Dr. Chris van Tulleken and Chris Williamson discuss how ultra-processed foods damage health similarly to smoking. They compare almonds to sugary drinks by calorie, explain what makes foods ultra-processed, and share fMRI evidence of lasting brain changes eight weeks after people change their diet.
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Who say you shouldn't eat more than 5% of your calories from free sugar at all, you'll get health benefits all the way down to 5% if you can get it.
Now, these foods are bad for us and we shouldn't be eating them. And there's no argument really to say that they're healthy or safe.
Your body interacts with a thousand calories of almonds is somewhat different to the way your body interacts with 1000 calories of Coke in terms of appetite. Dr. Chris Van Tulleken is a physician.
Scientist and BBC broadcaster.
Known for exploring how ultra.
Processed food impacts our health and behavior.
The ultra processing, which includes the marketing, the coloring, the texture effects, the physical processing, thermal chemical processing, that is the stuff that allows you to eat so much of the sugar, salt and fat.
Imagine the drug company said, hey, we just developed this new drug, it's safe. And the other thing goes, oh, cool, great, let's just improve it. That's exactly what happens with food.
We did functional MRI scans and looked at connectivity between different parts of the brain. And these changes were very surprising to all of us. They were very robust and they persisted for eight weeks after I switched back on the diet.
