Ultra Processed Foods
Imagine this, you are in a grocery store trying to buy some healthy snacks, for yourself or for your kids. Does it feel like an impossible guessing game? For me it does. I love snacking and every time I have a snack I feel guilty because I know these are loaded with calories from sugar and fat.
So I set out on a mission to find healthy snacks in the market. At first I thought maybe I was looking at the wrong places. So instead of our neighborhood grocery stores I searched online, and looked at specialty health stores. Still there were not a lot of options. There were a lot of health claims on the front of the packaging but the ingredients told another story. Like in some of them there wasn’t any added sugar, but had high sugar as fruit concentrate or sweeteners or brown sugar with the word organic thrown at the beginning. Some had ingredients I can’t even pronounce. Honestly I didn’t know if any of these were healthy? All I knew was something is not right here. Then I looked at kids snacks, I mean surely they will be healthy right? Nope Its the same story here too. In fact the sugar content in some baby foods were shocking. But then it hit me, All this time I was asking how to find healthy snacks. But the question I should have been asking is WHY? Why cant we find healthy snacks. To find the answer, I will have to take you to the 1950’s America.
Chapter 1: The Big Tobacco Playbook
Back then almost everyone was smoking cigarettes. It wasn’t just common, it was considered safe and cool. But then a lot of studies started coming out linking smoking to cancer. As media started talking about it, awareness grew, and regulators started closing in on the industry’s biggest titans like R.J. Reynolds and Philip Morris. This is where things start to get interesting. On October, 4th 1962, an internal memo was sent to the CEO of R.J. Reynolds. In the memo they said R.J Reynolds or RJR was not just a tobacco company, it was in the flavor business. RJR had extensive experience developing synthetic flavors and fragrances for their tobacco products and they could use that for foods and beverages as well they could even selling these flavorings to other food manufacturers. It argued that these synthetic agents would eventually replace natural ingredients. As an example, it said that natural yeast would eventually be replaced by chemical leavening agents like bicarbonates which we know today as baking soda and baking powder. Chemical agents could recreate the exact same texture as that of the yeast, while removing the time needed for the dough to rise. But chemically leavened bread was missing one critical thing: the flavor created by the yeast. And a synthetic agent that could artificially restore that lost flavor would get a massive market. So the bread made using cheap artificial ingredients and which takes less time to make, costs less and tastes the same as traditional bread – so people would buy more of them and more profits. So in 1962, tobacco giant R.J. Reynolds entered into the food business by acquiring the Pacific Hawaiian Products Company.
They advertised it everywhere, in famous TV shows, the radio, and so on. In just one year, RJR was able to increase sales of Hawaiian Punch by 25%. This proved that food and beverages indeed was the right path forward. So in the subsequent years the company started acquiring more food and beverage companies including the Nabisco brand in 1986. RJ Reynolds became the producer of popular American snacks like Oreos, Planters, chips ahoy, Walkers Crisps, oh Henry and many more. It even owned Del Monte and KFC. The problem is that it was not just RJR, Philip Morris, another tobacco company bought General Foods in 1985, and Kraft foods in 1988. A similar story happened in India too. In the late 1990’s cigarette demand was dropping due to growing awareness of health issues and in 2001, the government announced a total ban on tobacco advertising. This forced one of India’s biggest tobacco companies to pivot to Fast Moving Consumer Goods or FMCG which included packaged foods like cookies, chips and noodles.
I cant say the name of the company, I really want to. But I cant. Please google India’s tobacco company pivot to FMCG and you will know and You need to know. Anyway… this company realized the easiest way to penetrate the market was through their existing cigarette distribution network. The company trained thousands of roadside vendors or paan-wallahs to become mini-grocery stores selling their packaged snacks along with their cigarettes. By 2023, its non-tobacco FMCG revenue exploded from practically nothing to around 2.3 billion dollars. These companies were selling a lifestyle, like chai with biscuits or ice cream after dinner, changing our eating habits. And the market got flooded by these packaged foods controlled by a few big companies. So someone who wants to make and sell healthy snacks are up against these huge corporations. Maybe that’ s why finding healthy snacks are difficult. Its not just tobacco companies. Like in India in 1939, a company was successful in convincing millions of household to swap traditional, natural fats for industrialized, trans fat heavy hydrogenated vegetable oil. A European company launched instant noodles in India and saw immense growth, normalizing these packaged foods in India.
Chapter 2: Buy more, eat more
Now the foods were cheap. But that wasn’t enough. There is a term these companies use called the “STOMACH SHARE”. Its the amount of digestive space a company can grab from its competition. So they came up with other techniques that could make them get more stomach share. One of which was created by food scientist called HOWARD MOSKOWITZ and its called the bliss point.
Have you ever eaten the same home cooked meal like chicken curry and rice for example, two days in a row and get tired of it? I know I’m completely done with it by day two! This tendency to stop eating just one distinct strong flavour over and over again is called “SENSORY-SPECIFIC SATIETY”. Us humans developed this because we want a varied diet, giving us the micro and macro nutrients from a variety of sources.
Moskowitz leveraged this principle to create a complex formula of salt, sugar, fat and other flavoring agents, that stimulate the taste buds just enough to create maximum pleasure, but not too much to tell the brain to stop eating. It overrides our satiety mechanisms allowing us to keep eating for longer without getting full, but also to eat that same food day after day. This meant people would buy more – more profits
There is more. All these kinds of foods like ice cream, biscuits, chocolate bars are soft and they melt in your mouth. Extruded puffs for example is, and I quote “one of the most marvelously constructed foods on the planet in terms of pure pleasure”. When you first bite into it, you get a crunch. But a split second later it completely melts away on your tongue without needing to chew. This is called the Vanishing calorie density.
When eating foods like this, brain thinks that you’re not eating as much. Because there is no protein or fiber in them, to tell your brain – Ok we’ve gotten enough and we can stop eating. Rather the brain is waiting for it, as it asks us to keep taking another bite in the hope of getting those nutrients. It again short circuits our satiety mechanism that tells us we are full. So people would buy more – more profits.
Such foods that contains highly processed ingredients like starch or refined flour like all-purpose flour or Maida, industrial additives like colors or sweeteners and high levels of sugar, fat and/or salt, designed using bliss point formulas and vanishing calorie density are called Ultra-processed foods.
They are portable, convenient and acceptable, and it created eating habits like GRAZING where people skipped main meals and ate while watching TV or driving a car or working without even noticing it.So thats another reason why finding healthy snacks is hard, because they don’t taste as good as bliss point engineered ones. Someone might try a healthy snack once, but because of our natural satiety mechanisms, they won’t re-buy it the way they do with ultra-processed foods. Plus, natural ingredients cost more, making genuine products more expensive to produce. It’s terrifyingly easy for a company making genuinely good food to go under.
When we fail to stick to healthy snacks, we usually blame ourselves. We call it a lack of willpower or we assume we just haven’t found the right brand yet. But willpower alone cannot fight modern food science. The real reason is we might be addicted to it.
You might already know Dopamine, its a chemical messenger in your brain that helps control pleasure, and motivation among other things. It binds with dopamine 2 receptor (D2R) in our brain thus regulating our reward system. Certain food give us pleasure by releasing dopamine while others produce signals that make us dislike it. Experiencing pleasure from the sweetness of natural food like fruits is not a bad thing. The problem is when we repeatedly consume foods with high concentrations of sugar like ultra processed foods causing recurrent big surges of dopamine. So eventually the same food wont give you the same dopamine hit. Its levels start dropping gradually.
Studies also show repeated consumption of UPFs might result in a reduction of dopamine 2 receptors as well.Lower receptors along with a reduction in dopamine released causes Reward Deficiency Syndrome (RDS), which produces cravings and addiction. This is also how people get addicted to alcohol and drugs such as cocaine or tobacco.
The worst part of all this is, it happening to a child. Have you ever seen a child crying and throwing a tantrum to get some chocolates or snacks? It might be the cravings and withdrawals.
Chapter 3: Hooked for life, how companies target children
I remember snacking on these when I was little. Gosh I loved them. They tasted incredible. But that’s not just the reason I wanted them. Its because there was these Pokemon cards inside which I loved. When I was a kid, I used to ask my grandma every other day to get me one of these. Using popular cartoons or mascots, color packages may seem normal for us now but its a proven method used for decades to attract children.
If we look at Big Tobacco playbook, we see in 1988 RJR made Joe Camel their mascot for Camel cigarettes. And even 6 year olds knew who Joe camel was, and when they grew up they smoked camel. So if they could get kids hooked on these ultra processed foods at an early age, they will be life long loyal customers. And there were no regulations against it until recently. Fortunately, now countries like the UK, Germany, Brazil, Colombia, Canada and America have all started taking some action against these. Not a lot, but at least its a start. For example, in 2023, Rio de Janerio prohibited the sale of Ultra Processed foods in schools. In Canada food packages should show labels showing high in sodium, sugar or saturated fat if the levels are above a threshold. But companies find loop holes and still manage to get their products out in the market. With growing restrictions, these companies also expand to so called emerging markets in Asia, Africa and Latin America where there are no regulations.
I came across an investigation by the advocacy group Public Eye and it revealed a stark double standard in popular baby food products. While the exact same products were marketed as healthy options everywhere, versions sold in Asia, Africa, and Latin America contained added sugars, whereas the formulas sold in Europe were completely sugar-free.
They could just not include the sugar and bad stuff in these products globally but they didn’t. This double standard proves how important the bliss point formula is and how getting introduced to their products at such young age and getting them addicted is in their best interest.
Through marketing they attract customers, even kids. They show a lifestyle like chai and biscuits with your friends or collecting cards for kids. So we try to mimic that lifestyle and before we know it, we are doing it repeatedly. And then we get addicted re-enforcing this vicious cycle. Addiction kindo becomes an internal trigger.
Chapter 4: Calories in is not equal to calories out
Now I’ve got friends who might see this and tell me, its just food, just calories. So if we eat more, we can just burn it off by exercising or playing outside. That actually is not true. There is more to these foods and ingredients like even sugar than what meets the eye.
Lets look at sugar, which is one of the biggest part of these issues. Table sugar or sucrose is made of one molecule of glucose and one molecule of fructose.Glucose is the carbohydrate found in rice, grains, vegetables and fruits and is essential for body to get energy. Our liver has unlimited capacity to process glucose.
Fructose is found naturally in fruits and in low quantities. Its what gives fruits its sweetness. Fructose in its refined form like table sugar, syrup, or fruit juice where there is no fiber is very very bad for us. Our liver cannot process them using insulin. It doesn’t send signal to the brain to stop eating because it overrides the satiety signals, thus causing weight gain, and obesity.
It causes addiction, metabolic syndrome, hypertension, fatty liver, raises LDL cholesterol and many more. Studies show high dietary fructose can increase liver issues just like how alcohol does causing non-alcoholic fatty liver. So no you cannot burn it off without serious health effects. Not only that more and more studies show that UPF consumption also leads to Type 2 diabetes, dementia, cancer and so on. A 2024 study showed, diets high in UPFs are associated with 50% increase in the risk of death from cardiovascular disease and 48% increase in risk of anxiety.
This is a huge crisis. And we now know that someone cannot just make a healthy snack and hope people would buy it. That will not happen. Unfortunately we are accustomed to certain bliss point engineered taste levels. UPFs are a bad habit, and we need to break this habit and also make sure our kids doesn’t fall into this habit.
Chapter 5: The Solution
I believe we need three things.
1) awareness
2) community
3) solution
Awareness is what I am doing now and what I intent to do in the future with my videos. Once we are aware, we can acknowledge it and move towards breaking the habit.
Community is for us to help each other, find good products and find and support good businesses. Community can therefore help vendors who sell healthy food, organic produce to customers.
For a solution I have created this website Snackera. It has the list of healthy snacks so you can weed out the bad ones from the healthy ones. Also there is a scoring system where you can get a score of how healthy any snack is. Please check it out. The link for the community and Snackera is in the contacts page.
Together we can make a change, Thank you for reading.
By Vishnu Radhakrishnan,
Founder of Life As A Habit and Snackera.