Ultra-Processed People:
Why We Can’t Stop Eating Food That Isn’t Food
by Chris van Tulleken | May 7 2024
This month, I am writing about a book one of my clients told me about. It is called Ultra Processed People by Chris van Tulleken. Chris is a father, scientist, doctor, and award-winning BBC broadcaster. He has collected compelling evidence from worldwide studies and used himself and his brother to test his theories to show the effects of ultra-processed foods on our health.
He shows that ultra-processed food is the cause of the epidemic of food-related diseases, including cancer, diabetes, obesity, and auto-immune disease.
A Month of Process Foods
Chris spent a month eating an ultra-processed diet typical of what children and adults in the United States and other countries eat. Colleagues at the University College Hospital in London, England supervised his diet for the month. He spoke to experts in academia, agriculture, and the food industry itself and read countless research papers on the subject.
After his month of eating ultra-processed foods, he gained six stones, which is 84 lbs., and had several health issues.
What is ultra-processed food?
Roughly speaking, it is food you can buy that includes one or more ingredients you would not keep in your kitchen. They include “stabilizers, emulsifiers, gums, lecithin, glucose, and a number of different oils.”
As you read the book, you may cut out most ultra-processed foods. However, Chris suggests that you do not cut out these foods until you have read the book and you are disgusted by them.
For the first time in human history, most of our calories come from foods that our bodies are not equipped to digest — and are addictive.
The book is easy to read.
It combines research, interviews and personal anecdotes. In fact, near the beginning of the book, Chris describes an anecdote about going to the park with his family. There he discovered that the ice cream he bought for his daughter did not melt but became a gelatinous mess.
This book helps us understand why our food is heavily processed and filled with additives and is so addictive. As Chris says — and I am paraphrasing here – if the same ingredient is in your toothpaste and your deodorant, should we be eating it?
Ultra-processed foods are making us sick.
It is important to be vigilant about what we put in our mouths to maintain our health. Ultra-Processed People analyzes and assesses the impact of additives on the food we eat daily.
I recommend that everyone read this book. Perhaps we can have an impact when we stop buying ultra-processed food.
Additional Resources
You can purchase the book on Amazon.
You can watch the video podcast #1 Cause of Disease & Weight Gain: You May Never Eat This Food Again with Chris van Tulleken or listen to the audio podcast.
This topic is becoming mainstream. In 2020, Katherine D. McManus, MS, RD, LDN, wrote a blog post for Harvard Health Publishing on the same subject: What are ultra-processed foods, and are they bad for our health? In addition, the BBC produced an hour-long documentary with Chris van Tulleken in 2024.
This book is one we all need to read.
Take care,
~~Ellen
P.S. Let me share with you this famous quote from Hippocrates, “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.”