Ultra-Processed People book review
You are what you eat, as they say. So what the heck are we actually eating?
UPF (Ultra-Processed Food) has been hitting the headlines a lot lately, and that’s partly due to this book. You might recognise Chris van Tulleken from the telly, he’s an infectious diseases doctor whose research focuses on how corporations affect human health. This book is an expose of the real cost of our addiction to Ultra Processed Foods.
Over the years I have seen many client food diaries, and people are eating differently from before. More and more we’re relying on convenience goods to get through our busy days. Twenty years ago we’d have been spending more time, effort and money on feeding ourselves. However in this day and age, ‘real ingredients’ are comparatively more expensive and time consuming to prepare. Walk into any Metro supermarket and most of the products leaping off the shelves are UPF’s. You have to hunt about to find basic ingredients.
Supermarkets sell sliced bread for 50 pence, it’s £5 from an artisan bakery. There is a vast difference between the cheapest and most accessible foods, and the top of the range. This week the Guardian even published an article about the socio-economic impact UPF has on the population, using bread as an example.
So what on earth is a UPF? How can you tell?
A UPF is a normal food that has been engineered to be more profitable. This is something that happens with most brands - a food company makes continual adjustments so they can make more profit. It all makes a lot of sense when you think about it in a business perspective. A food production company is a business there to make a profit - it’s answerable to shareholders to make more profit. If it starts earning less, the shareholders invest in something else.
It’s more profitable to use cheaper ingredients, produce on a massive scale and extend shelf life (adding preservatives). When food becomes produced on a greater scale, it’s likely to be machine-made mush, so it has a soft and easy to eat texture. It will probably also have salt and other flavour enhancers added, and maybe even nutrients added. Health claims on the label are common. The classic example is fortified breakfast cereals that have had the grain processed so much that little of the original nutrition remains. So should we be worried?
In answer to that, perhaps think about if you have any foods that you find difficult not to eat. Now, think about why you find this food so irresistible.
Personally I can eat a whole packet of chocolate digestive biscuits in one go. I love the initial crunch (engineered to be that way) and the insanely good combo of salt, fat and sugar that I would not find in ‘naturally occurring’ foods. I tried hiding them in the cupboard where I had to go up a ladder, but sadly the clever McVities engineers are too good at their jobs. I just have to not buy them. Even just thinking about my favourite UPF food has made me think of snacking… Mmmmm. Biscuits….
Too often we blame ourselves for eating a whole packet of biscuits, cakes or treats. We forget that these foodstuffs have been engineered to be this way, and that their irresistibility is designed to get all sorts of feelgood neurotransmitters pinging. Hello serotonin! And we often reach for these ‘comfort foods’ when we’re feeling down. And then feel worse about ourselves. It’s not our fault. It’s the food that’s shoddy.
The research shows that UPF ‘treats’ masquerading as food are designed to be irresistable / addictive, to sell more, making more profit for shareholders. And I’m so glad this book has been published now, when we really need the scientific evidence of what this pursuit of profit is doing to our health and happiness.
According to 2018 BMJ research: “Ultra-processed foods account for 56.8% of total energy intake and 64.7% of total free sugars in the UK diet. Free sugars represent 12.4% of total energy intake, and 61.3% of the sample exceeded the recommended limit of 10% energy from free sugars.” Wow. That is significant. That’s over half of our daily calories coming from food that is not really food, in the traditional sense.
I’m not saying all UPF’s are bad. In fact, using UPF for snacking can save a lot of time. Being aware of what Ultra-Processed Foods are and why they exist is good start point for learning. And reading this book will get you up to speed on all the latest research on the field. It’s not the first expose of the food industry:
Scottish food author Joanna Blythman warned us about supply chains with ‘Shopped: The Shocking Power of British Supermarkets’ in 2005.
Michael Pollan presented The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (2007), tracing our history of food - where it came from and where it’s headed.
David A Kesslers’ The End of Over-Eating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite was published in 2009 and gave us a glimpse of how American food had become big business.
More recently, Professor of Genetics Tim Spector has been talking about the effect of UPF’s on our guts. Check out The Diet Myth: The Real Science Behind What We Eat 2016.
Get reading and make your own mind up.
