Overheard at Table 3: Ultra-Processed People

Ultra-Processed People: The Science Behind Food That Isn't Food

Chris Van Tulleken

Published by WW Norton, 2023

 

 

This guy's a doctor, a professor, and holds a PhD in molecular virology, so it is wholly gratifying to read from him ideas that I have been harboring for well over a few years now.  Vindication for my observations!

While he admits that more studies must be made and that there has been no coherent, peer-reviewed and tested studies, the results of many doctors and scientists' observations convincingly argues for a link between the obesity epidemic and our food - and not just the sugars, but ALL of our food, which has become not real "food" in the ways that our bodies understand food.

Now, be aware, all you conspiracy theorists, he is NOT saying that there is some sort of global cabal of Illuminati who have decided to kill us all by giving us Type-2 diabetes; however, he is saying that the food industry, growing and evolving over the past 40 years, has been systematically breaking down our normal food staples to their bare essences, then adding chemicals to preserve their shelf-life, make them ready for long-haul transportation, and to make you consume more of them.

All for the sake of selling more, making more money.

He also makes the case that much of our obesity is not a moral failing or a weak will, as is so often intimated in our culture, but that these foods are designed to "hook" our brains.  They trigger the pleasure centers of our brains much in the same way that cigarettes and heroin do, and they tell the body to get ready for a heavy dose of nutrition that never comes.  So, the brain thinks that you're eating food, your guts then say, "Yo!  Where dafuq is the nutrition?!" and then your body, overall, is left wanting more and more ...

It reminded me so much of the Star Trek Episode, "The Trouble with Tribbles" in which an enzyme was added to grain destined for a starving planet that would render the consumers of the grain unable to process any nutrients.   The Tribbles got into the grain containers and over ate the grain, and died of starvation.  The tag line for the show was, "In a vat full of food, they STARVED to death"

My wife and I, just last night, had a three piece chicken strip meal from Raising Cane's,... complete with fries.   This was at least 1100 calories ... and we had had another 600 calories from Chick-Fil-A that morning and home-cooked chicken and rice for lunch (probably around 700 calories)

So, we had had possibly double our caloric intake need for the day, yet! about two hours after the Raising Cane's meal, we were both suddenly ravenous.  It was about 10pm at night, and frankly, I could've guzzled down a cheeseburger.  But we both just drank water and went to bed.  

What I'm telling you with this is that we understand what this book is saying because we live this, daily.

Much of the science contained in this book I don't understand, but I commend the author for doing his level best to make it understandable for a layperson such as I.   Also contained in these pages are many stories of his conversations with other doctors and scientists who are interesting characters in their own right.

The closest he comes to calling any specific company out as being particularly evil is Nestlé ... you need to read the chapter describing how they have single-handedly destroying the traditional food infrastructure in Brazil.

One of the most impactful chapters was on GRAS - Generally Regarded as Safe: a classification set by the FDA in the late 50s when Congress was concerned about potentially poisonous additives to food.   It seems there is a process by which any company that wants to make an additive to food needs to submit an application to the FDA for GRAS status; however, if they don't like how the FDA questions them, they can simply withdraw the application and put the additive into their product and call it GRAS anyway.  

So really, what's the point of the FDA if the "F" in their title is merely symbolic?

One other part of the book that interested me was a study conducted by a Chicago pediatrician in the 1920s named Clara Davis.  She did a study on roughly two dozen poor children just after they were weaned: she gave them various choices of foods and let the infants decide what they wanted to eat.  Each of them, without any prompting, ate the foods that their bodies needed to grow healthy and strong. 

I was reminded of the Book of Daniel, Chapter 1, in which Daniel asked that he and his fellow captive Israelites be allowed to eat their food of vegetables instead of the King's meat, to demonstrate that they would show themselves healthier than other people's on the "regular" diet.

This experiment (while admittedly was with a very small test group) underpins what most of this book is trying to tell us: that our bodies know what is needed to keep us healthy, but for the sake of cheapness and for convenience, we have given up our natural foods for mouthfuls of mush, jam-packed with chemical flavoring and colors and we have TOLD ourselves that this is food.

But it's not.

And it's killing us.

That's of course, my conclusion anyway.  The good doctor is a bit more dispassionate and a lot more erudite, but yes, we can only conclude that the food we eat has no nutritional value and it's designed to addict us into eating more and more.

We are the tribbles.  And we are in this grain bin, and we are eating and eating and starving ourselves to death.