A visual summary of Ultra-Processed People

With super easy steps to avoid UPFs in your diet

I recently read Chris van Tulleken’s book, ‘Ultra-Processed People’, on a recommendation from a friend. I’ve always found pop science books to be hit-or-miss, and it’s a tough line to walk. Sometimes they have too much information for a lay person, other times they talk down to us. Sometimes the book clearly should have been a long article and has too much ‘filler’ jammed into it, other times it should have been a longer series. However, I think van Tulleken hit the mark just right — providing reasonable explanations to an educated audience, while also having a fun and dynamic tone. Bonus: if you listen to the audiobooks you get some great podcast snippets from conversations with him and his brother about ultra-processed foods (UPFs).

In this post I want to outline the ideas I found particularly gob-smacking in this book, in a slight expansion on my Goodreads review for it.

The key idea in van Tulleken’s book is that evolution is a race between the creatures that eat, and the foods that get eaten. With that in mind, our bodies evolve in relationship with our environment to be able to get the most nutrients out of what’s around us, and what’s around us evolves to avoid being eaten by the creatures in its environment.

Here’s where ultra-processed foods come in — because the stabilisers, emulsifiers, flavourings, and other compounds are artificially synthesized and not studied for long-term effects in the population before being approved, we have no good evidence that the compounds are safe for our consumption.

However, we do have good evidence that the food industry’s incentives are aligned with making us crave more so we can eat more so we can spend more. What’s more, at the other end of the spectrum, namely cost savings, the food industry is incentivised to try to grow as few products as possible, with as many applications as possible, so they can be frugally cultivated and harvested.

This is why, according to van Tulleken, we see a lot of the same ingredients (e.g. corn used in chips, high fructose corn syrup, etc.) across the food spectrum, whether it’s in sweet or savoury dishes. And many of our foods have similar flavours and textures that promote overconsumption (soft, very sweet, very salty, a hint of spicy).

And the cherry on top of the ultra-processed cake is another cost saving strategy for corporations — to use waste products in other industries as food additives. Van Tulleken gives examples of artificial colours, flavours, and preservatives that are synthesised from petrochemicals.

The book isn’t just shocking and it’s purpose isn’t just to outline the harms of UPFs. It also tries to suggest reasonable strategies for getting rid of these products from your life. Specifically, it gives two pieces of advice I’ve found helpful:

• If there’s a label on the food, and there are ingredients you don’t recognise or couldn’t find in your kitchen, it’s probably UPF.
• Try to eat from the periphery of the grocery story — the bakery section, fruits and vegetables, etc. If it’s covered in plastic, it’s not guaranteed to be a UPF, but it’s the first sign.

Helpful resources

Nova classification

Lastly, I wanted to share some other resources I’ve found helpful in making good food decisions. Firstly, the Soil Association has a really interesting report on UPFs, including a guide to the NOVA system, which categorises foods as minimally processed, culinary ingredients, processed foods, or ultra-processed foods:

Quiz yourself — do you know a UPF when you see one?

• The New York Times has a great quiz on UPFs — comment with your score!
• Open Food Facts — This is an app made by a non-profit in France with contributions from thousands of volunteers. It lets you search for products and scan barcodes to identify UPFs. The database contains 3m products and is expanding every day.

I hope this has been a helpful small introduction to UPFs, but I encourage you to look into the primary resources (like van Tulleken’s book and the Nova system) if you’re interested in learning more.

📝 If you’ve found this helpful, subscribe to Spec, where I write about productivity, organisation systems, and personal engineering projects.