5 tips on how to eat fewer ultra-processed foods

Ultra-processed foods (UPFs) are everywhere. According to the documentary Foodspiracy, more than half of Canadians' calories come from foods that are ultra-processed.

UPFs include things like mass-produced bread, ice cream, breakfast cereal and instant soups — foods that are created through multiple industrial steps. One way to determine if something is a UPF is to read the ingredients: if there's at least one ingredient you wouldn't normally find in a domestic kitchen, it's likely ultra-processed. 

In Foodspiracy, Dr. Chris van Tulleken joins The Nature of Things co-hosts Sarika Cullis-Suzuki and Anthony Morgan to dive into the world of ultra-processed foods  and explore how giant corporations have worked to sell us products that seem to prioritize profits over health.  

"The evidence is increasingly clear that pre-prepared, packaged, highly-processed food is linked to weight gain and obesity, some cancers, dementia, Type 2 diabetes, and early death from all causes," van Tulleken said in Foodspiracy.

Van Tulleken believes that understanding more about UFPs, and how they affect your body and your health, will likely change how you think about them. 

Dr. Chris van Tulleken's tips on how to eat fewer ultra-processed foods

Tip 1: Read the ingredients

"So much of the information we need to understand about how food affects our health is written on the pack or the can," says van Tulleken.

Tip 2: Don't stop eating ultra-processed foods

"Tip two, and this is going to sound counterintuitive, is don't stop eating and drinking ultra-processed food. Read the ingredients and eat and drink while you do so," he says. 

As van Tulleken looks at a can of cola, he says, "The question I want to be asking myself is: Is a mixture of phosphoric acid, aspartame, potassium benzoate, flavouring potassium citrate, acesulfame potassium and caffeine — is this food?"   

"What you may find is that if you read the ingredients and you engage with the food or drink whilst you do so, it will become disgusting to you. And we have really good evidence about that from tobacco science and alcohol science."

Tip 3: Don't switch to the diet or low-fat options

"Don't think that you can escape the harms of UPFs by switching to the diet or low-fat options," warns van Tulleken.

Research shows that even when these foods have less fat or sugar (like diet sodas), they can still negatively impact your health. The problem isn't just the fat or sugar — it's the way these foods are processed. Removing fat or sugar from UPFs " doesn't seem to affect how they harm us," says van Tulleken.  

Tip 4: Try to understand how UPFs affect your health and your body

"We have good evidence from really big population studies, and also randomized trials and lab studies, that ultra-processed food isn't just associated with weight gain and obesity …It's also independently linked to cancer, but particularly bowel cancer and breast cancer, linked to inflammatory disease like Crohn's disease, linked to metabolic disease like Type 2 diabetes, linked to dementia. It's linked to anxiety [and] depression, and it's linked to early death from all causes," van Tulleken says in the video above.

Tip 5: If you're struggling, remember that it's not your fault

"When we talk about food, we shame people. We shame others and we shame ourselves. And the thing that is most important for everyone to remember is that if you are, as an individual, struggling to stop eating this food or if you see people around you struggling, remember that it is not you — it's the food,"  says van Tulleken.

"There are teams of geniuses employed by some of the biggest companies on earth designing food that is irresistible and incredibly hard to stop eating."

For more information on ultra-processed foods, how they affect our health and what we can do about it, watch Foodspiracy on CBC Gem and The Nature of Things YouTube channel.