Ultra-processed food. You’ve probably heard of it. Heck, you’ve probably eaten lots of it in your time – but you still might not know exactly what it is. Despite the sheer volume of ultra-processed food (UPF) in our lives (you’ll find it in most kitchens, supermarkets and lunch boxes), awareness of ultra-processed food and the associated risks is still relatively new, at least for the majority of us.

But low UPF recipes and diets have been on the rise lately, thanks in part to best-selling books like Ultra-Processed People, written by Dr Chris van Tulleken, an infectious diseases doctor at the Hospital for Tropical Diseases in London.

Below, Cosmopolitan UK talks to Dr van Tulleken about all things UPF, the benefits of reducing your intake, and why cutting out UPF might be easier said than done (but that doesn’t mean you can’t give it a go, if you’d like to).

What is ultra-processed food?

Ultra-processed food refers to food that has been ultra-processed during its production, often with the addition of ingredients you wouldn’t normally find in your cupboards, if you were trying to recreate the recipe at home (think emulsifiers, preservatives, artificial flavours and the like).

Essentially, it is the opposite of a whole food (think vegetables, fruit, eggs, nuts or other foods left in its most natural state), and goes a step beyond processing a food by cooking or altering it using ingredients a home chef would have to hand.

“There’s a very long, formal definition, but it boils down to if something is wrapped in plastic and contains an ingredient that you don’t typically find in a domestic kitchen, then it’s almost certainly an ultra-processed food,” explains Dr van Tulleken.

So, UPF often includes ice cream, sausages, crisps, flavoured yoghurt, and mass-produced bread, to name a few examples.

One easy way to identify UPF is looking for “any food with a health claim on the pack, like low fat, high fibre, whole grain,” says the expert, who adds, “anything like that is almost always ultra-processed.”

What risks are associated with ultra-processed food?

“We’ve got very good evidence now from thousands of independent studies that link ultra-processed foods with a very wide range of harms and these include cardiovascular disease, like strokes and heart attacks,” reports Dr van Tulleken.

He says that weight gain and obesity are the most obvious risks associated with UPF but that there are a range of additional problems that you may be affected by, whether or not you gain weight. “It causes strokes and heart attacks, metabolic disease like type two diabetes, anxiety, depression, inflammatory disease like Crohn’s disease, dementia, cancers (all cancers, but specifically breast and bowel), and then also early death from all causes.”

His message reinforces what we already know: your diet has a big impact on your life. Research suggests poor diet is killing more people globally than tobacco, and when quizzed about what this entails, the author was very clear. “I think the evidence is very clear that by poor diet, we do mean an ultra-processed diet.”

Is all ultra-processed food bad for us?

Naturally, your next question is probably, ‘Is all ultra-processed food bad for us?’ This is certainly not the case, according to Dr van Tulleken, who points out it’s not as simple as categorising food as either ‘good’ or ‘bad’.

“If you were going to live on a desert island for a year, you’d be much better off with a stack of burgers to survive on than a pile of broccoli. You wouldn’t live a year eating only broccoli,” explains the expert. So, when it comes to our diets, we’re better off examining our dietary patterns. “What we think is really important is that people eat a dietary pattern that is not built on ultra-processed food,” continues Dr van Tulleken.

What does that mean? Well, for many of us, lots of our meals are centred around UPF. Think about your lunch, for instance. “All our sandwiches are ultra-processed. Our crisps and baked chips are all ultra-processed, and our fizzy pop, even the fancy stuff, is ultra-processed,” says Dr van Tulleken, who adds that we follow similar patterns at dinner, too. Baked beans, oven chips, fish fingers, sausages, all of that is ultra-processed, according to the pro.

If you’re vegetarian, you might opt for a meat alternative, but lots of these products also “meet the definition of ultra-processed.”

“They come from the same companies and the same system of production that makes the other ultra-processed foods, so they are not manufactured with your health in mind,” but with the purpose of making more money, claims Dr van Tulleken.

But, please don’t let that panic you. Once more, “There are definitely ultra-processed products that aren’t harmful. The issue is the pattern of diet,” says the doctor (around one in five people in the UK and USA get 80% of the calories in their diet from UPF).

Is it cheap to cut out ultra processed food?

If your next question is ‘How easy is it to reduce my UPF intake?’, it’s important to note there are several factors at play and cost is one of them.

“It’s very easy to cook real food cheaply if you have a big kitchen and loads of Tupperware and a deep freezer and lots of time to do it. But if you don’t have those things, real food is fantastically expensive,” explains Dr van Tulleken.

“At the moment in the UK, we spend about seven to eight per cent of our household budget on food on average, and that’s because everything else in our lives is so expensive. So, energy, housing, everything else. Real food is, for many, many people in the UK at the moment, unaffordable. They just can’t buy good, healthy food however we describe it, even if you don’t worry too much about the processing.”

It’s understandable then that Dr van Tulleken is clear he doesn’t set out to be didactic in his book, but rather aims to help share information with readers.

Should I reduce my intake of ultra-processed foods?

“I don’t have any advice for anyone. I want people to eat whatever they want. I just want people to have adequate information about what food they buy,” Dr van Tulleken tells us, adding that he believes each individual has a choice.

(He does, however, want the government to take action, to prevent UPF from being marketed at kids, to add warnings to food, and to tackle poverty and inequality. “You can teach kids anything you want about food, but at the moment they can’t afford to buy real food,” he comments.)

For his part, Dr van Tulleken doesn’t eat much UPF, but he takes a different approach with his kids. “My children do eat quite a lot of it,” he says. “They probably get, I would say, 20% to 30% of their calories from UPF,” explaining he wants them to be able to eat the same food as their friends, especially at school.

Is ultra-processed food addictive?

To reiterate the above, nobody is saying you must give up ultra-processed food. But if you’re interested in lowering your intake, you may find the following advice helpful.

“There is very good evidence now that many of these products for many people are addictive, and so some people may find it easier to just cut out ultra-processed food completely rather than try and be moderate. I don’t give that as advice, but some people do find that. Of course, it is much more expensive to avoid ultra-processed food completely,” notes Dr van Tulleken.

What are the benefits of reducing UPFs?

As part of his research, Dr van Tulleken purposefully adopted a high UPF diet for a month in order to measure the results. “At the end of the diet, I quit immediately, and within 48 hours I felt massively better,” he says.

“If people quit it overnight, they might not feel an immediate overwhelming improvement, but a lot of people will feel actually very significantly better quite quickly. A lot of the symptoms, the minor symptoms of daily life that we all experience where we wake up feeling anxious at four in the morning, where we have slight indigestion, bloating, or we’re very windy, those things are quite strongly associated with ultra-processed food.”

So, there you have it. All the basics you need to know about UPF. What you choose to do with the information is up to you, but please remember it is important to eat a healthy, balanced diet to maintain good health and ensure you’re feeling your best, as per NHS guidance. Advice on healthy eating is available on the NHS website.

This article is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice or diagnosis. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition.