Dr Chris van Tulleken: The Food Industry Wants to Buy My Silence

Chris van Tulleken (0:02)

We've reached the same threshold of understanding as we did with tobacco, that it's not merely associated. You know, we know that this food causes physical and mental health problems. The thing about the food companies is they're not just similar to tobacco companies, they were the tobacco companies. When the Government Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition has such close relationships with the food industry, it's little wonder we have light regulation. You cannot solve a problem that you profit from creating.

Jake Humphrey (0:32)

Here's a question I want you to ask yourself next time you pick something up in the supermarket. Was this made by someone who loves you? Well, it kind of sounds simple, doesn't it? But ever since Damian and I sat down with Dr Chris van Tulleken, it's a question I've realised you have to ask every time. So Chris is an NHS doctor, an associate professor at UCL, an advisor to the World Health Organisation and the author of the bestselling book Ultra-Processed People. Now, he once spent a month eating a diet that was 80% Ultra-Processed food as part of a study with his colleagues at UCL. And what happened?

He says everyone around him suddenly became unbearable, his colleagues, his wife, his kids. He found himself snapping at the people he loves the most. Then 48 hours after he stopped, the clouds parted. And just think about that for a second. How many of your bad moods, your short fuses, your difficult days, your, I just can't stop eating this moments, might not actually be you at all. Because the message at the heart of this conversation is if you struggle to put this food down, it's been designed that way.

We're bringing this one back because it's changed the way that all of us on the team look and think about food. Welcome to High Performance, Dr. Chris van Tulleken.

Chris van Tulleken (1:42)

Whether I'm researching food or communicating about health, what I'm really trying to do is not deliver advice. It's about trying to change the system so everyone really has the same opportunities that I did. As a kid, I ate amazing food. I'd like the best diet you could possibly imagine. My mum edited cookbooks. The best cooks in the world would come to our house and cook us dinner. I mean, it was ridiculous. So I was given this incredible nutrition. That probably accounts for two inches of height, okay? Probably accounts for 20 points of IQ, opportunities that people in different households don't get. And that's terribly unjust. So the world is very, very violent towards some people, and it is a form of violence. It harms them psychologically, physically, socially, mentally.

And the world shouldn't be that way.

Jake Humphrey (2:32)

I still don't think, despite your incredible best-selling book, the range of interviews you've been on, the fact there is now finally a conversation about ultra-processed food, I still don't think that the true messages are getting through. And so we wanted to start this with some recent studies, a Harvard study that says ultra-processed or junk food, especially sweeter food, may increase the risk of developing depression. I mean, that is a huge headline. The Journal for Molecular Psychiatry, junk food creates systematic inflammation, and you can explain what that is to us. The British Medical Journal, 48% to 53% increased chance of developing anxiety if you have a junk food or UPF diet.

And Dr. Amelia Lake, drinking energy drinks is linked to an increased risk of anxiety, stress, depression, suicidal thoughts, psychological distress among children. Its consumption also showed an increased risk of poor academic performance, sleep problems and unhealthy dietary habits.

Chris van Tulleken (3:28)

Amelia's work is incredible. She's been so important. The question that the food industry want everyone to ask about these studies is to go, well, yeah, it sounds worrying, but we have to remember that, you know, ultra-processed food is eaten by people who already live in disadvantage. They may have problems with gambling, homelessness, they may smoke too much, they may live in poverty. And so it's probably not the food, it's probably all that other stuff. And the food is merely associated with anxiety, depression, mental health problems. And clearly, the project of the team at Harvard, what they're very skillful about is going, is this an association or is there a cause? And we now have a very, very big body of data that, in fact, I would say that we've reached the same threshold of understanding as we did with tobacco, that it's not merely associated. We know that this food causes physical and mental health problems.

When it comes to mental health, the disentangling it is really complicated. So we now have, you've listed a few studies, what we now have when it comes to ultra-processed food, but it's bigger if we look at things like high-fat salt sugar food or different ways of defining junk food. We've got meta-analyses. So we've got analyses of analyses that show there's an association between these negative health outcomes and ultra-processed food. I think the question to ask about this is to say, is it plausible that eating a diet made of molecules that some of which are entirely synthetic, don't exist naturally on earth, eating a diet made of formulations that you've never encountered in your evolutionary past, and eating a diet which has been deliberately designed to drive excess consumption? I know this because I've spoken to dozens of food industry scientists who will say this. Is it plausible that that food would not cause mental health problems, that it wouldn't cause you to feel that you're out of control? So I think a lot of the problems with the food are about a lack of agency. And you know from so many of the people you've spoken to that one of the most important things you have to have in life if you're going to feel good is agency, is control, is direction. If there's a goal over there, you can actually put together the steps to get toward it. And there are certain things in all of our lives that interrupt agency.