Chris van Tulleken
Ultra-Processed People – Penguin, 2024
Reviewed by Robin Thomas, December 2024
In recent times we have started eating substances constructed from novel molecules and using processes never previously encountered in our evolutionary history – ‘modified starches, invert sugars, hydrolysed protein isolates and seed oils that have been refined, bleached, deodorised, hydrogenated and interesterified.’ What Tulleken points out is that the human body has evolved over hundreds of thousands of years to select from and eat what is available in their environment and our bodies are marvellously adapted to this. We, and indeed all living creatures, are able to pick out and eat enough of what we need using incredibly complicated sensory equipment developed and refined over, and it’s worth repeating, hundreds of thousands of years.
We have a name for these materials we have evolved to eat: Food.
The materials listed above (modified starches etc) are not food. We eat them but they are not food, they are ‘industrially produced edible substances’. Their generic name is Ultra Processed Foods, UPF.
If we take into our bodies too much UPF, and in fact according to Tulleken, any at all is probably too much, our incredibly complex bodies become confused. In fact UPF has been carefully developed by large companies and corporations to exploit this confusion. UPF gives us sugar and other pleasure hits while providing only limited nutrition. Because our needs for nutrition are not satisfied our bodies want more and if we try to satisfy our bodies with UPF we just want more and more, which of course is exactly what those corporations want. We have too much of what we don’t need and not enough of what we do. Also some UPF, such as additives and emulsifiers are positively harmful. The result is obesity, malnutrition and a host of other harms.
Surely our regulatory authorities would do something about it? Well, says Tullekin…
The UK is well behind – there are many other countries such Belgium, France, Canada, Israel, Brazil (and other South American countries) which are facing up to and doing something about this issue, so it’s about time we made an effort to catch up. It is difficult: one of the main problems is what Tullekin has no difficulty in describing as corruption – the very serious problem of organisations charged with advising on this issue being funded by UPF manufacturers.
Don’t take my word for it, Chris Tullekin gives us chapter and verse in 300 pages of a carefully researched story. If that makes it sound dull, I can assure you it isn’t because Tullekin is a natural writer and communicator and the book is a page turner from beginning to end. Should you wish to check or challenge any of Tullekin’s conclusions the book contains about 100 pages of notes and references, so you don’t need to take his word for it either.
I recommend that you read the book from beginning to end, it may be one of the best things you ever do. As an absolute minimum it will have you reading the ingredients very carefully on every jar, can, packet and bottle you buy, and I imagine that by the time you get to the final chapters which address what we and the government should be doing about it, you would wish to write to your MP about the effects of UPF on, not only personal health but the environment and climate change, not to mention the attrition of antibiotics and the piling up of plastic waste. Read it!