processed foods, anything in a box, or bag are potential health problems;

Story at-a-glance

• In a lecture at The Royal Institute, Chris van Tulleken shared details of how ultraprocessed foods impact human health, tracing a timeline from the mid-1970s when childhood obesity was a mere 2% to the present day, just 50 years later, when it now hovers at 20%
• Van Tulleken notes that processed foods are not the same as ultraprocessed foods because processing is ancient and people have been grinding, salting, smoking, curing and fermenting food for hundreds of thousands of years. As he says, humans are the “only obligate processivores”
• Food products are not just a sum of the nutrient parts, as has been demonstrated in multiple studies, including a case study by van Tulleken in which he discovered that after just four weeks of eating 80% ultraprocessed food, he experienced heartburn, anxiety, 15.4-pound weight gain and poor sleep
• Based on research, van Tulleken proposes the brain is a prediction engine, and taste is an early warning system that your body uses to warn of toxins and predict the nutrients that are on the way to the stomach. When the tongue signals sugar, fat, or protein that doesn’t arrive, it may trigger a stress response that causes you to eat more
• Ultraprocessed food manufacturers propose that obesity is caused by not getting enough exercise or not having enough willpower. Yet, the evidence suggests these theories are invalid and that obesity and other diseases are linked to consuming ultraprocessed foods that may be slowly killing us

Consumption of ultraprocessed foods in the U.S. grew from 53.5% of the total calories consumed between 2001 to 2002 to 57% of the total calories consumed between 2017 to 2018.........more.......