I went on holiday this year! An actual holiday. For the past few (actually many) years, when I have taken leave it’s been to dash around visiting family and friends on the continent and coming back in time for work. Pleasant of course, but also part duty, and part hectic tour of everyone. (They all say my visit with them is too short, while I try and cram everyone plus return travel into the week or 10 days I have available.) The last time I went away to discover somewhere new (and I mean more than a weekend visiting friends who’ve moved somewhere I’ve never been to before) was when I went to Zimbabwe in 2004. 21 years! Gosh. What is time, even. Anyway, this year I went to Crete for a week.
My uncles (they’re married) have been going there on holiday since before I can remember, and they bought a flat in Chania town 5 years ago, and have been telling me to visit therefore for the past 5 years. So I finally got my act together and I did. This is not a travel blog so I’m not going to report on the itinerary, activities, weather, or post any photos – all of this is an introduction to say, I was on holiday and therefore I read an entire book in one week. That’s what I want to talk about.
The book: Ultra Processed People, by Chris van Tulleken
It’s excellent and I highly recommend it. In fact, it’s so good that I deliberately hold back from talking about it to everyone because I don’t want to seem like some kind of evangelising cult member – BUT – it has literally CHANGED MY LIFE (okay joking, I did say that for dramatic effect) – it has shifted my understanding of modern food.
A few background things for context (and I’m going to try and keep this short):
- The author is a science communicator and journalist, his writing is clear and accessible. He’s trawled through a TON of research from countries around the world and translated it into plain language; and he’s connected things to one another, and talked to experts from across the board (from food, health, agriculture, industry, advertising, public health, etc).
- “Ultra processed food” (UPF) is basically anything you couldn’t produce at home using the ingredients in a normal kitchen or pantry. The key is in the “ultra”. Processing includes cooking, baking, pickling, brining, smoking, fermenting, etc – modalities of transforming and preserving food that have existed throughout the world for centuries.
- What has arisen in the last 100-150 years is ultra-processing, i.e. the production of edible foodstuffs through industrial processes (mechanical and / or chemical), using edible substances and additives that ensure lower production costs and long shelf-lives, and thereby returning higher profit margins. (Note they are not designed to necessarily ensure optimal nutrition and health.)
- UPFs are addictive by design, and push overconsumption. Marketing and advertising is part of the “ultra processing” process: designed to make us buy and consume UPFs in order to generate bigger profits.
- The industrial processes often have a negative impact on the environment, which is not always mitigated, and never accounted for in the UPFs retail prices.
One example of industrial processes, amongst many, that made me recoil in horror: palm oil. I already knew palm oil was bad because of deforestation and orang utangs losing their habitats, right? ALSO, palm oil in its natural state is red, and spicy. In order to be able to use palm oil as a basic vegetable oil it has to be bleached (literally) to remove the colour, and treated with hydrogen (a chemical process) to remove the taste. Then it is interchangeable with other bland vegetable oils, and it is cheap on the world markets. Multinational food companies buy whichever oil is the cheapest that day – which maximises profits.
In case you’re wondering whether the whole book is just privileged anti-capitalist propaganda:
- It discusses poverty and food poverty, access to food, food deserts, cost over quality, and the myriad factors that lead to our everyday decisions around putting food on the table for our families (in the global North and global South). It is never judgy of people but it does point out the faults in the system. So it acknowledges privilege, and I suppose it can’t notlean towards anti-capitalism when you consider the results of the capitalist machine on human and environmental health. But it is not positioning itself explicitly so. It seems to me that it’s well researched and balanced, so I wouldn’t say it’s propaganda, but you’d have to read it to make up your own mind, I guess.
In case you’re wondering whether the whole book is the latest fad diet weight loss biohacking hustle:
- The book doesn’t urge you to cut out UPFs. Actually it says you certainly can if you really want to (you do you), but its recommendation is to keep eating UPFs as you normally do, while learning about them. But at the same time, reading labels more, and noticing where they are found (i.e. NEARLY EVERYWHERE). The aim is education, not weight loss or dieting or food fads or suchlike. It actually has some pointed things to say about the weight loss industry and weight loss culture.
A couple of quotes that really stuck with me:
- “We are ultra-processed people not just because of the food we eat. Many of the other products we buy are engineered to drive excess consumption; our phones and apps, our clothes, our social media, our games and television. Sometimes these can feel like they take much more than they give. The requirement for growth and the harm it does to our bodies and our planet is so much part of the fabric of our world that it’s nearly invisible.”
- “Is it real food, made to nourish you, or is it an industrially produced edible substance made to turn your health into money for someone else?”
My big lightbulb moment and the reason this book has shifted my understanding of modern food:
I have been reading food labels literally since I’ve been able to read. When I learned how to read, a whole wondrous world of information and knowledge opened its doors to me. Naturally I wanted to know everything so I was immediately a voracious reader, but it was bad manners and therefore forbidden to read a book at the dinner table. So instead I read anything printed within reach: the mineral water bottles (mineral water was a big thing in France in the 80s), the packaging of whatever was available on or around the table. I’ve been reading food labels for want of more interesting reading materials for 40 years. I am familiar with the words “emulsifier” and “dextrose” and “carageenan” and “beta-carotene” and “sodium nitrite” and “E-numbers” even though I couldn’t tell you exactly what they are in detail.
In my naivety, I had always assumed that these unknown substances were included because they served some kind of nutritional purpose, that they were good for us. Or you know, at least not, like, bad.
My takeaway from this book in one line: They’re not there to serve a nutritional purpose. Just profit.
Photo from Topping & Company Booksellers‘ website