49 pages • 1 hour read
Ultra-Processed People: The Science Behind Food That Isn't Food
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Themes
The Importance of Experimental Studies
Ultra-Processed People references numerous studies that aim to prove the value of experiments and their centrality in understanding diet and health. A case in point is the 2017 experiment conducted by Kevin Hall with 20 volunteers comparing the impact of UPF and non-UPF diets. As van Tulleken highlights, this “provided tantalizing evidence that Monteiro’s theory may indeed explain the rise in obesity across populations” (58). The study, showing a rise in weight among volunteers on a UPF diet over a two-week period, gave legitimacy to the NOVA scale and prompted further research into its impacts. Indeed, Hall’s study was one of the things that led van Tulleken to look more closely at the phenomenon of UPF. Likewise, a similar study by Hall in 2012 helped show that sugar does not cause weight gain. Comparing two groups on high- and low-carbohydrate diets, with equal caloric intake, the study found that “there was no difference between the groups in terms of the effect of fat or sugar on metabolism” (113).
This disproved the hypothesis that insulin from sugar intake is the main culprit for rising obesity levels, as well as the thesis that lack of exercise is responsible. Herman Pontzter’s 2012 experiment showing that calories burned by Hazda adults was “very similar to that of American and European populations” confounded a deeply held assumption that less exercise means fewer calories burned and more weight gain (130). As such, these studies showed the power of experiments to subvert assumptions and to forward understanding. This is important in an age when health claims, and diets founded on them, are often not based on studies or are based on studies compromised by industry funding.
Many long-term effects of UPF are hard, if not impossible, to determine. As van Tulleken says, “Whether an additive causes issues that are detectable only after years of exposure—depression, increased suicidality […] weight gain […] is difficult to discern” (227). The challenge of showing causation, given other casual factors in the real world, is immense, meaning a product’s safety will remain at best uncertain. To the extent that we can test the effects of a new substance, producing UPF poses an ethical dilemma. As van Tulleken says, “A single two-generation test for reproductive safety might use over 1,000 animals” (234). This is not even considering the fact that for testing to be robust, it must be done extensively and on both primates and humans. Van Tulleken suggests that it is better not to produce unnecessary substances in the first place.
The Correlation Between UPF, Poverty, and Inequality
Van Tulleken highlights how “low-income households tend to eat more UPF” (145). As such, there is a clear link between poverty and the consumption of UPF, which causes obesity and health problems. This is not due to low-income individuals having poor taste or being ignorant about what is healthy. As van Tulleken notes, “UPF is almost universally cheaper, quicker […] [t]han foods and meals that need home preparation” (18). With limited time and money, UPF seems like the best option. Likewise, those living in poorer areas may find that they are in a “food desert.” These are places “where shops simply don’t sell fresh foods and healthy groceries and only UPF is available” (139). Alternatively, people may live in a food “swamp” where “fresh food may be available, but it is submerged in a swamp of fast-food outlets selling UPF” (139).
UPF does not merely reflect or track poverty; it exacerbates and recreates it. Obesity and diabetes caused by UPF limit life chances and earning potential for those on lower incomes and cause more trauma and stress. This makes dependence of the short-term “hit” of UPF more likely and, as with any addictive substance, traps victims in a cycle of use to relieve the problems the drug has created in the first place. This cycle of poverty, trauma, and use is then often transmitted to the next generation, who grow up having to cope with the problems that UPF caused for their parents.
UPF deepens inequality and poverty on a world scale. The factors that made the poorest communities in Africa and Latin America most vulnerable to Nestle’s marketing also made them susceptible to the negative impact of its products. Since the 1980s, UPF has infiltrated communities near the Amazon and other “untapped” markets. The poverty in these areas and their lack of political power mean that they are highly susceptible to the short-term allure of UPF firms. At the same time, “healthcare infrastructure is far less able to cope with the growing need for drugs to manage diabetes or high blood pressure” (248). Victims of UPF in developing areas have to cope in the absence of social and healthcare structures, which have been able to mitigate some of UPF’s effects in the West, and they have to cope in a much shorter time. They are also likely to be the most affected by catastrophic climate change, another consequence of UPF.
The Effect of Sub- or Unconscious Forces on How and What We Eat
As van Tulleken says at the start of Ultra-Processed People, “[E]very discussion of weight gain, whether in the press or in our own heads, is suppurating with blame, which is always directed at the people who live with it” (7). Society holds obese individuals responsible for their weight, but this is unproductive and based on a pervasive myth. Van Tulleken says that it feels “like we make conscious choices, amenable to the exertion of will” when it comes to food (138). However, in the long run, how and what we eat is determined by a system beyond our conscious control. In any one instance, we can resist eating something when we are hungry, but it is almost impossible to resist what our body is telling us to do indefinitely.
Van Tulleken explores the subconscious nature of our relationship to food, looking back to humanity’s evolutionary past. Like any animal, humans did not initially “choose” what to eat based on intellectual and voluntary “decisions.” Rather, humans evolved, in conjunction with the environment and physical need, to crave the right kinds and amounts of food. As van Tulleken says, “The legacy of the half billion years or more of the second age of eating is an internal system that precisely regulates food intake” (100).
What we eat is far too important, evolutionarily speaking, to be left to the whims of conscious thought. Powerful regulatory mechanisms interact with consciousness—in the form of tiredness, thirst, or breathlessness—to drive us. When it comes to what we drink, “[i]t may feel like it’s under your conscious control” and that “you can choose to have or delay a drink” (102). However, in the long run, if we have too much or too few fluids, the body will force us to restore balance by compelling us to drink more water or urinate.
All of this explains why diets do not work. As van Tulleken says, “[W]e don’t really choose what to eat […] you can avoid carbs in the same way you can hold your breath” (117). Our appetite reflects a powerful instinctual force, and it can only be suppressed for so long. Food intake is regulated by a complex internal system that influences feelings of hunger and satiation. Understanding this allows for a better grip on the causes of obesity. Rather than being due to a failure of “will” or “bad choices,” obesity can be understood as “a physiological confusion” (206). This is caused by the entry of foods and chemicals into the human diet that our internal system has not evolved to process. Calorie-dense and additive-laden UPF disrupts the body’s natural mechanisms of desire and satiation for controlling food intake. Like addictive drugs, these novel substances hijack our natural sense of what we need for survival.
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