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How Ultra-Processed Foods Make you Fat 1/2
It’s a Design Feature, not a Flaw
We are living through a food catastrophe, so why can’t we stop eating? In 2013, Brazil was facing a national crisis — obesity. Since 2002, obesity had more than doubled from 7.5% to 17.5%. The Brazilian scientist Carlos Monteiro, at the University of Sao Paulo, noticed an odd paradox. People were buying less sugar, oil and salt, but their weight was rising steadily. He recognized that people were swapping their traditional home-cooked foods for ready-to-eat foods like packaged cakes, soda, cookies, breakfast cereals, crackers and potato chips. As they did so, their weights went up. What did these fattening foods have in common?
It wasn’t the calories or the macronutrients (carbohydrates, proteins, fats) that defined these fattening foods. It was the ultra-processing. Monteiro concluded that “What should be said above all, is that consumption — and production — of ultra-processed products needs to be minimised”. This was a revolutionary change from the laser focus that had been placed on nutrients and was clearly not working. It…
