Ultra - Processed Diet Made This Doctor Sick, He's Studying Why: NPR 🍪 [View all]

An ultra-processed diet made this doctor sick. Now he's studying why, NPR, July 24, 2023. - Ed.

Eating processed food is nothing new. Humans have been crushing grains to make bread for thousands of years. But in recent decades, our food supply has shifted, with an increasing number of ultra-processed products, made with fillers, additives, stabilizers and synthetic ingredients that our grandparents wouldn't recognize. A recent analysis by the Access To Nutrition Initiative, finds about 70% of food products sold in the U.S. are unhealthy — and much of the food can be classified as ultra-processed.

So, are we the frogs in the boiling pot, adjusting to the shift toward ultra-processed foods, without realizing these foods may promote excess consumption, which may harm us?

Amid the global boom in diet-related diseases, including obesity and Type 2 diabetes, Dr. Chris van Tulleken, the author of Ultra-processed People, made himself a test subject for a brief, one-month, experiment. Van Tulleken, an infectious disease physician in his mid-40s, swapped his normal, healthy diet, full of fruits, vegetables, lean proteins and whole grains, for foods that mostly came from packages, boxes and bottles. We spoke to Dr. van Tulleken about his book and his research. This conversation has been edited for length & clarity. - How exactly did your diet change – what did you eat? I started eating more snack food, so I'd have mid-morning snacks. And I went back to eating the kind of cereal I loved as a child, so I would eat my chocolate covered breakfast cereal.

I drank more soda. I made little swaps, for example, instead of eating nuts as a snack I'd eat chips. Then in the evening I had a lot more convenience food, so I was still eating a few vegetables, but I'd have microwavable lasagna or I'd have takeaway fried chicken or pizza. Overall, about 80% of my calories came from ultra-processed foods and that's very easy to do. Most bread in the grocery is ultra-processed, almost all of our breakfast cereals & snack foods are ultra-processed and most of our convenience foods are ultra-processed too. What we know about the health risks of ultra-processed foods. In your book you describe how you gained weight, which isn't too surprising given the foods you ate. 🍕

You also measured what happened to your gut hormones, what did you find & how did you feel?

I became very unwell very quickly.. Why do you think you were left wanting to eat more, when you'd eaten sufficient calories? I think a lot of this food has been engineered to drive excess consumption. It's energy dense, it's full of fat, salt & sugar. So you can consume calories at a much higher rate than when you're eating whole foods. Also, ultra-processed food is often processed into much smaller particles. So it may be being absorbed in a different part of the gut than the part that releases the fullness signal. So I suspect you're eating this food faster than your body's ability to send a signal to the brain saying, 'I'm done now.' This fits with the evidence that foods full of refined carbohydrates such as bread, crackers & chips – basically what a lot of the ultra-processed foods are – can drive up blood sugar and insulin which may stimulate appetite. What's new here?...https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/07/24/1189276187/an-ultra-processed-diet-made-this-doctor-sick-now-hes-studying-why