49 pages • 1 hour read
Chris van TullekenUltra-Processed People: The Science Behind Food That Isn't Food
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2023A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 3: “Oh, so This Is Why I’m Anxious and My Belly Aches!”
Part 3, Chapter 11 Summary: “UPF Is Pre-Chewed”
In Parts 1 and 2, van Tulleken aims to establish that there is strong evidence linking UPF consumption to both obesity and poor health. Now, van Tulleken examines more exactly why this is the case. One reason, he argues, is because UPF is soft. The extreme processing of UPF relative to non- or minimally processed foods makes it much easier to be eaten more quickly. This is despite the illusion of texture on first bite, created by much UPF, such as cereals and burgers. Because we can eat UPF faster due to this softness, we consume more calories than we would with non-UPF before our body’s satiation hormones take effect.
Van Tulleken expresses concern that the UPF industry is suggesting that food could be “given back” its toughness to minimize excess calorie consumption. As he says, “[R]ather than proposing a shift to whole food, more processing is proposed instead” (178). This is what he calls “hyper-processing.” Van Tulleken argues that this proposal is misguided because softness and calorie density are essential to UPF since soft, calorie-dense products sell better. As such, “hyper-processing” of texture into food is unlikely to catch on and risks further unknown health effects.
Part 3, Chapter 12 Summary: “UPF Smells Funny”
In this chapter, van Tulleken examines the link between flavorings in UPF and negative health effects, especially in terms of UPF’s impact on excess calorie consumption and weight gain. He looks at the purpose of smell and its relationship to what we eat. In non-UPF food, certain smells indicate the presence of important micronutrients that our bodies need. However, ultra-processing from basic starches and oils reduces or entirely destroys the micronutrients within the content of food. UPF firms then “add in” flavorings to make the otherwise bland-smelling UPF smell appetizing.
Such a process tricks us into eating nutrient-poor food by exploiting our evolutionarily adapted connection between smell and nutrition. It also leads us to overconsume. This is because we overconsume as we keep searching for the missing micronutrients that we need. As van Tulleken says, “UPF and ultra-processed beverages can cause both obesity and stunting” (191). He argues that these deficiencies cannot be remedied by the consumption of vitamin supplements. The value of vitamins is only fully realized in the context of whole foods.
Part 3, Chapter 13 Summary: “UPF Tastes Odd”
Van Tulleken argues that UPF promotes ill-health and obesity because it exploits our sense of taste and the relationship between different elements of our sense of taste. He uses the example of cola drinks. Such drinks combine sourness from phosphoric acid and bitterness from caffeine with fizziness and coldness, allowing them to contain more sugar than we would otherwise find palatable. Humans naturally find high amounts of sugar by themselves “sickly sweet” (198).
The bitterness and sourness from the caffeine and acid mean that “together, they allow a huge amount of sugar to be smuggled past the tongue” (198). These high doses of “smuggled in” sugar in UPF create sugar spikes in the blood, making us want more of the product. We end up both consuming more sugar per drink than our taste recommends and drinking more of these sugar-laden drinks overall. Van Tulleken argues that artificial sweeteners do not necessarily circumvent this problem with UPF. Research shows that artificial sweeteners, added to UPF, promote obesity, especially when eaten with sugar from other UPF products.
Part 3, Chapter 14 Summary: “Additive Anxiety”
Van Tulleken asks whether additives, chemicals added to food, affect our health beyond being part of a process driving excess calorie consumption and insufficient nutrient consumption. Specifically, he looks at the effect of emulsifiers, a type of additive used to bind different chemical substances together, on the human body. He argues, based on a 2015 study on mice, that they harm the microbiome. The microbiome is the complex ecosystem of microbes, including bacteria and fungi, that live in our large and small intestines. As van Tulleken says, they are “an adaptable digestive engine” helping to “make vitamins and turn indigestible food into molecules that have beneficial effects on our hearts and brains” (215). On top of this, the microbiome produces biofilm, which helps protect the gut against harmful bacteria.
However, emulsifiers, which are novel chemicals previously not ingested by humans, have been shown to undermine the beneficial effects of the microbiome. They do this by allowing bacteria in the microbiome to leak into other parts of our body and by encouraging the colonization of the gut by harmful bacteria. Van Tulleken suggests that these effects of damage to the microbiome by emulsifiers may be responsible for increases in autoimmune and inflammatory diseases as well as increases in metabolic diseases like Type 2 diabetes.
Part 3 Analysis
In Part 2, van Tulleken gives some hints as to why obesity can best be understood in terms of addiction. Rather than lack of exercise or food abundance, something addictive about UPF promotes excess consumption and causes non-controllable weight gain. Van Tulleken looks more closely at what gives UPF this character and the mechanisms by which industrially processed food can have effects analogous to addictive drugs. UPF food provides a non-normal “rush” or “hit.” As van Tulleken says, “We consume addictive products for the sensory hit […] increasing the speed of any drug being delivered […] is a crucial aspect of making a substance addictive” (179). Due to the extensive processing of UPF, it is almost universally lacking in toughness. As van Tulleken says, “I can inhale a burger in well under a minute” (173).
The texture and resistance of non-UPF food typically mean that we must eat it slowly; our satiation hormones have a chance to respond, telling us that we’re full as we’re finishing. In contrast, “UPF is absorbed so quickly that it doesn’t reach the parts of the gut that send the ‘stop eating’ signal to the brain” (173). As such, with UPF, we end up eating more than with normal food before we feel satiated. We also get double the “hit” of calories. This effect is exacerbated by the dryness of UPF. UPF is made with minimal water to extend shelf-life and lower costs. This makes UPF more calorie dense, intensifying the sensory hit still further. At the same time, UPF manufacturers harness “different tases in a way that creates sensory confusion” (199). By exploiting knowledge of flavor combinations and optimally combining fat, sugar, and salt, they can make appetizing, high-calorie food that we would otherwise find too rich.
Overall, UPF achieves “a massive calorie load and blood-glucose spike” (200). This creates a sensory “rush” similar to that of a drug, which non-UPF cannot match since it causes a relatively slow rise in blood sugar. To replicate this feeling, we keep going back to UPF, and in greater amounts, despite knowledge of its harms.
This “dose” effect is not the only thing that makes UPF addictive. Van Tulleken also explores The Effect of Sub- or Unconscious Forces on How and What We Eat. UPF has an addictive character because it exploits the “associations that we learn between smell and taste, odours and nutrients” (186). Prior to UPF, human beings evolved to find the smell and taste of food that gave them the nutrients they needed delicious and appealing. UPF, because of the intensive processes it subjects food to, largely destroys these nutrients and their smell and taste signatures.
To make food appealing, UPF must add artificial flavorings to its products, creating replicas of real nutrient-related tastes and smells. As van Tulleken says, “This added flavour won’t contain any of those lost nutrients that it should signal” (190). Consequently, we keep “chasing flavours in search of missing nutrition” (189). We eat more and more UPF; like a drug, it reels us in but never quite gives us what we want.
This “chasing” is not restricted to purely physiological processes. Smell and taste “act[] like a barcode” that “we link to our previous experience of eating a food” (186). Therefore, UPF producers can tie food to past enjoyable experiences and to ideals. Through manipulation of flavor and marketing, UPF can evoke broader positive associations of past tastes. They can tie their products to ideas of friendship, fun, and family rooted in holistic experiences of communal cooking and dining, which UPF can suggest but not replicate. Searching for some lost meaning in food, as well as nutrients, we overeat UPF trying to find the very things that UPF has excised. As van Tulleken argues, we are kept addicted by UPF’s never quite delivered promise of fulfillment as much as we are by the chemical hit of its calorie-dense foods.
