Ultra-Processed People is a book that I’ve heard a lot of people talking about this year. Not least my wife, who has been reading the small print on food packaging and pointing out things I don’t understand. On her recommendation, I read it too.
I didn’t expect to review it here, where my focus is on sustainability, social justice, and the new economics that will support such things. The book turned out to have to a lot to say on those themes, and so here we are.
If you don’t know Chris van Tulleken, there’s a good chance that your kids are on first-name terms with him already. On British children’s TV he is Dr Chris, who presents alongside his identical twin Dr Xand. He’s also a tropical disease specialist in London, and a researcher into the role of corporations in the global food system. It’s that research that has led to the book, which investigates the phenomenon of ultra-processed food (or UPF).
I won’t go into the definition of UPF, as you probably know it when you see it. Heavily marketed, brightly packaged, and with a long list of ingredients that are hard to pronounce. These ingredients are there for the benefit of the producer. They enhance shelf-life, and make them easier to produce and transport. They create consistent textures and flavours, sometimes putting them back in after those things have been lost in the factory process of being mashed and mixed and extruded. UPF is highly profitable, almost ubiquitous, and a novel substance in the history of humanity. We did not evolve eating these foods, the health effects of them are under-studied, and they are harmful in a variety of ways.
The book argues that “UPF is causing a synergistic pandemic of climate change, malnutrition and obesity.” It asks the obvious questions, explains the relevant scientific studies, and makes its case. The rise in obesity and poor nutrition in rich and middle-income countries has been much discussed, with lots of competing theories. The book goes through many of them – too much fat, salt or sugar, not enough exercise, a global moral collapse in self control – and shows that UPF may offer a better answer.
Why? Because processed foods break the rules of food that our bodies know and respond to. Their articifically created flavours prime our bodies for nutrients that then don’t arrive, prompting us to eat more. They are energy dense, meaning we absorb calories faster than the body’s mechanisms that tell us to stop eating. UPF “hacks our brains” and causes us to overconsume, while displacing healthier foods that would have been part of a traditional diet.
Of course, ultra-processed foods are made by corporations. To the relentless drumbeat of shareholder value, food companies need to sell more of their product, no matter the consequences for health, animal welfare or the environment. Van Tulleken doesn’t use the C-word, but I will: this is the logical conclusion of a capitalist food system. The ultimate goal is not to feed people and nurture their health. The ultimate goal is to make money, and so the most profitable foods win. They will be the ones that have been fine-tuned for easy processing and immediate consumer satisfaction, “designed to be purchased and consumed in the largest possible quantities.”
This is food in the service of economic growth, and “UPF is growth”.
Along the way, rainforests are cleared to grow food that adds nothing to nutrition and health. Billions of animals live in misery for food that makes us unwell. Corporations make enormous profits without paying towards the health impacts of their products. In the global south, access to UPF is advancing much faster than healthcare provision, meaning hundreds of millions of people who will not get the care they need for Type 2 Diabetes, heart conditions or obesity.
Ultra-Processed People makes all of this clear and accessible, with lots of anecdotes, and interviews with farmers, doctors and food scientists. It combines scientific rigour with down-to-earth examples, as the author experiments with a UPF diet and a non-UPF diet to compare them. It’s written with wit, and without moralising or telling people what to do. You’ll have to work out what’s best for yourself and your family, and the real solutions lie outside of personal decisions – as is often the case.
Like climate change, consumerism, sweatshop labour and many other global problems, personal ethical choices don’t solve the wider problem. Government regulation, which the book explores as the primary focus of its solutions, will be an ongoing battle against perverse incentives. Ultra-Processed People doesn’t push the logic very far into political and economic territory, but it prompts bigger questions about society. How did corporate profits become more important than health and the environment? How do we run the economy for human wellbeing rather than financial gain? And what is the role of economic growth in a society where people already have too much?
- You can get Ultra-Processed People from Earthbound Books, and the money I make from the online book store pays for the hosting fees of this website.
- Similar themes are explored in one of my favourite books on food, Michael Pollan’s Food Rules.
The Earthbound Report 
Glad you pulled in the ‘C’ word, for food has indeed become a commodity to be traded for profit – at the expense of the environment and accelerating climate change. I am reminded of Karl Polanyi’s analysis of capitalism in ‘The Great Transformation’ (1944) where he identifies fictitious (or false) commodities – land, labour and money. Back in 1944, I doubt Polanyi could have even imagined food as another fictitious commodity – back then traded foods such as sugar, tea and coffee, were supplementary and even luxury additions to ‘normal’ diets. I believe that there is mileage to be gained by analyzing UPF’s as another Polanyi fictitious commodity.
For ourselves, we usually cook from scratch at home, and enjoy the occasional UPF as a treat. We have the tell-tale sign of home cooks – sugar and salt on the kitchen worktop to be used as seasoning. But we are easily deluded – when our children were young back in the 1980s and ’90s we gave them breakfast cereals and orange juice, UPFs in my view that I would not give them if we had children now – it would be porridge made overnight from oatmeal with whole fruit.
As long term vegetarians trying to be more plant-based (as of course guided by Michael Pollan: “Mostly Plants”), I am dismayed at how much vegan food sold in supermarkets and many all-vegan outlets is in fact UPF. This also seems to be having an impact on the few occasions we eat out – the ‘vegetarian option’ is increasingly also only vegan – no bad thing, but all too often UPF. Last month I had the misfortune to have a vegan burger which turned out to be ‘Beyond Meat’ – it was awful to my non-UPF palate, and my estimation of what was supposed to be a quality restaurant plummeted. What on earth was wrong with a ‘vegetable burger’ based on nuts and/or beans prepared with minimum processing? I make my own burgers (and sausages) based on the centuries old Glamorgan Sausages (Selsig Morgannwg) – which can easily be made vegan using chick peas and/or cashew nuts with miso paste, instead of cheese.
We are indeed, as a society, turning into ultra-processed people, at great expense to our health and the health of the planet.
Yes, vegetarian and vegan alternatives are often highly processed, and the health benefits of eating less meat will be reduced. (That’s somewhere we come unstuck as a family, as the kids are quite partial to the ‘Beyond Meat’-style burgers!) There’s a theme in the book, in fact, of foods being sold as healthier when they are over-processed to achieve it. Like sugar-free versions of things that rely on artificial sweeteners.
I feel quite fortunate in being raised in a food culture that had almost no processed foods at all, in Madagascar in the 80s. It just wasn’t available, and so natural foods are entirely normal to me in ways that they aren’t for many of my peers.