I mentioned this book a few blogposts ago in connection with my current weight-loss programme. As a book, it's a game-changer.
So much of the food on our supermarket shelves and in our takeaway fast foods is ultra-processed. In other words, natural ingredients have been stripped of some of their naturalproperties and wholly unfamiliar chemicals and substances have been added in replacement for more natural (and expensive) ingredients.
It's not about improving taste. It's not about making food healthier (such as the Fat-Free Lie - I will explain in a moment). It's all about increasing profits.
The so-called 'Fat-Free Lie' is a good example. Fat has always had a bad press. It's a foodstuff and it's an outcome. We have been taught that there is nothing positive about the word. But fats are important to our health and we need them. We just need to control how much we take in. So, clever manufacturers decided that they'd capitalise on this by making low fat or zero fat products.
But we all kept on getting bigger.
The thing is ... fats and oils are what make food feel fabulous in our mouths. Remove them and a meal is far less satisfying. So manufacturers had to replace them with something to simulate the mouth-feel. Enter stabilisers, emiulsifiers and modified starches and sugars. They do the job instead. BUT they have around the same calories as the fats and they trigger your brain's dopamine receptors so that you want to eat more of it. Don't believe me? Go into any shop and compare a pot of full fat yoghurt to the same sized pot of low fat yoghurt. They contain around the same number of calories.
I'm not picking on Tesco here - they all do it. As you can see, there's around 100kcals difference per pot (the average man needs around 2500 per day to maintain weight and an average woman around 2000). But the low fat version has more salts and sugars. In fact it has 7g of carbohydrate content per 100g of yoghurt compared to the full fat version which has 3.4g. And it's the sugars/carbs that your body turns into fat.
It's just one of the many things discussed in this important book. The reviews say it all:
'A wonderful and fascinating exposé of ultra-processed food, edible substances with strange sounding ingredients which are manufactured by some of the wealthiest companies on the planet and which, worryingly, form an increasing part of our diet. As Chris shows, not only have these foods been formulated to ensure that we eat them constantly and without thought, but they hijack our ability to regulate what we eat, primarily by affecting our brains. And he backs up his claims with a powerful self-experiment, along with lots of rigorous and often shocking research. Reading this book will make you question what you eat and how it was produced' - Dr Michael Mosley (BBC presenter and bestselling author of The Fast Diet).
'A devastating, witty and scholarly destruction of the shit food we eat and why -- Adam Rutherford
Everyone needs to know this stuff' - Prof Tim Spector (author of Spoon Fed and Food for Life).
'Incendiary and infuriating, this book is a diet grenade, the bold and brutal truth about how we are fed deadly delights by very greedy, evil giants' - Chris Packham
Did you know that McDonald's fries contain 19 ingredients?
Nineteen. including a silicon-based anti-foaming agent (dimethylpolysiloxane), hydrolised milk, 'beef flavouring' (that may or may not be meat-based - McDonald's is cagey on the subject), dextrose, sodium acid pyrophosphate, trans fats and something called TBHQ - an antioxidant food additive that is used to extend shelf life.
TBHQ has been declared food safe in small amounts. However, experiuments by the Centers for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), found that it increased the incidence of tumors in rats and, according to the National Library of Medicine (NLM), cases of vision disturbances have been reported when humans consume TBHQ. This organisation also cites studies that have found TBHQ to cause liver enlargement, neurotoxic effects, convulsions, and paralysis in laboratory animals.
Some believe TBHQ may also affect human behaviour. It’s this belief that has landed the ingredients on the 'do not consume' list of the Feingold Diet, a dietary approach to managing attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Advocates of this diet say that those who struggle with their behaviour should avoid TBHQ.
So, bad news for Hindus, vegetarians,vegans and kids with ADHD then.
And why are we allowing people to put this stuff in our food? What's wrong with potatoes, oil and a little salt?
It's a scandal.
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