{"id":30048,"date":"2023-07-16T19:00:07","date_gmt":"2023-07-16T17:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sciencefocus.com\/?p=148193"},"modified":"2023-07-16T19:38:29","modified_gmt":"2023-07-16T17:38:29","slug":"how-ultra-processed-food-tricks-you-into-eating-more-and-how-you-can-free-yourself-of-its-addictive-properties","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/rss_feed\/how-ultra-processed-food-tricks-you-into-eating-more-and-how-you-can-free-yourself-of-its-addictive-properties\/","title":{"rendered":"How ultra-processed food tricks you into eating more, and how you can free yourself of its addictive properties"},"content":{"rendered":"

BBC’s Dr Chris Van Tulleken, author of Ultra Processed People: Why Do We All Eat Stuff That Isn’t Food… and Why Can’t We Stop gives us the lowdown. <\/p>

By Jason Goodyer\n \t\t<\/p>

Published: Sunday, 16 July 2023 at 12:00 am<\/p>

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Statistics show that the majority of most adults\u2019 diets are made up of ultra-processed food, or UPF. But what is it? And how harmful is it to our health?<\/p>\n

We speak to Dr Chris Van Tulleken<\/a>, author of Ultra Processed People: Why Do We All Eat Stuff That Isn\u2019t Food\u2026 and Why Can\u2019t We Sto<\/em>p to find out more.<\/p>\n

What is the difference between processed and ultra-processed food?<\/h2>\n

Food processing is ancient. We\u2019ve been doing it as a species for more than a million years. It\u2019s shaped our bodies. It\u2019s shaped our guts. There are broadly three types of food: whole food, which is like an oyster or milk. You can process milk into butter, cheese or yoghurt so that\u2019s processed food. We\u2019ve been doing that for many thousands of years.<\/p>\n

But ultra-processed food has a formal scientific definition that\u2019s very widely recognised by the UN. It boils down to this if it\u2019s wrapped in plastic and it contains an additive that you don\u2019t find in a typical domestic kitchen, then it is ultra-processed food.<\/p>\n

How much UPF do we eat?<\/h2>\n

Our whole diet is now being replaced, to the extent that this makes up on average 60 per cent of our calories. For kids it\u2019s much higher. A very typical teenager might get 70 or 80 per cent of their calories from UPF.<\/p>\n

How can we tell if we are eating UPF?<\/h2>\n

If you can afford it, go and buy a loaf of real bread from your local bakery, sourdough or any traditional bread will do. The supermarket bread is a spongy foam.<\/p>\n

If you have an eating race of supermarket bread versus an equal amount of sourdough, you\u2019ll find it takes you at least twice as long to consume the sourdough. Real food is much less energy dense, much wetter and much chewier.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s partly because of the emulsifiers and stabilisers and the way the wheat gluten is added later in the process used to mix it. UPF is incredibly soft. Softness, we think, is one of the main properties of ultra-processed food that drives excess consumption.<\/p>\n

How does UPF trick our bodies?<\/h2>\n

One of the most studied effects is that it drives weight gain. It\u2019s so soft that we eat it before our gut hormones have time to catch up and tell us that we\u2019re full.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve got really good data going back to the nineties that shows that when your food is soft and energy dense, you eat it at a rate that\u2019s much higher than real food. There are lots and lots of studies showing that this is one of the most important things that determines appetite.<\/p>\n

You\u2019re just eating foods at a rate that your gut can\u2019t keep up with and you consume more calories. Some of the research shows they\u2019re digested so early in the gut that they never even make it to the bit of the gut that releases the hormones that tell you to stop eating.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s because they\u2019ve been reduced to such elemental forms. They\u2019re absorbed very quickly so you never really get the fullness signal. I think people will recognise this from their own experience. They don\u2019t satisfy you.<\/p>\n

What are the harmful effects that we get from consuming UPF?<\/h2>\n

Weight gain is one, because of the flavour enhancers, the sugar and the calorie density.<\/p>\n

The additives do have some direct effects on our brains and also on our microbiomes. So we think the emulsifiers, molecules that bind fats to water, are a bit like detergent.<\/p>\n

In a simple way, and this is this is a bit of a simplification, the emulsifiers act a bit like detergent. They scrub out our guts. They remove the layer of healthy mucus and foster the growth of less friendly, more inflammatory bacteria living inside us.<\/p>\n

A lot of that work is currently being done in mice. People are not mice, that\u2019s important to say. But I do think when we\u2019re thinking about food additives, to say that something is safe, we should have a much higher threshold of evidence.<\/p>\n

What can we do to stop our addiction to ultra-processed food?<\/h2>\n

For the book, I spoke to lots of people within the food industry. They were really decent, interesting, intelligent people. Many of them, behind closed doors, will say we know this stuff is addictive and we would rather not make it, but we can\u2019t be the first to act.<\/p>\n

Many of them told me about a design process, which I\u2019d also seen doing an investigation of the baby food industry for the BBC. The food is put through focus groups.<\/p>\n

One of the things was about a box of cereal. You have a box of cereal A and B, and the scientists are trying to figure out which one goes to market. If the focus groups eat five per cent more of box B, that\u2019s the one that goes to market because it\u2019s going to sell well.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the commercial reality of the way the companies run. They can\u2019t manufacture foods that people eat less of. And that is, in the end, what real food is. It\u2019s food that you just eat a bit less of.<\/p>\n

The companies can\u2019t pivot to just making money from real food because without the intellectual property these foods are just commodities.<\/p>\n

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About our expert, Dr Chris Van Tulleken<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Chris is an infectious diseases doctor based at University College London Hosiptal.<\/p>\n

He is a regular presenter on BBC science show such as Surviving the Virus: My brother and Me<\/em> and The Truth About HIV<\/em>.<\/p>\n

His new book Ultra Processed People: Why Do We All Eat Stuff That Isn\u2019t Food\u2026 and Why Can\u2019t We Sto<\/em>p is out now.<\/p>\n

Read more about food:<\/strong><\/p>\n