The truth about ultra processed food | Dr. Chris van Tulleken and Tim Spector
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 26 มิ.ย. 2024
- What is it about ultra processed food that makes it so bad for our health?
Jonathan talks to Dr. Chris van Tulleken and Tim Spector to try and find out.
Dr. Chris van Tulleken is an infectious diseases doctor at University College Hospital, in London, and one of the BBC’s leading science presenters.
Watch the full episode here: • What is "Ultra Process...
If you want to uncover the right foods for your body, head to joinZOE.com/podcast and get 10% off your personalized nutrition program. - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
I credit my farmer's daughter Irish Mum being brought up eating only whole non UPF from birth, cooking every meal from scratch, and feeding me the same simple but healthy foods to my life long good health- 54 now. She ate full fat real food like Irish country butter her whole life and died aged 87, by accident, not bad health. Slim, full of life, mentally sharp and fit as a fiddle until the day she passed away. My diet is still almost 100% free of UPF. Thanks Mum x
Bless your Mom
Lovely mum, lovely story. Thanks for sharing. 👍
4 months ago I was diagnosed with type 2 Diabetes. My HbA1c (blood glucose) was 73 mmol/mol. Since then I have moved to a mainly wholefoods diet with little processed food and no UPF. I eat many organic things where possible. I eat strictly pumpernickel for bread, no refined carbs, no potatoes, ZERO added sugar and control carb portions to around 50g per meal. I enjoy cheese, fatty natural yoghurt, whole milk and snack on nuts, which keeps my fat intake at a good level. Kimchi, sauerkraut and yoghurt help my microbiome. I have also done a morning workout (exercise bike and weights) 4-5 times a week and have taken 500mg of Metformin twice a day. In 4 months I have lost 17.5Kg/2St 10lbs/38.5lbs and my blood test results today show a HbA1c of 36mmol/mol, which is amazing!
I thought me and my husband ate healthily, we have changed the way we eat over the last 7 weeks cutting out UPF, changing back to full fat food, given myself no limits on portion size, added kefir into my diet... and so far I lost a stone, he's lost a bit more and his reflux has disappeared!
Brilliant! It takes a bit of effort with careful shopping and extra food prep time, but it’s sooo worthwhile. People argue about vegan vs vegetarian vs carnivore, but I say any way of eating can be beneficial provided it is made up of only whole foods. 😊
@@annettestephens5337 I agree and actually enjoying the challenge of finding alternative foods, making my own bread, trying out new foods. I never expected things to change so much so quickly even my skin feels moisturised.. works for me!
So true, I have younger in laws who have moved from "normal" (or rather normalised) ultra-processed food to ultra-
processed vegan food. 😮
They think they are saving the planet, bless them.
@@lynwalker5528 theres some easy swaps that are no harder like using good porriage oats as a plain breakfast cereal to either have plain or add to.
Me too 😊
I read the book (Ultra Processed People) recently with increasing dismay and disgust at what is being done to us in the name of profit. I thought my husband and I had a pretty good diet, we're in our 60s and on no medication whatsoever, we don't have high blood pressure, high cholesterol or diabetes, we're not overweight, and aside from the odd musculoskeletal issue we're in pretty good shape fir our age. 90%+ of what we eat is natural whole foods prepared and cooked from scratch, but an understanding of all the artificial sweeteners, emulsifiers, flavourings, modified this-and-thats that are found in practically everything in a carton or packet has made me even more determined not to consume this junk! A trip round the supermarket the other day trying to find "real food" without all the ultra-processed garbage in it was torturous! It's really difficult to avoid UPF even for someone who has the time, money and passion to cook from scratch. It's practically impossible for busy working people! As for eating out, the mind boggles...
So what UPFs are you finding it difficult to avoid if 90% of your diet is home cooked from scratch?
@@chriswalford4161 as I said, emulsifiers, modified starches, artificial sweeteners, as well as various unpronounceable ingredients that do goodness knows what: just look at the ingredients on shop bought bread, canned soups, sauces, soft drinks, yogurts... 90% cooked from scratch still leaves 10% not cooked from scratch!
I am reading that book right now. Lots of interesting , disturbing information I’m not happy that he wants to give sugar a bit of a pass, and dismiss keto/low carb diet effectiveness as “largely anecdotal “
Watch the full episode here: th-cam.com/video/uMv2TZUSPdg/w-d-xo.html
Now well into my 70s I can say that even unprocessed food has no flavour anymore. It’s not only things like strawberries and tomatoes that are tasteless. Meat is reared on ultra processed animal feed and grown for speed and size rather than health and flavour. Vegetables are grown in dead ultra processed soil or aquaculture with no micro biome. Add in chemical fertilisers, glyphosates and antibiotics. Isn’t it possible that the healthy micro biome of our food is crucial to the health of our own and therefore us?
Just finished the book and it was eye opening
I agree
Scariest book I’ve read for ages!
Which book?
@@alexpal1495 ultra processed people by dr Chris van tulleken
Therapy is being proved to be the best thing for addiction. I read intuiative eating and it’s really helped my relationship with food.
It's a myth thst processed food is the only food some people can afford. Rice vegetables legumes are cheap! When I was very poor I lived on pasta and tinned tomatoes. Interesting thatvthe food industry has made food more and more addictive year on year. This is a great channel. Thank you.
It's not a myth. There are people living in poverty who unfortunately cannot afford to cook at home. They may have enough money to purchase non processed foods, but those require elements such as gas, a stove, hot water, knives, chopping boards, ,electricity, pots, pans, etc... That's where the problem comes in. They have no choice but to buy ready-made.
Unless you’re homeless you have a house with running water and a cooker of some kind. If you can pay for a television, phone, internet etc you can buy a knife, chopping board and make a healthy lentil, tomato, onion, carrots soup for a family of 4 for 40 pence per portion. People are lazy and persistent in making bad choices because do-gooders tell them they aren’t capable of so doing. Go back to the 1950s and 1960s - lots of post war frugality, few people had much money or kitchen ‘kit’ but virtually everything was made from scratch
@@barb4645 Good for you if you can afford it. I recommend you watch some documentaries about poverty so you get a reality check.
@@mardjo595don't buy it I'm afraid. Those people often have a 800pound smartphone and broadband connection as well. And order take aways.
It's not that expensive for a half decent pan, knife and chopping board, that will end up paying for itself. Much cheaper to make your own meals, people are just lazy and don't have cooking knowledge passed down from parents.
You go to Spain or Italy, even poor people there can afford to eat all cook every day, fresh food. They just were taught properly how to, by the previous generation. The whole family do it together as an activity. We just don't have that culture here.
Everyone should be able to make a simple pasta sauce or a curry.
Where can I find the full interview? It cut off too soon.
Processed food bloats me out and gives me anxiety attacks.
What is said at 4.09 is terrifying 😯 - creating food we can’t stop eating.
it is not a matter of individual nutrients but their synergy during their effective assimilation and particularly, their bioavailability / usage.... A multitude of reactions require not only a sequence of intermediate stages but also the use of cofactors (mostly from mineral origin) to speed up the reactions up to acceptable levels... or even just to overcome activation energy thresholds.
Ascorbic acid without its flavonoids, tocopherols and mineral cofactors (i.e. Fe...) companions within a specific vegetable food source would be less assimilated and bioavailable
Another cliffhanger! Keep up the good work… Thank you. Cliffhangers… Help, help, help!
I had absolutely no problem giving up ultra processed foods.
One podcast I'd be curious about would be - health differences based on different cooking methods, eg pressure cooker, slow cooker, microwave, oven, stovetop. I know it's not UPF, but do home processes affect the health qualities of our food?
not sure if it goes to cooking methods but home processes is a factor to at least some degree pureeing is known to make it easier to break down and less filling.
Thank you
Don't stress it too much. Look at the cooking methods that were traditionally used for a long, long time, find ones that you are good at doing, then stick with.
When you cook food - you cook love into it, that is the secret.
CHIPS/CHOCOLATES
2x spicy instant noodles 🍜 😋
fastfoods w/diet coke
🍕 🌭 🍟 🍿 😋
all my guilty pleasures😅
(i) Eating UPF as an addict and
(ii) eating UPF as a comfort food / emotional prop
…. how are these related?
Yes I am about halfway through, I was eating Pringles at the time!!🙈🙈x certainly made me more discerning
I like the idea of taxing ultraprocessed food. The more of it you eat, the more you pay. Instead, however we could tax high fructuose corn syrup, sugar etc. so that the tax is hidden in the now more expensive products. This strategy will get grumbling but unlikely to cause a revolt like a sales tax.
I have stopped eating so many ultra processed food.
SInce doing that i have reduced my food craving and i have managed to lose 10kg in 3 months.
Pleased you used the term 'ultra-processed'.
Just about everything we eat has been processed to some extent - and cooking is the ultimate form of processing. If we're not able to eat something without extreme heating, then we're not designed to eat it. It's unnatural.
Worryingly, nothing we eat today - even raw fruit and veg - is natural. It's all been tweaked to make it softer, more colourful, sweeter, more pleasing to the eye, longer-lasting, etc.
Everything in our shops has been chosen by supermarket bosses to make a profit, not by nutritionists to make us healthier. Thousands of edible fruit varieties on Earth. We're only allowed 60. God knows what invaluable, health-enhancing, disease-preventing phytonutrients are in those fruits but, for reasons of capitalism, we will never get.
I find it a bit silly to extent the definition of ultra processed food to cooking itself as the pinnacle of processing. What would you even mean with 'extreme heat'? Cooking has been crucial for our evolution, it allowed us to extract more nutriets and our brains to grow by effectively doing digestion outside of the body. So many foods we eat are processed (not ultra-processed) and that's perfectly fine, because otherwise we could cut out 90% of our diet. For a definition of ultra-processed, just stick to an item with more than 5 ingredients listed on the back or something you would not be able to whip up yourself in a home kitchen.
Meat is cooked at 70+ C. If you don't think that's extreme, try putting your hand in an oven with the meat. Humans commonly die in temperatures of 45 C.
Reducing cooked and other processed food would allow us to increase the variety in our diet. There are thousands of edible fruits and vegetables we never have the chance to try, owing to supermarket shelves being filled with processed, profit-making 'food' [sic].
Cooking DESTROYS micronutrients, crucially water-soluble vitamins. It also denatures protein. It changes carbs into sugar (leading to diabetes II), and leaves carcinogens in the subsequent food (leading to a number of cancers).
By breaking down fibre, cooking allows us to eat more calories. Bad. 75% of adults and 25% of children are now overweight or obese, so look where that's got us!
For another gauge of the effect of cooked and other processed foods, check out the full doctors' waiting rooms, the waiting list for operations, the packed hospitals...!
60%+ of modern chronic disease is food-related.
@@johnmachinmegavegan8378: Do you eat much raw fish or meat? Because cooking these to 65 C is particularly to destroy pathogens as well as to prepare the proteins for eating.
And raw lentils or beans? ~ good luck with those. Red kidney beans need a good boil.
I've noticed that when I drink Diet Coke the signal to my brain that tells me I'm sated doesn't arrive.
I feel like I’m still not 100% clear on what encompasses UPF…is pasta, rice, noodles included? There so many things you’d have to cut out that would logistically very hard to make yourself at home on a regular basis, even if you did have the time and money.
Nope, the book really clarifies it and there's some great articles out there explaining the system. All of those are not ultra processed. It's essentially anything with ingredients you couldn't make at home
I'm confused. At 2:30 you say that the participants did not prefer the ultra processed food, and yet you also say that they went back for seconds 2:58. How does one tell if this due to a preference or due to some addictive ingredient concoction?
know what you mean
I assume they asked them, did you prefer food A or B, with no knowledge of which A or B was. Thus, going back for seconds was not due to preference.
enjoying eating a food is discint from eating a lot of it. someone can enjoy a really rich food that they only eat a little of while eating more of a less rich food they don't enjoy nearly as much.
I believe it is more abt how "filling" the food is so I guess more of teh ingredients in it? I would still be very interested to at least have some idea what that is about like the release of hormones or something.
@@dandelily9224 ingrediants + processing both factor in to how filling something is. fruit is a good example when blended into a smoothie its less filling than just eating the fruit that went into it.
How come ZOE rarely seem to highlight the health benefits of fresh meat (including red) and fish in terms of helping people reduce their intake of UPFs and unhealthy carbs?
It makes you wonder, huh? Many doctors are having pretty miraculous results by pretty much disregarding the guidelines, using the high fat/organ meats/low carb and focused on animal foods as they are the most bioavailable to humans and least anti-nutrient filled. This doctor is saying the opposite but there’s a lot of research showing vegans and vegetarians have poorer health outcomes, that saturated fat doesn’t cause heart disease [btw, Serrapeptase is s powerful enzyme that clears atherosclerosis (most likely caused bt bacterial biofilms but maybe the toxic plant oils also?! Even Gandhi wrote at length on the toxicity of plant oils) and has many great properties - just be careful if you’re on blood thinners as it’s powerful] and K2 (mk4+mk7) is amazing! Oh there’s a lady dr reversing type ii diabetes by following the low carb/high animal fat diet. There’s a very popular carnivore fertility dr on yt, so many great results.
He’s also pushing plant meats in another video, claiming it lowers heart disease which is scientifically incorrect. He’s ideologically driven, pushing veganism, claiming that calories = nutrients (what?!?!)
@@Ida-Adriana TOTALLY agree! I trusted ZOE at first, but now I’m beginning to question what they’re about. Their slick ads seem to be pushing blood-sugar monitoring devices and their app “programme” seems to involve much poo testing etc. It’s all starting to smell of dodgy allergy testing clinics that wealthy folk (still) pay privately for, only to get a different result from each different clinic they try! As for your comments about meat and fish; YES! And what’s more, the DHA in Omega 3 fatty fish is pretty much essential for brain health & function. It is so often forgotten about. Perhaps it’s too simple & cheap a remedy? Imperial College Oxford’s Professor Michael A Crawford (age 90 something) has been harping on about its importance (also in terms of human behaviour) for 5 decades!
@@Ida-Adriana Sorry, meant Imperial College London!
It could be cost or environmental reasons. Red meat is known to be one of the worst foods we can consume for land use, methane emissions and water use, and if you want to support more ethical operations you'd pay a pretty penny for it too. There's also potential issues with red meat and heart health and certain cancers. Given all that, it's a tough sell to recommend to people.
With fish, there's lots of overfishing in parts of the sea and fish is one of the most expensive foods you can buy. There's also potential heavy metal and microplastic contamination increasing in the supply. Generally, fish produces good health outcomes though in most nutritional studies.
Most health organisations recommend eating a variety of protein; beans, lentils, soy, fish and white meat. That seems like a reasonable recommendation for cost, variety, environmental impact and health.
I disagree that abstinence is the only way to " cure" any addiction. There is a body of research that shows that some people who have been addicted to alcohol can learn to control their drinking.
Is it not controlled addiction?
Im trying to eat whole non processed food bur finding a lot of it is fatty! (Avocados, yogurts, cheese, nuts etc.. worried its going to make me fat!)
Yoghurt and cheese is processed food!
[ seen this before ]
According to a piece that I have just watched over on Joe Scott’s YT channel, what Big Food could be doing to make ultra-processed food bad for us, is adding glitter. 😈
I'm really sorry if this comes across as being confrontational, as that is not my intention (and you could also argue that I shouldn't have clicked on this video if I find it triggering ha 😋); but just in case anybody who reads this is also struggling with an eating disorder, as a result of diet culture and demonising certain foods: my 'addition' to every UPF under the British sun literally saved my life from anorexia 😊. As often mentioned, health is so indiviualised - and sometimes, the healthiest thing to do is heal your relationship with those foods, just as how the unhealthiest thing that I ever did was cut out these foods entirely. 😊 Sorry again to preach!
The best advise I have ever heard is " Everything in moderation".
End of story 😊
Not everyone's metabolism or body is the same.
Take everything in life with a grain of salt.
Do what works for you.
Science is NOT exact.
Mostly hypothesis in my opinion.
Awake happy and emit that to others.
💕
( I could barely understand these guys accent ! 🙃)
Have an awesome day!
Totally valid point. As someone whose relationship with food was healed by cutting out UPF though, I definitely think it comes down to individual needs. I have never felt so good about eating sugar as I do now because I simply eat food. That’s it. If it’s not UPF, I’ll eat it, and homemade cookies are not ultra-processed
I’ve read Ultra Processed People twice and I would encourage anyone who thinks that what he’s talking about here is part of diet culture to read the full book before drawing conclusions. This isn’t a weird fad to get skinny, it’s an exposé of what major corporations have enacted on our environment, our minds, and our physical health
No, cut it out completely. Once you cut it out completely you’ll go through a phase extreme relapse. This is your brains strong neural pathways related to compulsively and the micrbiome in your gut. After a while the “eating disorder” you have will dissipate and you’ll feel infinitely better. Anorexia is a different issue and there are plenty of alternatives to macchiato ds and pizza. rEAL food.
I wonder if it comes across as confrontational because you are taking it personally & it triggered your relationship with food.
Which is fine 100 % I find it informative & has helped me understand the difference between real food & ultra processed food. I didn’t find it confrontational at all. ❤
Frightening
porridge
Norman Stanley Fletcher! ;)
@@bb2021 Every time I find myself 'running' a bit stiffly I think about the prison officer played by Fulton Mackay running on as referee doing high knee lifts in the film version of the series -- all great characters ! !
It is the microbiome
They need fiber
Not true:the individual micronutrients are the reasons what makes a diet healthy…but we don’t know to use these different micronutrients together so that they can play in harmony and synergistically to get all the known positive effects in our body…..Dr Hall gives us only a first good clue how these processed good disrupts our physiology…it is not the answer to all our questions or health effects of processed food….to say that means only that you don’t understand the complexity of nutrition
They reference several scientific studies. You simply reference your opinion and emotions. Whate is your science?
The lack of micronutrients is literally what makes ultraprocessed foods so horrible. They extract the stuff that makes our taste buds tingle but strip away all the good micronutrients, which is exactly why our guts are not satiated when eating ultraprocessed foods, leading to overeating due to malnourishment. Real foods are satiating and allow our guts to shut off the hunger hormone.
@@dudea3378Agree completely..that is what I tried to explain above..but Dr Tulleken wants us to think the contrary…that is ludicrous
@@az55544That is my understanding after reading thousands of publications,hundreds of intervention studies and many books ( ….BTW Dr Kevin Halls would confirm what I explained above…) …
I’ll take his research and education over yours.
He is not even nutritionist, dont listen to him