One of my favorite books that I read in 2023 was Ultra-Processed People by Chris van Tulleken. This book revolves around the changing food culture in today’s world- how food has changed since the dawn of humans and how it has become more of an industrial junk rather than a farmer’s play. In the book, the author intermittently discusses a self-experiment. This involved quitting Ultra-Processed Foods (UPF) entirely for a month, and then being weighed and measured in every possible way, and for the next month, eating a diet comprising 80 percent of calories coming from UPF. The purpose of the experiment was to truly realize the deleterious effects UPF can have on the human body and brain.
Processed vs Ultra-Processed Foods
We consume processed foods all the time. Fruit juices, pickles, shakes, roti, idli, etc. are all examples of processed foods. Baking, steaming, frying, fermenting, and grinding are all examples of processing. But processes like these are necessary to make food suitable for human consumption in the contemporary world. On the other hand, Ultra-processed foods (UPF) are made with unnecessary processing and unwanted materials. UPF has a long scientific definition, but in short “if it’s wrapped in plastic and has at least one ingredient that you wouldn’t usually find in a standard home kitchen”, then it is UPF. For example, have you ever used diphosphate when cooking at home? Probably not. It is a stabilizer and a thickening agent found in packaged chicken nuggets, marshmallows, pudding, crab meat, imitation crab, canned tuna, soy-based meat alternatives, toothpaste, dental floss, and household detergents. Diphosphates hold everything together through the freezing process so the water doesn’t end up in crystals on the surface. This blog will be way more relevant if you check out my previous two blogs, which elaborate on industrial ingredients that are used in foods as well.
Results of the experiment
The results of the self-experiment were shocking. Talking about observable effects, the author gained 6kgs, but more shocking were internal changes in the body and brain.
Appetite hormones (ghrelin and leptin) got deranged; hormone that signals fullness (leptin) barely responded to a large meal, while the hunger hormone (ghrelin) was sky high just moments after eating UPF. Imagine how counterintuitive it is to not feel full after a large meal. Levels of a protein that indicates inflammation (C-reactive protein) had doubled.
Brain scans showed increased connectivity between several regions of the brain, especially the areas involved in the hormonal control of food intake, and the areas involved in the desire and reward system. Changes on the MRI were physiological and not morphological – the actual wiring in the brain hadn’t changed, but the information flowing through the wires had. Over time, such changes in information flow cause structural changes. As a result, new permanent connections grow. Messing up with the reward pathway is what we DO NOT DO because that is what addictive drugs do after all.
Food addiction literature
Food addiction is scientifically very unfashionable as food contains such a wide range of molecules and any single combination of molecules cannot be identified as addictive. Also, an addictive substance requires abstinence to get rid of addiction, and one cannot abstain from food, ergo, food is not addictive. Addicts also can’t be moderate with addictive substances, and if they are moderate with the substance, they are not addicts.
Parallel between UPF and substances
What we do is that we regard UPF as food. UPF is not food, but rather a separate category of addictive edible substance. It isn’t food generally that’s addictive – it’s UPF. It may seem offensive to compare struggles of addiction to substance abuse with food addiction, but there is a growing literature on the horrors that UPF possesses.
UPF is consistently associated with higher scores on food addiction scales compared to real food and it’s always with UPF that people report problems.
UPF seems to be more addictive for many people than addictive drugs. Over 90 percent of people in the USA consume alcohol but only 4 percent develop an alcohol-use disorder, whereas over 40 percent of people develop UPF addiction after having tried it. “There is no other drug that, having tried it, 40 percent of people will continue to use regularly despite negative health consequences (a definition of addiction).”
Drugs of abuse and UPF are both modified from natural states so that there is rapid delivery of the rewarding substance.
“Drug addiction and food addiction share risk factors like family history of addiction, trauma, and depression, indicating that UPF may be performing the same function as the drugs in those people.”
People report similar addiction symptoms with UPF and other addictive substances, including craving, repeated unsuccessful attempts to cut down, and continued use despite negative consequences. Patterns of dysfunction in reward pathways can be seen for both food addiction and substance misuse in neuroimaging.
So, would you consider UPF addiction a thing? If we observe closely, a lot of peoples diet are predominantly UPF. Awareness about the dangers of UPF is important -how it negatively affects our physical health, our minds, our gut microbiome and our environment. Hence, I would strongly recommend reading this book.
(Our genes also have a big role in UPF addiction, and more on that later. )
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