Ultra Processed foods

Ultra Processed Foods (UPFs) have become commonplace in our food chain. Slowly, almost by stealth, they have filled up our supermarket shelves and are so common now they have been accepted as normal.

This started in the 1970s and was seen as a great thing. Healthy(!), cheap, calorie-dense, and quick. What's not to like?

A big review of the evidence published in February 2024 in the British Medical Journal(1) shows that UPFs are connected to at least 30 causes of ill health, and people are eating a lot more UPF than they realise.

What is the size of the issue?

The figures show that 70% of food sold in the USA is UPF and 60% in UK and Australia! Interestingly, this is only in the teens in France and Italy….

Shockingly, these figures are higher for children who are often fed almost exclusively on UPFs.

What are ultra-processed foods?

Ultra-processed foods are industrially produced foods made from ingredients designed to mimic whole foods but are much cheaper to manufacture. They are soft and calorie-dense, and have often been designed to reach a ‘bliss point’ whereby there is just the right combination of fat, sugar, and salt to keep you wanting more.

In many ways it's not the processing in a way, (we've processed food for centuries), it's the ingredients and industrial chemicals we are eating in these foods.

Ultra-processed foods differ from processed foods. Processed food means whole foods that have had a helping hand to transform them into something else - for example, we pasteurise milk, churn cream into butter, ferment milk to make plain yoghurts, and remove the outer husk from grains and oats so we can eat them.

Unprocessed food is that which is in its whole state e.g. fruit and vegetables straight off the plant.

Why are we interested in UPFs, are they all bad?

There seems to be a correlation between the advent of UPF and obesity prevalence. This started in the 1970s and there is a great correlation on the graphs. We don’t have enough information to say this is causative yet, but it is very suspicious!

Manufacturers almost certainly didn’t set out to make foods that would harm us, but the production of these foods is commercially driven, which means that it is a fact that they are not produced to feed and nurture, but primarily to make money.

The other point is that if you are eating UPFs, they are displacing traditional whole foods. You won't have the appetite for both!

There are concerns that the ingredients in these UPFs are not only devoid of nutrition, but also may be affecting your gut microbiome. Think of your microbiome as another organ. It helps us to make some essential vitamins, break down medications that we need, and allow distribution to the places in the body that need them, supports our immune system to keep us from becoming unwell or helps us to fight off bugs.

The microbiome also maintains the gut mucosal barrier. If we have leaks in this barrier we can damage our intestines from our stomach acid, and also let in external pathogens, which can lead to us becoming unwell.

There is also some interest in the addictive nature of these foods, eating them can make you want more…

How can you recognise UPFs?

As a general rule….

Things covered in plastic;
Ingredients you don't recognise;
Often with health messages on them - ‘low fat’, ‘sugar free’, ‘heart healthy’;
Lots of the ‘snack’ foods are UPFs (25% calories in the UK diet now from snacks).

Look at the ingredients;

Stabilisers, emulsifiers, gums, lecithins, sweeteners, modified starches, and different oils, are all hallmarks of processed foods.

A good example is ice cream.

Homemade ice cream is made from an egg custard with added cream.

Quite simple ingredients with a fairly short shelf life and not easy to transport.

Most commercially produced ice cream contains gums, emulsifiers, and glycerine to keep them stable. Instead of expensive ingredients like milk, eggs, and cream, we are talking about palm stearin, palm kernel oil, skimmed milk powders, emulsifiers, and gums, cheap but mimic that mouth feel and creaminess we expect from ice cream.

So you will find some better ice creams are very local as transportation can be challenging.

Let’s look at another example.

UPFs are particularly found in low-fat products.

Take mayonnaise. The fat content is lowered and replaced with gums and starch for thickening.

Using these replacements also allows the manufacturer to decrease manufacturing costs and at the same time make health claims, what a win-win for these companies!

Remember, awareness comes first. Once you’ve discovered how much UPF you are eating, you can begin to consider changing things slowly.

Could you change your breakfast just to start with?

References:

Lane M M, Gamage E, Du S, Ashtree D N, McGuinness A J, Gauci S et al. Ultra-processed food exposure and adverse health outcomes: umbrella review of epidemiological meta-analyses BMJ 2024; 384 :e077310 doi:10.1136/bmj-2023-077310