Book Information
Title : Ultra-Processed PEOPLE
Author : CHRIS CAN TULLEKEN
Publication Date : June 27, 2023
Genres : Nonfiction, Food industry, Nutrition
Pages : 383
ISBN : 1039004911
How I met this book
I am interested in food habits and nutrition. I believe that good food habits are crucial for people. Growing up, I had never experienced a situation where I had to worry about how my body looked. One of the reasons is that I was an active person. My mother tried to have me eat nutritious and healthy foods. However, I loved to eat fast food or snacks. At high school and university, I had to lose my weight by about 10 pound for the competition. The first time was horrible. I had no knowledge of eating actual healthy foods to lose my weight. Eventually, I had no energy in the competition. I realized how important what we eat. I experienced to cut my weight many times after that. Because of the background, I naturally start being interested in food habits and nutrition.
I mostly spend my lifetime in my country, in Japan. After I came to the United States, I was surprised about what people buy and eat. When I went to the grocery store, many massive processed foods were everywhere. I remembered how big energy drinks were. Also, I realized how people look differently regarding body size. Since I came here, I have definitely gained weight (probably about 5 – 10 pounds?). Because of this experience, I was interested in how the foods industry work in this country. This book is actually focused UK as well as US.
When I saw the book’s title, I did not notice that this book is about food. When I looked at the table of contents, it turned out that the book was published recently and about specifically Ultra Processed Food (UPF), which I had never heard before I picked this book. The recent study on food nutrition and industry and the specific term UPF intrigued me to pick this book.
Summary of this book
Short Summary
The main cause of weight gain and health issues such as obesity and diabetes is Ultra-Processed Food (UPF). Not only UPF harms human’s bodies, but environment. If the package of the food include at least one ingredient that you would not find or recognize in the standard home kitchen, it is UPF. The reason why people eat UPF is not because of their lack of exercise and willpower and high sugar intake but rather because of its addiction, our genes, and the environment where we live. The food companies that make UPF seek to maximize their profits. To improve the current food environment, there are some suggestions, such as putting warning labels on the products, ending financial relationship with food industry, stop targeted marketing of UPF to children, and ending poverty.
Key Points
- There is a classification system called NOVA that divides foods into four groups. Group 4 is UPF. There is a long definition of UPF, but the key words of it were profitable (low cost ingredient and long shelf life) and convenient (ready-to consume).
- Many studies show that UPF causes a lot of harmful effects on human bodies, such as weight gain, cancer or heart attack.
- There are three phases of eating. The first phase is when living organisms eat things that have never been alive. The second phase (560 million years ago) is when they eat other living organisms. The third phase (the past few decades) is when they start eating UPF.
- Our physical system controls how much energy and macronutrients we need to consume properly in the second eating stage. After UPF was invented, the system seemed not to work, which led to body weight gain.
- High sugar or fat intake is not a significant issue. However, high sugar intake can worsen teeth and make you eat more. More importantly, high carbs diet are more likely to be high-UPF.
- Exercise does not significantly affect weight loss. This is because energy consumption throughout the day is set to be balanced.
- People tend to underestimate their calorie consumption. This is one of the reasons why the obesity rate goes up even if some of the studies show the calorie intake has been declined.
- Weight gain is not because of willpower, but rather, mostly because of the environment where you live or genetics and UPF itself.
- UPF has unique characteristics, such as softness, calorie density, fat and sugar smell, and multiple flavor combinations. The common ingredients in UPF, emulsifiers, worsen our health.
- The FDA should determine which foods are GRAS, Generally Recognized As Safe. However, there are not enough people and money to handle all referrals from the food companies. As a result, food industries themselves determine their foods are GRAS, called self-determination.
- Food industries focus on their profit in the short term over the environment issues because of tons of foods production in the long term.
- The author suggests to prevent people from being addicted to UPF: policymakers should not take money from the food industries, UPF marketing should be restricted, and warning labels should be put on the products.
Study Shows
- 1 in 5 people gets 80% of their calories from UPF in the UK, 60% in the whole population.
- People with less money have higher rates of obesity.
- Ultra-processed food diet leads to weight gain and overeating while non-ultra processed food diet leads to losing weight even if they can eat as much as they want.
- Infants and children have self-regulatory systems spontaneously to know how many calories and which nutrition is needed for their bodies.
- Walking distance is changed from 250 miles (1970s) to 180 (2010)
- Hunter-gatherers in Tanzania and American and European populations burn a similar amount of calories per day.
- Since 2000, 98.7% of new food chemicals have been produced by self-determination. 1,000 out of 10,000 food substances in the USA are estimated to be self-determined secretly.
- From 1980 to 2015, the obesity rate doubled, in China by 80% and in Mali by 1550%.
- To produce 100g of beef, chicken, tofu, beans, and peas, 25, 4-5, 1.6, 0.65, and 0.3 kg of carbon dioxide are needed, respectively.
Favorite Quotes
“obesity and other diet-related diseases are not a choice” (p.45)
“‘Heat and mechanical processing are not just a part of our culture- they’re a part of our physiology” (p.89)
“What, when, and how we eat is determined by complex systems that operate far below our conscious level”(p.102)
“every aspect of UPF disrupts our multi-million-year-old network of regulatory neurons and hormones.” (p.107)
“We couldn’t leave something so important up to the vagaries of conscious control, any more than we would with oxygen levels” (p.132)
“Food environments determine what we eat for more than conscious level” (p.143)
“UPF is not food, like a banana or a piece of chicken, but rather a separate category of addictive edible substance.” (p.165)
“All over the world, traditional diets are being displaced by UPF as a part of a global nutritional transition” (p.248)
“The food security that many of us enjoy is the product of a system of production that has kept costs low by destroying wild land and not paying for the costs of atmospheric carbon” (p.263)
“There’s an illusion of food supply, but it’s primarily a flow of money, driving ever-increasing complexity of processing” (p.274)
How I felt about this book
While I was reading this book, I was hooked to read more. This is because the author’s information in this book was new to me. For example, while I was reading the chapter on whether food addiction is about our willpower, he mentioned the marshmallow experiment, which I had already known. (you can search for it if you have never heard of it) However, The reason why children picked and ate marshmallows might no because of their lack of will-power but because of the environment where they live. It was convincing to me that if children in the food deserts, they are more likely to eat right off the bat. So, the experiment is not only measured will power but economic component. There are other information regarding foods that I have never heard of or thought of in this book.
After reading this book, I learned that food addiction is not because of us. There are so many causes to make us hooked to food or UPF. Thinking about foods, there are many UPF in the aisle at the grocery stores. The food companies try to sell them more and more, or else their business will fail. On the other hand, the more we eat UPF, the worse our health and environment become. However, it is the fact that we live in the situation where we are intrigued to eat UPF by processing, marketing, and mislabeling. As the author mentions in the book, being obesity and gaining weight are not our choice. Even if reading this book and understanding how badly UPF affects us, I might not be able to stay away from UPF completely. This is because UPF is cheap, delicious, and convenience. Therefore, although we know about UPF more, I think that it will be almost impossible to stop this UPF age. However there are still something that we can do, such as reading label closely or having more knowledge about our food system. I personally will keep learning about our foods. That is because I now know that foods are important in our lives in the long term. I hope that suggestions that the author mentions can be fulfilled in the future.
Whom I recommend to read
- Those who do not know or want to know UPF(Ultra-Processed Food).
- Those who would like to know how foods (UPF) affect us
- Those who would like to know our current food industry.
