Food is part of a complex and interconnected system of arms races and competition for energy flowing between different life forms. This competition, like all arms races, has led to increasing complexity, so that all aspects of food consumption are also complex.
The senses of taste and smell, the immune system, manual dexterity, the anatomy of the teeth and jaw, and vision – it is difficult to name even one aspect of human biology, physiology and culture that has not been shaped by our eternal need for energy. Over billions of years, our bodies have perfectly adapted to using different types of food.
The whole truth about modern food
But over the last 150 years, food has become… something that is not food.
We are beginning to consume substances composed of previously non-existent molecules, created by processes we had never encountered before; substances that cannot even be called food. The calories in our diet increasingly come from modified starch, invert sugar, hydrolyzed protein isolates, and vegetable oils that have been subjected to processes of refining, bleaching, deodorizing, hydrogenating, and interesterifying. These calories are used to create mixtures from substances completely new to our senses, such as artificial emulsifiers, low-calorie sweeteners, stabilizing gums, humectants, fragrances, dyes, color stabilizers, releasing and firming agents, thickeners, and diluents.
These substances began to appear in our diet at the end of the 19th century and gradually gained more and more popularity. Since the 1950s, this attack has become so intense that today products of this type make up the majority of the diet of the inhabitants of Great Britain and the USA and play a significant part in the diet of almost every society on the planet.
As we enter this unfamiliar food environment, we also enter a new parallel ecosystem in which an arms race is taking place, driven not by the flow of energy but by money. We are talking about a new system of industrial food production, of which we are the victims, that is, the source of money that drives the system. The competition for profits that fuels increasing complexity and innovation occurs throughout the ever-evolving ecosystem of companies – from giant multinational groups to thousands of small national companies. To make a profit, they lure us with ultra-processed foods, or UPF (ultra-processed foods). This food has undergone an evolutionary selection process that has lasted decades, making the most purchased and consumed products have the best chance of survival in the market. In order to survive, they have evolved to bypass the systems responsible for regulating weight and many other functions of our body.
Check what you eat
Currently, UPF accounts for almost 60% of the diet of the average resident of Britain and the USA. Many children, including mine, get most of their calories from these substances. UPF is our food culture and the foundation of our bodies. If you’re reading this in Australia, Canada, the UK or the US, your national diet is UPF. These foods have a long scientific definition that can be boiled down to this: if a product is packaged in plastic and has at least one ingredient that you wouldn’t find in your average home-cooked meal, it’s UPF. You know most of these products as “junk food”, but there are some organic, free-range and “ethical” products that are also UPF, even though they’re marketed as healthy, nutritious, eco-friendly and weight loss friendly (another tried and true rule: almost all products advertised as healthy on the packaging are actually UPF).
When we talk about food processing, most of us think of the physical processes we put our food through, such as frying, marinating, mechanical separation, and so on. But ultra-processing also includes other, less obvious processes, such as deceptive marketing, fraudulent lawsuits, behind-the-scenes lobbying, and falsified scientific research—all of which benefit corporations.
The first official definition of UPF was formulated in 2010 by a team of researchers from Brazil. Since then, a wealth of scientific data has emerged supporting the hypothesis that UPFs harm health and increase the incidence of cancer, metabolic and mental illnesses, and consequently destroy societies by displacing traditional food cultures and leading to inequality, poverty and even premature death, as well as destroying our planet. The system needed to produce these foods is the main cause of biodiversity decline and the second largest The market sector responsible for global greenhouse gas emissions. UPF is therefore causing a synergistic pandemic of climate change, malnutrition and obesity. The latter aspect is the most researched, but also the most difficult to talk about, because discussions about food and weight, even if conducted in good faith, leave many people very sad.
Can obesity be overcome?
Much of this book is about body weight, because much of the evidence that UPFs are harmful is about that. But ultra-processed foods cause all sorts of suffering that have nothing to do with their effect on our weight. UPFs don’t cause heart attacks, strokes, and premature death just because they cause obesity. The risk increases with the amount of UPF consumed—regardless of weight gain. Furthermore, people who eat UPFs and don’t gain weight are at increased risk of dementia and inflammatory bowel disease—but these people are not usually blamed for their health problems. Obesity therefore deserves special mention not only among diet-related diseases, but among all diseases, because doctors blame patients for it.
Let me pause for a moment on the topic of obesity. We still don’t know what language to use in this discussion. Many people rightly find the word “obesity” offensive, and calling it a disease is stigmatizing. A large group of people treat obesity not as a disease, but as their identity. For others, it is simply a way of being, and it is becoming increasingly normalized. Gaining weight does not necessarily mean an increased risk of health problems.and the risk of death is actually lower among many overweight people than among those who have a “healthy” body weight. Still, I will sometimes use the word “obesity” to refer to the condition as research into the disease and its treatment gains funding. In some cases, recognizing obesity as a disease reduces the level of stigmatization: health problems are not a lifestyle or a choice, and the word “disease” itself can help ease the burden of responsibility on the person struggling with the condition.
This is important because any discussion of weight gain in the media or in our own minds is filled with condemnation of people who weigh more. The belief in its guilt has escaped the attention and moral judgment of researchers because it has been so oversimplified that we have failed to see it. It is based on the assumption that people do not have the willpower to exercise more or eat less. As I will show repeatedly, it is very easy to challenge this view. For example, surveys conducted since the 1960s by the US National Institutes of Health clearly show that weight gain is on the rise in society. They show that the incidence of obesity has increased dramatically among white, black, and Latino populations of both sexes and all ages since the 1970s. The belief that there is a crisis of personal responsibility among men and women of all ages and ethnic groups at the same time is incredible. If you are living with obesity, it is not for lack of willpower. It is not your fault.
Such times, such obesity
In fact, we are far less responsible for our weight than a skier is responsible for a broken leg or a football player is responsible for a knee injury. or a bat researcher for contracting ringworm from working in caves. Diet-related diseases result from the collision of certain ancient genes with a new food ecosystem designed to fuel overconsumption, and which we do not yet seem able—or perhaps unwilling—to correct.
For 30 years, the scale of obesity has been rising at an alarming rate under the watchful eye of policy-makers, scientists, doctors and parents. Although 14 government policies comprising 689 different policies have been adopted in England during this period, the incidence of obesity among primary school leavers has increased by 700 per cent and morbid obesity by 1,600 per cent.
Excerpt from the book “Ultra-processed People” by Chris van Tulleken, published by Marginesy. The book is available for purchase here. Title, lead and abbreviations of the editorial staff of “Newsweek”.
