat nuts, let me guarantee you will not be able to swallow them before you chew them 20 times. You will choke if you try. A McDonald’s burger you can swallow after chewing twice, same for chips. It will turn to mush the moment it comes into contact with saliva.

Breads are supposed to be chewed. A genuine French baguette would take a lot of chewing. But the breads we get today don’t even resist the application of butter. They just disintegrate because they are all filled with all kinds of emulsifying agents to provide consistency. The producers do not want large holes inside the loaf. They also want bread that is soft to the touch. Chewing more causes lower consumption of calories. Softer food ensures you chew less.

Our animal senses know good food from bad by smell because sometimes by the time you taste it, it might already be too late if it is dangerous. Our associations with smells begin to form from the womb so if a mother is on a UPF diet the child is doomed. Even after birth, the child forms an association with a smell profile early in life everything else will seem off. Each of us has our favourite cola and the other brand is just not right. It’s the animal association of the smell profile of that cola with good food in our mind. Part of the reason why cola is marketed to the youngest crowd, once they form an association, they are trapped for life.

When I was growing up in the late 80s and early 90s Coke had quit India because of Indian policies and Pepsi was the most widely available cola. Even today, I feel an affinity towards Pepsi.

The flavour signature of foods lets us know the nutrients it has. And also the micronutrients it has. Now our body knows what it requires and is capable of searching out those micronutrients. Artificially created food is just not designed with that in mind. For instance, the presence of calcium hinders the absorption of zinc in our bodies. UPF companies cram all kinds of stuff in and if your body needs zinc eating more of it will result in lesser absorption since calcium is also present, resulting in overeating. Also, many times flavours are added without the micronutrients even being present in the food. In such cases, the body is left craving to find the nutrient the food promises but does not deliver.

Our body knows how much of something it needs. You cannot eat 200 grams of sugar in one go, your body will simply revolt. Enter UPF. All colas are made of caffeine and it is really bitter. This allows a great deal of sugar to be added to the drink without causing the body to revolt. In addition to that, there is the acidity of the fizz that masks the sugar as well as phosphoric acid. All this makes Cola palatable but at what cost to the body. It hijacks our ability to discern the quantum of sugar in the drink. Fools us into washing our mouths with acid and consuming an amount of caffeine and sugar we otherwise would not. Further, they recommend that you serve it cold because the temperature stunts your ability to taste the sugar. Cola at room temperature is awfully sweet and revolting to drink.

“Diet anything” is even worse for your body. Especially diet sugar. This is because your body is expecting a certain number of calories when you eat something sweet but it is a deception. It does not get those calories and hence pushes you to have more of it. Insulin is produced and it gets no sugar to deal with. TaDa! Insulin Resistance and here comes diabetes.

Many of the emulsifiers used in food are also used in toothpaste and soaps. This in turn has grave consequences for our bodies and is partly responsible for the fertility crisis that the world is experiencing today. How many fertility clinics were there 50 years ago?

Unlike pharmaceuticals, when it comes to food additives, the USFDA allows for self-certification. This is a little more restrictive in the EU but across the world food manufacturers can add pretty much anything to the food.

Food that is considered essential is not taxed under VAT in the UK. Pringles tried to prove that there was not enough Potato in the chips to be considered a crisp so that they would not be charged VAT. Potato content in Pringles is only 40%. They showed that the potato is turned into a dough and then squeezed into a shape resembling a slice of potato. To escape paying some tax, the company opened its kimono and let all of its secrets out.

Normal food is so hard to find and UPF is so easy to find that eating normal food is considered being on a diet now.