Around the world, the risks of developing diet-related health issues such as Type 2 diabetes, obesity and cardiovascular disease are rapidly rising. “We’re in the middle of a food crisis, but we can’t stop eating,” says British-Canadian medical doctor Chris van Tulleken in the documentary Foodspiracy. While it can feel like the only way to make things better is for individuals to eat “healthier” — whatever that means — van Tulleken has a refreshing perspective: it’s not our fault.In the documentary from The Nature of Things, co-hosts Sarika Cullis-Suzuki and Anthony Morgan dive into the world of ultra-processed foods (UPFs) and explore how giant corporations have worked to sell us products that seem to prioritize profits over health.”The evidence is increasingly clear that pre-prepared, packaged, highly processed food is linked to weight gain and obesity, some cancers, dementia, Type 2 diabetes and early death from all causes,” van Tulleken says.Sarika Cullis-Suzuki, Anthony Morgan and Dr. Chris van Tulleken dive into the world of ultra-processed foods in Foodspiracy, an episode of The Nature of Things. (Yap Films)What are ultra-processed foods?Humans have been processing foods through curing, fermenting and drying throughout history, but the concept of “ultra”-processed foods is relatively new. Ultra-processing is when a food goes through multiple industrial steps; think foods like mass-produced bread, ice cream, breakfast cereal and instant soups.”If you look at an ingredients list and there is at least one ingredient on there that you don’t typically find in a domestic kitchen, then it’s almost certainly an ultra-processed food,” van Tulleken says.UPFs are usually cheap and convenient. They’ve also been engineered to be, quite literally, irresistible by corporations with access to teams of scientists and cutting-edge technology. According to industry insiders in Foodspiracy, food manufacturing companies use a variety of elaborate techniques to keep us addicted to unhealthy food. “Companies spend a lot of time optimizing all aspects of a product: the taste, the flavour, the texture,” says John Ruff, former executive with Kraft General Foods. “But what’s happened is that palatability has been turned into, well, it’s too good. It’s addictive. It’s too tasty.”And when food is too tasty, people tend to eat too much of it. A 2019 study by the National Institutes of Health in the U.S. found that participants on a diet of ultra-processed foods ate about 500 more calories per day compared to those on a minimally processed diet, even when calories, carbohydrates, sugars, fat and fibre of the meals were matched.People eating more means they’re buying more, which means higher profits for food companies. Here are some of the ways they make their products so irresistible. Flavours created with scientific precisionIf a food is slightly too sweet, salty or fatty, people won’t want to eat as much of it. But experts say that when all of the flavours a
