Shiny happy UPF people?

What I talk about when I talk about a book on ultra-processed foods, an avocado named Luna and a Florida steakhouse that's put a plant-based steak on the menu.

In a recent airing of the podcast This American Life, a producer shared his experience of trying to quit smoking. His first stab was using the book Allen Carr’s The Easy Way to Stop Smoking. Step one is to continue smoking while reading the book until you’re disgusted with it and, presumably, yourself. (It didn’t work.)

This same approach is used in a new book I just finished called Ultra-Processed People: The Science Behind Food That Isn’t Food. The author, Chris van Tulleken, is a doctor in the UK, and for four weeks while researching the book he eats a diet that is 80% ultra-processed foods (UPF). It’s a very “Super Size Me” tactic, which, come to think, doesn't seem to have impacted much in our food world since it aired in 2004. 

This is the UK cover of the book, which is way better than the US version. Plus it has a different subtitle.

The book is a page turner in an upsetting way. As I read it, I realized there were products in my pantry that were UPF. Some of them I could ditch pretty easily––crunchy snacks to eat with a salad; and a few I’d struggle to jettison like the creamer I use in my morning tea—unsweetened vanilla Nutpods.

Much of what we eat might be considered UPF. It’s my belief, along with the books’ author, that these foods are responsible for a host of our global health issues. If you’re someone who likes to learn more about what you eat not less, here are eleven compelling things I learned while reading the book. (I’m not using quotes, but much of below is directly from the book.)

1. Ingredients like xantham gum, guar gum, emulsifiers and glycerine (found in ice cream, tooth paste, coffee creamers and more) are used because they save manufacturers money. They extend shelf life and in the case of ice cream help the product deal with shifts in temperature. (Ice cream isn’t always in the freezer.)

2. Palm oil is in thousands of UPF foods. I wrongly assumed it was a clear and odorless oil but when it’s freshly pressed it’s “an almost luminous crimson, highly aromatic, spicy, flavorful and full of antioxidants like palm tocotrienol.” For UPF this is all problematic, and flavor and color are removed in an unpleasant multi-step process. (That beneficial antioxidant? It’s added back in because it helps prevent rancidity.) p.28 

3. Most commercial cereals (all UPF) contain a significant amount of salt because it makes it taste better. That’s somewhat okay for adults but if your kids are eating it too it’s not. (They’re tiny people.) p.39

4. Beneficial nutrients only seem to help us when we consume them in context. Fish oil supplements vs oily fish, beta carotene supplements vs carrots and so on. p.47

5. A study of 100,000 people published in the British Medical Journal found that a 10 percent increase in the proportion of UPF in the diet translated to a roughly 10 percent increase in the overall risk of cancer and risk of breast cancer. (Need it to be clearer?) p.60

   

   Here’s the cover of the book I received along with a different subtitle. This book is from Norton.

6. The UPF world we live in is affecting our ability to self-regulate our appetites. For example: when you feel full you stop eating. And an increasing number of studies show that all aspects of UPF disrupts our multi-million-year-old network of regulatory neurons and hormones. p.107

7. We are eating more calories than ever and trying to change our energy expenditure (exercise) is not going to make a significant  difference to weight. Obesity is caused by increased food intake and by food we mean UPF. p. 132

8. Emma Boyland looked at data from nearly 20,000 participants across 80 different studies and found that beyond all doubt food marketing is associated with very significant increases in children’s food choices, food intake and food purchase requests. p.141

9. There may be a way of treating UPF that will allow some people to escape its spell: it’s an addictive substance. P.150 Most UPF is not food. It’s an industrially produced edible substance. p. 155 And: It isn’t food that’s generally addictive. It’s UPF. p. 165

10. The purpose of the digestive system is to destroy the food matrix (the fiber that holds up the nutrients like in an apple). p.171 Softness is one of the characteristics that has been identified as near universal quality of UPF. p.172 It may be that UPF is absorbed so quickly that it doesn’t reach the parts of the gut that send the ‘stop eating’ signal to the brain. p.173

11. “Whole foods contain thousands more molecules than manufacturers add back in, and it’s these molecules’ more subtle health effects that could be responsible for the well-established benefits of eating whole food - protection against cancers, heart disease and early death.” p.189

I underlined a lot in the book, and earmarked several studies to read in-depth. If you’re struggling with whether to call a food a UPF, then it probably is UPF. Why? Because “it will have been developed in a way to promote over consumption even if it lacks the specific harms of additives like emulsifiers.”

When you find any of these ingredients on the back of your package than it’s UPF. I won’t tell you never to eat UPF, but limit your exposure as much as humanly possible. After reading the book I took a look at my toothpaste (Tom’s of Maine). Guess what? It has xylitol in it, which is a sweetener. It may naturally occur in plants but I’m 99% sure it’s made in a huge manufacturing plant. Also, all artifical sweeteners equal UPF. I like to chew gum. Another product for me to look closer at. (Say it ain’t so!)

Definitely need a new toothpaste with far fewer ingredients.

The book ends in a bit of a whisper and this is my only complaint. Many of the experts van Tulleken quotes in the book suggest that the industry will do nothing to clean up their act. Who do they suggest do the work? Government. Think that’s going to happen?

Other tidbits:

1. Niterói, a city in Rio, Brazil banned ultra-processed foods in schools. The new law applies to 70,000 students. (Clapping emoji’s here.)

2. Upcycled appliances? A circular blender for your own jars. It’s called re:Mix and it’s by OpenFunk. (Don’t we all save jars and then wonder what to do with the lot?)

3. A steakhouse in Orlando, Florida has added a plant-based steak to its red-meat repertoire. The steak is by Chunk Foods, which I got to try in a hotel room during a food-tech conference in San Francisco last year. It was good! But get this. It’s on the menu for $69! Would you buy it at that price?

4. Here’s a great story of plant breeding: Luna is a new avocado out of UC Riverside. Luna’s avo-great grandmother is the Hass, which uniquely is black when ripe, not green. (Shoppers didn’t take to the black so breeders took another stab and made an avocado that stayed green when ripe. It was named Gwen. But it took breeders so long (20 years) that when Gwen launched we had finally acclimated to black and Gwen was a flop. Luna has a great flavor (we hope) and is black when ripe. The trees are smaller and easier to plant; the flowers are easier for pollinators. Let me know if you spot it (and try it).

Where you can find me:

1. Nothing new to share this week but I’ll have two new pieces coming out very soon.

Some light housekeeping:

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