Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsBrilliantly researched exposé of the link between food additives and obesity
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 1 September 2023
Why is there an obesity epidemic in the west and why are populations becoming more unhealthy? Why are “ethnic” foods healthy, and why do remote peoples become unhealthy when exposed to western diets? This book sets out to explain why in an easy to understand and engaging way.
The author explains that the obesity crisis has not been caused by the “usual suspects” of salt, sugar, fat, lack of exercise and abundant, delicious food. It’s not even about sugar and carbs, which I must admit is something that I myself have bought into in the past.
Instead, it’s all about Ultra Processed Food (UPF) – so what is that? There isn’t a short, slick definition, but broadly, if the food is packaged, branded, heavily marketed and crucially, contains more than five ingredients then it is probably UPF. The types of ingredients to watch out for are, for example, modified starches, gums, E numbers, flavour enhancers and emulsifiers etc. In fact there are approximately 2000 such ingredients allowed in the EU but the number in the US is over 10,000. No one knows the true figure because there are no realistic restrictions on what food makers can do and no centralised registration system.
The author describes in some detail Kevin Hall’s experiment (Cellular Metabolism 2019; 30:67-77). This was done under strict laboratory conditions whereby a sample group of people were fed two diets containing exactly matched quantities of sugar, carbs, protein and fibre etc. The only difference was that one group was given food with these additives and the other not. After a few days, the group with additives were eating 500 calories more per person per day. In fact the other group members started losing weight. This experiment has been widely quoted in scientific literature – but it hasn’t really entered the mainstream.
Another eye-popping study was conducted by Herman Pontzer (Energy Expenditure and adiposity in Nigerian and African American women. Obesity 2008; 16: 2148-54). The results were so counter-intuitive that they ran the test several times. The study proved that office workers in the US burn as many calories every day as hunter gathers in Africa. Everyone burns about the same number of calories a day whether they are couch potatoes or have active lifestyles. And there are good evolutionary reasons for this. So if you want to lose weight, going to the gym every night won’t help – it all comes down to diet, and specifically, the quantity of factory produced additives that you put in your mouth every day.
How did we westerners arrive at this situation? It's the logical end point of having global food companies compete with each other to maximise sales and minimise costs without regard to the long term health costs which is the (inevitable) by-product. It is an example of a market failure, except the author is not an economist but a scientist, so this is my personal summary of the point. This also leads to deforestation, global warming and climate change which is not a direct theme of the book, but which is mentioned a few times.
But the author is quite clear about the solution to the problem and this is endorsed by food industry insiders – there has to be government regulation. This point leads to another thesis of the book: Food companies are massive global companies with multi-billion pound market capitalisations – it is in their interests to protect this wealth and they do this in many ways, not all of which are strictly honest.
For example, there are many examples in the pharmaceutical sector of industry funded research which offers skewed results. The food sector is no different. Worse still, the author gives specific examples of “independent” studies where the authors state they are independent, but have actually been funded by food industry sources.
Food companies also have massive political clout with lobbying. In the EU, a large chunk of the budget of one of the food safety ministries comes from industry sources. The author states several times that the relationship between “big food” and government should be confrontational and antagonistic – not cosy and friendly like how things currently are.
There is a section at the end of the book about formula milk for babies – the takeaway being that you should breast-feed your babies for as long as possible and avoid formula, particularly if you are a poor, illiterate peasant living in an area with low quality water.
Even though this is not sold as a weight loss book, I think this is the most influential diet, weight loss book I have ever read. It has had a profound effect on me since I finished reading it a few days ago. I found myself rushing home from work in order to continue reading – it is that full of interesting information. This book should be read by healthcare professionals, politicians, economists, climate activists and anyone who wants to live healthily and lose weight.