Walk into any supermarket and the choice of foods is enormous, from brightly colored breakfast cereals to prepackaged lasagnas.
But for many, deciding what to add to the basket has never been more difficult, with concerns growing over industrially produced items.
You might think Dr. Chris van Tulleken, as the author of the bestselling book Ultra-Processed People – an investigation into how aggressively marketed products created by the food industry are packed with ingredients designed to make us overeat – would be just the person to ask for help.
But you would be wrong.
“One of my very important things that I never try to do is give advice to anyone,” he says. “If someone is standing in a supermarket confused, I’ll just say, as someone who studies this stuff, a medical doctor and a scientist, I find it all terribly confusing.”
Perhaps it is not surprising then that this year’s is being offered Royal Institution Christmas lectures, Van Tulleken wants to explore how what we eat has shaped our evolution, affecting everything from our immune systems to the anatomy of our jaws.
“I want people to come away with an understanding of what the project of eating is, of how their ancestors – all the way back to the beginning of life – ate, and how we other living things in movement and thought and energy generally changed,” says Van Tulleken.
As befits a TV presenter known for “gross” experiments on BBC children’s show Operation Ouch, there will also be plenty of fun facts – while a cow has four stomachs, a platypus has none – special guests and of course experiments.
“I think it’s safe to say you’ll get views you’ve probably never seen before of different parts of my digestive tract,” says Van Tulleken.
It wouldn’t be the first time he’s tried things on himself: as part of one experiment, he spent a month where 80% of his calories came from ultra-processed foods (UPFs).
While the full definition of what constitutes a UPF is long, Van Tulleken said in general it is plastic wrapped and contains ingredients not typically found in a household kitchen. And they make up a large part of our diets: research suggests that a typical teenager gets by two-thirds of their calories from UPFs.
“I think I slowly started to worry about the food, and then suddenly it became disgusting,” he says of that experiment. “So I eat it these days to be polite because you can’t avoid it, but other than that I don’t really like eating it.”
Yet, while many studies have shown the links between UPFs and poor healthunpicking how they can actually cause harm is far from easy.
“I suspect most of the damage is from the fat – saturated fat – salt and sugar and energy,” says Van Tulleken.
But while he says nutrient content provides a useful way to regulate UPFs, it’s not the only factor in play.
“What we know about ultra-processed foods from industry evidence and from experiments is that the food is designed to drive overconsumption, and so you’re not just eating food with more fat, salt and sugar, you’re eating more of that food ,” he says.
Scientists proposed UPFs can disrupt the microbes that live in our intestines and play an important role in the body’s digestive and immune systems.
Van Tulleken will explore the importance of the gut microbiome in the Christmas Lectures, yet he is skeptical about the growing range of companies – from Zoe to Viome – offering consumers the chance to have theirs analysed.
His reservations, he says, are the same as those he has towards food companies.
“My answer to the question about microbiome-personalized technology companies is the same as my answer to the food companies and all the other companies: those companies exist for a single reason. They often owe a lot, a lot, a lot to investors, and they have enormous growth requirements,” he says.
“The science is constantly emerging. But put it this way. I have never sent my poo to anyone, and I never will.”
Van Tulleken’s distaste for the food industry is clear. Still, he says he doesn’t hope to overthrow the system. “I’m not an anti-capitalist,” he says. “My initial argument is for some very simple warning labels on food, some progressive taxation on the worst products.”
Few scientists would argue with helping people make healthier food choices. But the concept of UPFs has come under criticismwith some experts arguing its fuzzy definition captures foods that aren’t so bad for you.
While Van Tulleken disputes the benefits of such products, he admits there is a loophole. “[The definition] doesn’t include a lot of products that we think are probably pretty harmful,” he says.
“The problem is industrially packaged foods, typically high in fat, salt and sugar and energy that are aggressively marketed,” he says.
Yet the focus on mass-produced food has fueled another criticism: that criticism of UPFs is a form of food-shaming. There are also concerns that, just as the “clean eating” trend in the 2010s led some people to move into disordered eatingan increased focus on UPFs can have a similar effect.
Van Tulleken says he is very much alive to the risks of stigmatizing food and has worked closely with the eating disorders faculty at the Royal College of Psychiatrists, adding that there is even evidence that some eating disorders can be associated with certain UPF products.
These are tough issues, but the Christmas Lectures will be easier to digest.
“They are about grappling with the fundamentals of the most robust science around food and diet at the place that has figured out how to communicate about it all,” says Van Tulleken.
“I think to be forced to rethink all of that over three lectures and do a really deep dive into the meaning of food and how it works — and to draw in other experts — I mean that’s going to be a lot of fun.”
The Christmas readings from the Royal Institution (RI) supported by CGI will be broadcast on BBC Four and iPlayer at the end of December. The ticket ballot for the live filming opens to RI Members and Young Members on Thursday 12 September.
