Ultra-processed foods – you are what you eat

Judy Graham on why you should think twice before picking up that packet of processed food

Before you settle down on the sofa and dig into a packet of something tasty, there’s something important you need to know. Your multiple sclerosis (MS) Is more  likely to become severe if you eat a lot of ultra processed foods (UPFs).

“Diet is critical for MS symptoms, disease progression and severity and may play a more important role in MS than originally thought,” say the scientists who did research in  Australia on the effects of diet in MS.

Another Australian study found that adults with MS who ate the most ultra-processed foods had a slightly increased likelihood of central nervous system de-myelination.

Doctors who have picked up on these results are now warning their MS patients of the risks they face if they eat a lot of ultra processed food. Dr Aaron Boster, a prominent MS specialist in the US, says, “Eating ultra-processed food can have a massive negative effect on MS. You need to eat quality food high in nutrients. UPFs have hardly any. They’re full of calories and you eat them instead of quality food. You probably don’t even know you’re eating them because they’ve become so much part of everyday life.”

UFP overload

UPFs are everywhere – in supermarkets, fast food outlets, and takeaways. An estimated 60 per cent of calories consumed in the UK now come from UPFs.

“Ultra processed foods make up most of what people eat in the UK and US. It’s our national diet,” says Dr Chris Van Tulleken, a UK doctor waving a big red flag about UPFs. Eating them with a fizzy drink makes it even worse.

In his bestselling book Ultra Processed People, Dr Van Tulleken urges everyone to eat real food instead of UPFs. “Ultra processed food isn’t real food,” he says. “It is an industrially produced edible substance.”

Cost to health

The surge in popularity of UPFs in recent years is thought to be a factor in the increased numbers with MS. In 2019, the UK figure was 130,000. Now it’s 150,000. Some neurologists put this down to better diagnosis. But could it be in part due to how many more UPFs we are consuming?

Other scientific papers also say have that eating low-cost, highly processed, nutrient- poor foods contributes to chronic disease. A vast body of research shows a link between UPFs and obesity (a risk factor for MS), cancer, type 2 diabetes and mental illness in both adults and children.

UPFs lack the nutrients needed for health. “Our calories increasingly come from modified starches, invert sugars, hydrolysed protein isolates and seed oils that have been refined, bleached, deodorised and hydrogenated,” says Dr Van Tulleken.

“They have been assembled into concoctions using synthetic emulsifiers, sweeteners, stabilising gums, flavour compounds, dyes, colouring agents and other chemical substances.”

Food companies do everything to make UPF products moreish and addictive. “The food companies are very clever,” says Dr Van Tulleken. “They know exactly how to get to the ‘sweet spot’ – the perfect ratio of fat and sugar and everything else to make you want to eat more and more.”

Identifying UPFs

How do you know a ‘food’ is a UPF? One giveaway is that the ingredients are not things you would normally keep in your kitchen, says Dr Boster. Another is what’s written on the packaging. “Look closely at food labels. If it has more than five ingredients and things you can’t pronounce it’s probably a UPF.”

For example, a pack of Pringles Original Crisps – a popular UPF snack – contains 11 ingredients, including degerminated yellow cornflour, maltodextrin, emulsifier E471, annatto norbixin colour,  monoglycerides, and diglycerides – hardly ingredients many people would recognise.

A real food is as near to its natural state as possible, such as fruits and vegetables, meat and fish, nuts, beans and pulses.

Junk food in disguise

Beware of foods claiming to be healthy but are anything but. A product may claim to be ‘wholesome’ or ‘natural’ as a ploy to persuade you to buy it. But it can be laden with some of the same additives found in ultra processed foods such as preservatives, emulsifiers, thickeners, starches, gums, powders, bulking agents and sweeteners.

The Times newspaper recently analysed some popular supermarket foods claiming to be healthy, wholesome and natural. They discovered such claims could sometimes be misleading. Many products had ingredients usually found in ultra processed foods. Examples included Alpen’s ‘no added sugar’ muesli with ‘100% natural ingredients’. But it contains the additive milk whey powder, a sweetener derived from milk typically found in processed baked goods and desserts.

Yeo Valley’s organic strawberry yogurt contains maize starch – a thickener often used in doughnuts, bread and biscuits. Waitrose’s ‘hand-picked elderflower’ cordial contains artificial preservatives and added sugar. Graze’s Lemon & Blueberry Oat Boasts claims to be ‘packed with goodness’ but in fact has 28 processed ingredients.

There are many other examples of processed food masquerading as healthy. Be wary and read the labels. Although some ingredients are deliberately in very small print. Dr Van Tulleken warns, “A good rule of thumb is that if a product has a health claim on it, it is likely to be UPF and typically high in fat, salt and/or sugar.”

Some with MS might say they can only afford cheap food. But many truly healthy foods are inexpensive, such as vegetables, wholegrain cereals, legumes, pulses, eggs and tinned fish such as sardines or mackerel. And cheaper cuts of meat are as good nutritionally as more expensive ones.

Ultra processed foods may be cheap, but why risk your MS getting worse? Remember – UPFs are not real food. They are an industrially produced edible substance.