Ultraprocessed Foods: How Bad Could They Be?

Summary

Chasing Life: Ultraprocessed Foods – How Bad Could They Be?

Podcast Information:

• Title: Chasing Life
• Host/Author: CNN
• Description: Dr. Sanjay Gupta explores the secrets of the happiest and healthiest people worldwide, aiming to uncover how we can all lead healthier lives. This episode delves into the impact of ultraprocessed foods on health and explores current research to understand their effects.

Episode Details:

• Episode: Ultraprocessed Foods: How Bad Could They Be?
• Release Date: February 21, 2025
• Host: Dr. Sanjay Gupta
• Guest: Meg Tirrell, CNN Medical Correspondent

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Introduction

Dr. Sanjay Gupta welcomes his colleague and friend, Meg Tirrell, to discuss the pervasive presence of ultraprocessed foods in modern diets. The conversation sets out to explore the latest scientific findings on how these foods affect our health and whether they can ever be considered healthy.

Notable Quote:

• Dr. Sanjay Gupta [00:37]: “Ultra processed foods being healthy, well, the answers could shape U.S. food policy. They could guide how we feed ourselves and our families for a long time to come.”

Understanding Ultraprocessed Foods

Meg Tirrell articulates the confusion surrounding ultraprocessed foods, highlighting the difficulty consumers face in identifying healthy options amidst a sea of products laden with unfamiliar ingredients and industrial cooking methods.

Notable Quote:

• Meg Tirrell [01:37]: “Like how are you supposed to figure out, like what's healthy to eat? Are you supposed to avoid 70% of foods in our food system?”

Dr. Gupta explains that ultraprocessed foods often contain ingredients not typically found in home kitchens, making them inherently different from minimally processed foods.

Health Impacts of Ultraprocessed Foods

The discussion delves into numerous studies linking ultraprocessed foods to adverse health outcomes. These include increased risks of cancer, stroke, heart disease, obesity, diabetes, anxiety, depression, and higher all-cause mortality rates. However, Meg points out the limitations of existing studies, noting their retrospective nature.

Notable Quote:

• Meg Tirrell [04:50]: “Eating a lot of highly processed foods has been shown to increase the risk of cancer, stroke and heart disease...”

Current Research: NIH Studies and Findings

Meg shares insights from her reporting trip to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), where researchers like Dr. Kevin Hall are conducting groundbreaking studies to understand the mechanisms behind the negative effects of ultraprocessed foods. One pivotal study revealed that participants consumed approximately 500 extra calories per day on an ultraprocessed diet, leading to a two-pound weight gain over two weeks without conscious overeating.

Notable Quote:

• Meg Tirrell [05:35]: “He found that people... ended up eating more calories on the ultra processed diet, perhaps without realizing it...”

Dr. Gupta emphasizes the significance of these findings, suggesting that understanding these mechanisms is crucial for future food policies and consumer guidance.

Notable Quote:

• Dr. Sanjay Gupta [07:12]: “How much of this is about the additives are bad versus what they're doing in terms of making me crave it, that's bad?”

Policy Implications and Regulation Challenges

The conversation shifts to the potential policy changes that could arise from current research. Meg discusses how findings from NIH studies could inform regulatory bodies like the FDA on labeling standards and manufacturing practices to mitigate the harmful effects of ultraprocessed foods.

Notable Quote:

• Meg Tirrell [08:53]: “If you can eat a diet that's made up mostly of ultra processed foods, but that doesn't drive overeating... that could help us a lot.”

Dr. Gupta and Meg explore the complexities of implementing such policies, considering economic factors and the likelihood of industry pushback.

Notable Quote:

• Meg Tirrell [21:15]: “If you require them to do it, they can't bring it back afterwards. So that's the question.”

Cultural Perspectives: US vs Europe

Meg highlights the differences in food regulation between the United States and Europe, noting Europe's precautionary principle approach, which emphasizes understanding potential harms before allowing certain additives and processing methods. In contrast, the U.S. often permits these practices first and assesses their impacts later.

Notable Quote:

• Meg Tirrell [17:59]: “Europe have a different approach to regulating additives and food… they think, okay, we should figure out what this does maybe before we allow it in our products.”

Dr. Gupta reflects on the cultural and regulatory disparities, questioning the optimism for policy changes in the U.S. despite emerging evidence.

Notable Quote:

• Dr. Sanjay Gupta [19:57]: “How optimistic do you think he is, or maybe even you are that this will actually lead to any kind of measurable change?”

Consumer Takeaways and Practical Advice

The hosts discuss practical strategies for consumers to navigate the complex landscape of ultraprocessed foods. Emphasizing the importance of reading ingredient labels, they suggest avoiding products with unrecognizable ingredients as a precautionary measure.

Notable Quote:

• Dr. Sanjay Gupta [23:03]: “Have a lot of ingredients you can't pronounce in a goldfish cracker...”

Meg admits the challenges in completely avoiding ultraprocessed foods but encourages mindful consumption and informed choices.

Notable Quote:

• Meg Tirrell [24:50]: “If you're trying to avoid ultra processed foods, it's a red flag.”

Conclusion

Dr. Sanjay Gupta and Meg Tirrell conclude by reaffirming the importance of ongoing research and the need for informed consumer choices. They acknowledge the economic and practical challenges in reducing ultraprocessed food consumption but remain hopeful that scientific findings will drive meaningful policy changes and healthier eating habits.

Notable Quote:

• Dr. Sanjay Gupta [25:35]: “I just think we should be really thoughtful about it based on the best evidence.”

Final Takeaway: Ultraprocessed foods pose significant health risks, and while complete avoidance may be challenging, informed choices and supportive policies can help mitigate their impact on public health.

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This summary captures the essence of the discussion between Dr. Sanjay Gupta and Meg Tirrell, providing listeners with a comprehensive understanding of the complexities surrounding ultraprocessed foods and their implications for individual health and public policy.

Transcript

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[Dr. Sanjay Gupta]

Meg Tirrell, how are you doing?

[Meg Tirrell]

Oh, you know, good.

[Dr. Sanjay Gupta]

How are the kids?

[Meg Tirrell]

They're healthy right now, which is amazing for cold and flu season. Just waiting for the next thing to hit.

[Dr. Sanjay Gupta]

Today I'm sitting down with my colleague and my friend, CNN medical Correspondent Meg Tirrell.

CNN's Meg Tirrell joins us now. CNN's Meg Tirrell spoke to him.

CNN Meg Tirrell is tracking this one talented journalist. She writes, she's on TV all the time. She's guest hosted a few episodes of this podcast. But as you just heard, Meg's other full time job, more important job, is mom to two young boys.

How much do you think about their diet?

[Meg Tirrell]

It's kind of a balance for me between letting my anxiety take over about what they're not eating and all the nutrients I'm worried they're not getting and just making sure they get enough calories.

[Dr. Sanjay Gupta]

Like all great reporters, Meg lets her personal curiosity lead the way. And lately she's been doing some deep dives on something we see all around us but definitely don't know enough about, ultra processed foods.

[Meg Tirrell]

Like how are you supposed to figure out, like what's healthy to eat? Are you supposed to avoid 70% of foods in our food system?

[Dr. Sanjay Gupta]

Now, I do want to point out that ultra processed foods contain ingredients that you would not typically find in your kitchen. Some are even made using industrial cooking methods not accessible to the average home chef. Now, Meg has talked about this topic before on the podcast, but I wanted to invite her back to discuss the latest science of ultra processed foods because in part, the quality of our food supply has been a hot topic during the RFK Jr. S confirmation hearings and also because Meg recently took this really fascinating reporting trip to the nih. The National Institutes of Health researchers there are trying to answer two fundamental questions. Number one, what is it that actually makes ultra processed foods so bad for us? And number two, could those ultra processed foods one day be considered healthy?

I know, I know.

Ultra processed foods being healthy, well, the answers could shape U.S. food policy. They could guide how we feed ourselves and our families for a long time to come. I'm Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN's chief medical correspondent. And this is Chasing Life. Oh, and one more thing.

[Meg Tirrell]

I brought you treats. Okay. So I'm a reporter, so I, Meg.

[Dr. Sanjay Gupta]

And I took a close look at what goes into some of my favorite foods.

[Meg Tirrell]

I have heard from my inside sources.

[Dr. Sanjay Gupta]

That your inside sources may not like me. So I'm scared.

It was, let's just say, an enlightening experience.

Can I have this?

[Meg Tirrell]

Yeah.

[Dr. Sanjay Gupta]

Okay. Thanks. I remember your last time you were on the podcast talking about this. If you can't buy these ingredients or if you wouldn't do this at home yourself, that's probably a good indication that what you're eating is ultra processed. Fair.

[Meg Tirrell]

Yeah.

[Dr. Sanjay Gupta]

And when you read these ingredient lists, there's a lot of things on there that you would never buy in a store. You would never add these things to yourself. So you go to the grocery store you're trying to buy. Well, for your, for yourself, your family, your husband. How much of what you're buying is likely to be ultra processed unless you're.

[Meg Tirrell]

Trying to avoid it? The majority of the stuff that you're going to find is probably ultra processed. I mean, unless you're going to the bakery section, we don't know what the freshly baked breads, that might not be ultra processed, but it might be. We don't know.

[Dr. Sanjay Gupta]

Could you, I mean, if you asked, would you know? How would you find out?

[Meg Tirrell]

Yeah, probably, you could probably, probably ask for the ingredients list and see if there's any weird thing in there.

[Dr. Sanjay Gupta]

I don't know, but no one does that. Right. Because it seems like I need to go buy my groceries and like I might do it after talking to you, but it's. Or, or I guess if you buy, if you eat meat going to the, to the fresh meat section, you could probably be pretty confident that it's not ultra processed.

[Meg Tirrell]

Probably deli meat, though, you know, might have some preservatives or some other things in it that could make it ultra processed.

[Dr. Sanjay Gupta]

It's really hard.

[Meg Tirrell]

Yeah.

[Dr. Sanjay Gupta]

I'll ask some version of this question a couple times, but as difficult and maybe even dire as that all sounds, is it necessarily bad for you?

[Meg Tirrell]

That's the question that scientists are trying to answer now. And the studies that we've had up until now, and there have been a lot of them, dozens and dozens have showed a lot of negative health effects linked to ultra processed foods. Eating a lot of highly processed foods has been shown to increase the risk of cancer, stroke and heart disease. These ultra processed foods may put some people at a higher risk for developing depression. They're looking back at people's diets and they find that people who report eating more ultra processed foods have higher levels of obesity, diabetes, even anxiety, even things like all cause mortality, which, you know, is a confusing thing. It's like we're all going to die, but are you going to die sooner if you eat more ultra processed foods? It seems like, yeah, maybe. But the problem with these studies is they're backwards looking. So scientists have just started to try to run these randomized controlled trials of how people eat and that requires trapping people so they can't cheat. So we went down to the NIH where they've been running these studies. Some of the only studies like this in the world. The first one they ran came out in 2019 and that was just looking at ultra processed foods versus minimally processed foods. People had to live at the NIH for a month. You know, half the time they were on the minimally processed diet and half the time they were on the ultra processed diet. They were giving them basically identically matched diets based on the nutrients in them and, you know, how the foods looked and things like that. But at the end of this time, they found that people on average ate about 500 calories more per day on the ultra processed diet. And over two weeks they gained about two pounds. So they were offered the same number of calories on each of the diets and they ended up eating more calories on the ultra processed diet, perhaps without realizing it, because their there's something about ultra processed foods that just made folks eat more of them and that made them gain weight.

[Dr. Sanjay Gupta]

You know, it's funny going back to these just basic definitions, I think a lot of people, and even as I was thinking about this podcast with you, I was talking to my wife about this. I said, just like, what is your immediate instinct when you think of ultra processed foods? And she immediately said the additives, like might they be toxic in some way? Might they be increasing my risk of cancer or something like that? Right. I'm not sure I even know how to ask this question, Meg, but how much of this is about the additives are bad versus what they're doing in terms of making me crave it, that's bad?

[Meg Tirrell]

We don't know yet. But now Dr. Kevin hall at the NIH is running that study.

[Dr. Sanjay Gupta]

What we're trying to understand is what are the mechanisms, what is it about this category of foods that is driving people to over consume calories, potentially leading to obesity and these downstream consequences.

[Meg Tirrell]

So he took the results of the first study, looked at the clues they got from how people chose to eat in that trial, and he has two hypotheses about what might be driving overeating with ultra processed foods. One is their energy density. So how many calories you're getting in each gram of food you're eating. And it so happens that ultra processed foods are much more energy dense than minimally processed foods. And he says really that's because they take a lot of the water out of them so that they don't like rot, they're more shelf stable. And then the other thing he's hypothesizing is their hyper palatability, or we've heard the term the bliss point. So it's this combination of salt, sugar, fat, and carbs and just the right levels that make us like, not want to stop eating foods.

[Dr. Sanjay Gupta]

The snozzberries taste like snozzberries. Snozzberries or the head of a snozzberry.

[Meg Tirrell]

And so what he's done is with their nutrition team, devised four different diets. One is minimally processed, one is ultra processed, very similar to the first trial. High hyperpalatability, high energy dense. And then two other diets that kind of mix their ultra processed, but they vary how hyper palatable they are and how energy dense they are. And what he's trying to see is can you eat a diet that's made up mostly of ultra processed foods, but that doesn't drive overeating and perhaps all of the other health effects of that, if it's less energy dense or if it's less hyper palatable.

[Dr. Sanjay Gupta]

If we can figure that out, then we can provide, you know, our colleagues at the fda, for example, regulators with information about, you know, how they might want to label foods. For example, when he was doing this research, I'm sure these participants who were in the trial, they knew why they were there being studied. Did you get a chance to talk to any of them? I'm curious what their sort of experience was, going through a study like this because you have to be in the. You're essentially an inpatient, right?

[Meg Tirrell]

Yeah. So we got to meet one of the participants in this trial, and there's only 36 of them. So it was like really cool to get to meet one of these 36 people who's gonna potentially influence the way we think about our food and food policy. His name's Sam Sirsada. He's 20. He is a pre med student. So he's in college, which I thought was super cool. So how long have you been here?

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I'd say two weeks, 14 days.

[Meg Tirrell]

Two weeks. How's it been so far?

[Dr. Sanjay Gupta]

It's been fine. I mean, I have my PlayStation, my electronics.

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Honestly, feels like a dorm room for me.

[Meg Tirrell]

And yeah, he's allowed to go outside, but somebody has to follow him.

[Dr. Sanjay Gupta]

Oh, really? Can't go sneak a Snickers bar?

[Meg Tirrell]

Can't go to a vending machine. There was a vending machine strangely close to the metabolic ward. I was like, come on, guys, why are you doing this to these people? And they track almost everything you can track about a person. He was wearing a continuous glucose monitor. He's wearing like three trackers of his movement. They were doing stool samples so they could look at what's going on with his microbiome. They were taking regular blood from him and separating that into all its components to see the effects of the food on all kinds of things, including his immune system. And then one of the other things that makes the NIH one of the only places in the world that can do this kind of study is they have one of these things called a metabolic chamber. Participants like Sam come in here for 24 hours at a time once a week. This room measures literally the air they breathe in and breathe out. They're trying to measure their metabolism. And the only way they can get him food is they've got this little window that, you know, they open on one side, put the food in close, he opens on the other side.

[Dr. Sanjay Gupta]

Kind of sounds like prison.

[Meg Tirrell]

It really does. And he's in there for 24 hours. I asked him how he feels when he comes out, and he's like. It's like coming out of one of those, like, cryogenic freezers, like Austin Powers or something.

[Dr. Sanjay Gupta]

When you say that this might impact food policy, and this is a what if, sort of crystal ball question, but what might that look like? You have a study like this that Kevin hall is doing at the nih, what could that translate to?

[Meg Tirrell]

Well, his hope is that he can generate this evidence. It'll be good, strong evidence telling us these answers about food. And if he finds that foods that are super hyper palatable and high in energy density do lead to this overeating, you can provide that information to a regulator like the FDA as they're considering food policy. Does that change the way you label food? Do you put like a green light on something that's low energy density and low hyperpalatable and or whatever other metrics that are found to be important or is it used in a different way by regulators? You know, we've, we've heard about initiatives to try to lower salt in foods. For example, could you mandate that food companies lower the, the bliss point of some of their foods? Can, can you do that kind of thing? I mean, we, we don't know, but Kevin hall wants to provide the information so that regulators can figure out what to do with it, but also so that we as consumers have more information and feel better equipped when we walk into the grocery store. If you could still get these very convenient foods and lower cost foods but they wouldn't cause those problems, that could help us a lot. Without just saying, okay, when you go to the grocery store, you can only go to the vegetable section. You can only go to the, you know, the butcher or whatever it is.

[Dr. Sanjay Gupta]

Coming up, Meg and I are going to discuss some of those challenges of food regulation and also importantly, what lessons you should take to the grocery store the next time you go.

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[Meg Tirrell]

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[Dr. Sanjay Gupta]

I remember I interviewed Michelle Obama years ago when she was very focused on food and it was a wide ranging discussion. But one of the things that sort of jumped out at me was this idea that, you know, if you're trying to feed a family of five and you go to McDonald's, you know you can buy a lot of calories for cheap. And I don't know how much of that just the cost of calories has driven sort of where we are now. But you know, 20, 25 bucks and you can feed your family that night versus going and buying all these less processed, minimally processed, highly water dense foods that are, I think agreeably good for you but just aren't going to leave your kids satisfied. They're still going to be maybe hungry because there wasn't enough calories in that. How much do you think this is just about cost?

[Meg Tirrell]

I think a lot of it is about cost. In the first study, they also looked at the costs to prepare the diets and these were being prepared by chefs. So we're not even talking about the time it took to prepare these diets, but the cost. It was significantly more expensive to eat a minimally processed diet than an ultra processed diet. I think it was like almost 50%.

[Dr. Sanjay Gupta]

Really? That much more?

[Meg Tirrell]

Yeah, but you know, it's, it's convenient, it's less expensive to eat ultra processed foods. I mean, having to prepare an entire meal from minimally processed foods can take hours. I mean, I'm not a very good cook. I try to do it like on weekends, but it's really hard. And one of the things that really made me feel better was I asked Kevin hall how he feeds his own family. He's got little kids, he still gives them chicken nuggets, you know, and for me, I'm like, oh, I bought the Applegate farm ones. Those are fine. Right? You know, I'm sure there's like different degrees of like ultra processed chicken nuggets. I'm just happy they're eating chicken. I hope it's chicken.

[Dr. Sanjay Gupta]

Yeah. Our definition of what is acceptable and even healthy changes when you have kids.

[Meg Tirrell]

I think, for sure.

[Dr. Sanjay Gupta]

And I will admit that I found myself eating my kids food often, like, you know, cleaning up their plate when they hadn't eaten their. That's the thing. So if I gained weight, maybe I'm starting to lose weight a little bit now because my kids have just gotten.

[Meg Tirrell]

Older, not eating their scraps.

[Dr. Sanjay Gupta]

I'm not eating their scraps anymore. You know, one thing that comes up a lot, and you may or may not know the answer to this, but you know, people often say to me like, I'll go to Italy or I'll go to Europe and I'll, I'll eat basically the same foods. Like I have pasta dinners, I might even have some dessert and things like that. And I find myself feeling better, not gaining as much weight, maybe even losing weight despite having the same diet. I guess the question is how, how unique is the United States in all this?

[Meg Tirrell]

It's not unique, but it is. We do have a lot of our calories from ultra processed foods. It is sort of happening all over the world. But you also do hear about how in Europe they have a different approach to regulating additives and food and regulating all sorts of things. You know, I think it's called the precautionary principle, where they actually think, okay, we should figure out what this does maybe before we allow it to be in our products. Whereas in the United States we often sort of allow things to come in and then we see what effect they have. And I think a lot of folks think that that is potentially a problem.

[Dr. Sanjay Gupta]

Yeah, you know, it's interesting, I think for, for physicians and people in the healthcare field, precautionary principle is almost a little bit part of our DNA. Like why wouldn't we just do that? And then you find for certain products, foods, but also things like makeup and things like that they have these, these different supply and production chains in, in Europe for some of these products versus the United States. So they, or even in Canada where they won't, they won't include certain ingredients in their foods. And so. And I think the instinct, I think, in the United States is often to say, well, that's why are we doing this here? And that's terrible there. But it's more nuanced than that. I mean, you know, part of the reason, like, even the Fruit Loops, that's come up a lot recently because of what RFK has been saying about that. I think people intuitively like, yeah, why. Why are our Fruit Loops have more chemicals than in Canada? And what the. What the cereal manufacturers will say is, look, we know, first of all, you're not telling us something we don't know. But also, we've tried this and people didn't buy the products. And I guess that, again, I don't know there's an answer to this. But fundamentally, even if we learn all these things from Kevin Hall's study and all this, people like what they like and they like the choice, and they're gonna eat what they wanna eat anyway, right? Even if they're informed by new labeling or whatever. How optimistic do you think he is, or maybe even you are that this will actually lead to any kind of measurable change?

[Meg Tirrell]

I think the serial thing is super interesting because if you have a situation where you're pressuring a company into removing something and that's all you're doing, you're just pressuring them, you're not requiring them to remove something, okay, they try it, sales go down 10%. So they brought it back, you know, and sales bounced back. Okay? If you require them to do it, they can't bring it back afterwards. So that's the question. It's like, how are you going to deal with these things, just pressuring companies? I mean, I've covered the drug industry for a long time. They've dealt with a lot of pressure over their pricing practices. It works for a little while. They'll always find ways to raise prices again, if they're allowed to. I mean, so that's the question. It's regulation versus pressure. I asked Dr. Hall how optimistic he was that research like this would change anything about the way companies approach the food they make. Because they want to sell more food, of course, they want to make it more delicious. They want you to eat more of it. And he was saying, well, you know, a soda company doesn't care whether it's selling you regular soda or diet soda. They don't care how many calories they're selling you, because they can price that the same way. And so he sort of used that as an analogy of maybe we can change these things and, and also through behaviors. If you give people information, maybe they can use that to, you know, make buying choices that influence what companies do.

[Dr. Sanjay Gupta]

I mean, what, you know, one area that policy often goes, as you well know better than anybody, is pricing. And the idea that some products would cost more than others could, could be something that happens. And personally, and I am not an expert, but I think that's a dangerous slope because when you start to think about things like syntaxes, you know, I'm going to charge a tax for something that we now think is sinful in some way. I don't know. I feel like you're punishing people to buy calories. Yeah, nicotine, I put in a different category because it really has no redeeming qualities. But food is food. And you'd rather people eat good, healthy, not super energy dense, calorie dense food. But again, you could feed your family a five for 25 bucks. That's a pretty good deal. Are you going to put a tax on that, in a sense, punish people for that?

[Meg Tirrell]

Right. That would disproportionately hurt the people who already find food difficult to afford. So there is a huge issue with doing that. And I think that's part of a lot of pushback around all this focus on ultra processed foods. But that probably doesn't mean we shouldn't understand what ultra processed foods do. It's just, what do you do with that information? I think there is evidence to suggest with cigarettes, which of course are very different from food. You don't need them to live.

[Dr. Sanjay Gupta]

Exactly.

[Meg Tirrell]

But they have found that taxing those is one of the most effective ways to discourage people from using cigarettes with food. It's a different question. And I think some places are trying this. And you know, of course in New York City, Michael Bloomberg tried to put a tax on soda and it failed.

[Dr. Sanjay Gupta]

So I interviewed Michael Bloomberg as well about this and it's actually one of the funniest interviews. First of all, he starts off even before we started rolling. He said, I just want to tell you, Sanjay, I love Cheetos. I'll never forget that. I'm like, oh, that's very interesting, Mr. Mayor, you love Cheetos. Why lead the interview with him?

[Meg Tirrell]

He was worried it was a skeleton in his closet. And he put out, I just want.

[Dr. Sanjay Gupta]

To get this out of the way. I'm a Cheeto lover. But he had this thing, obviously part of it was pricing, but the other part was that if you went to a movie theater, you could no longer buy a 16 ounce soda, you could buy an 8 ounce and if you wanted, you could buy two 8 ounce sodas. So then you could have your 16 ounces, but you couldn't buy a 16 ounce in one glass. And I said, tell me about that. And he was making this point that I'm adding these micro blocks. This is part policy, but part of this is just psychology. Just saying I'm going to make it. Even if it's not more expensive, it's just slightly more difficult for people. And there might be enough people out there who say, Hey, 8 ounces enough. I'll just, you know, take that as a micro block.

[Meg Tirrell]

Yeah. And something with soda, I mean, that's not necessarily in the same category as a meal. So worrying about the tax on folks who are.

[Dr. Sanjay Gupta]

Yeah. So, you know, in terms of takeaways for people like, I, you know, I've often been told, read the ingredients. If you can't pronounce some of the ingredients, probably not a good thing to buy. Is that kind of how you just simply approach things when you go grocery shopping?

[Meg Tirrell]

Yes. But after learning more about this and talking more with Kevin Hall, I, I suspect it's more nuanced than that. And I also am giving myself a little bit of a break. As a parent of young kids who love goldfish crackers.

[Dr. Sanjay Gupta]

I have a lot of ingredients you can't pronounce in a goldfish cracker, including.

[Meg Tirrell]

I think smiles are ingredient in goldfish crackers listed in the ingredients list. I definitely, I mean, I guess I can make those in my own kitchen. So there we go.

[Dr. Sanjay Gupta]

Do they really have that listed as an ingredient?

[Meg Tirrell]

I think they do.

[Dr. Sanjay Gupta]

That's funny.

[Meg Tirrell]

Yeah. Good for them. So I haven't totally changed the way I eat, but I do think about it more. For sure.

[Dr. Sanjay Gupta]

But this whole thing about not being able to pronounce. We're gonna look at some of these products here in a second. But if you can't buy it yourself, the ingredient in the food that you're about to eat, from what I've seen, from what you've reported in the past, that's a red flag.

[Meg Tirrell]

Yeah. If you're trying to avoid ultra processed foods, it's a red flag.

[Dr. Sanjay Gupta]

Yeah. And people should avoid ultra processed foods. I guess we're coming right back to the beginning of this discussion again. Should I. Based on everything, you know, it sounds like a good idea to avoid ultra processed foods. They might be too hyper palatable, they might make me eat too much, even unknowingly. And they have all these ingredients that Some of, we don't know what they do. But just in terms of precautionary principle might be a good thing to avoid.

[Meg Tirrell]

Yeah, if you can. I think it's a good. I mean, I'm not a doctor. You are, you can say that. But.

[Dr. Sanjay Gupta]

Well, again, some of this to be, to be fair to is we don't have a lot of data to show whether or not some of these ingredients are necessarily bad for people. But if you're, if you're trying to apply this precautionary principle and anyone who's listening should maybe think about this a little bit and maybe even look it up and think about how you want to live your life. In terms of precautionary principle. There's a lot of things that we do in our lives to avoid something. It's not that it's necessarily going to be a harm to us, but hey, I'd rather not take the chance. But when it comes to some of these ingredients, I don't know, I'm just listening to you. And I don't know that it makes a difference that I'm a doctor because again, we don't have data on a lot of these things. But I think precautionary principle is pretty sound when it comes to some ingredients that I can't pronounce.

[Meg Tirrell]

Yeah. The way I think about it is like if I'm in the grocery store and I've got two loaves of bread in front of me and I can look at the ingredients, I'm going to choose the one with the ingredients. I recognize all else being equal, if that costs twice as much, maybe I'll think about it a little more.

[Dr. Sanjay Gupta]

I mean, this fundamentally is probably what's going to drive the policy discussion because I think you're absolutely right. If it costs twice as much, people may choose with their wallet more so than their precautionary principle, you know, and that'll be a really interesting discussion to have going forward. Maybe we can talk about that in a future podcast.

[Meg Tirrell]

Yeah, we'll see what happens.

[Dr. Sanjay Gupta]

Just what's the timetable on any of this? So the studies are ongoing. How long will they take to complete and have real results? And then what, what happens next?

[Meg Tirrell]

Yeah, so Kevin Hall's current study, he expects to be done by the middle of 2025 and to have results, he hopes, at least in a pre print. So not peer reviewed, published journal necessarily, but to have the results out there in the world by the end of 2025 or early 2026. So these things take a long time this is slow and there's not a lot of it going on. And there's a lot of demand for change even before we get these data.

[Dr. Sanjay Gupta]

Yes.

[Meg Tirrell]

And already, you know, the US DA Dietary Guidelines Committee is meeting to talk about what's going to go in 2025-2030's dietary guidelines. And these don't necessarily change huge amounts of things, but they are important. And they're not considering ultra processed foods, really, because they think there's not enough evidence to help them make decisions about it for this upcoming set. So we're talking about 2030 for that. But whether there could be actions that take place sooner than that and how much science they're based on, you know, we're gonna have to see. And I think industry will push back based on what they say is a lack of evidence.

[Dr. Sanjay Gupta]

Yeah, I mean, I think this idea of what level of evidence is necessary in order to implement policy change is a question that comes up not just in healthcare, but I think in many aspects of our society a lot. And how cautious we want to be. It'll be interesting to see how it all plays out. I'm fascinated by it, but, you know, I'm a doctor. I think that 70%, roughly, of chronic disease in this country is preventable. This is according to studies that I've read and reporting I've done over 20 years. And I think a lot of that is in some way shape or form based on how we nourish ourselves. Food is the only signal that we consciously give from our outside world to our inside world on a daily basis. We're informing our inside world with our food. I just think we should be really thoughtful about it based on the best evidence. But as you said at the beginning of this podcast, that evidence is really hard to collect. These aren't the 10,000, you know, huge clinically controlled trials that people would like. And I think what regulators probably need to understand is we may never have that kind of data. So how do you act in the meantime? That's going to be a really good question. So you have a bag of.

[Meg Tirrell]

Yes, I brought you treats. Okay. So I asked Ben Tinker, the head of health and Sanjay's longtime producer, what Sanjay's favorite treat is. Do you know what it is?

[Dr. Sanjay Gupta]

Raisin Bran Crunch.

[Meg Tirrell]

Ooh, no, actually, I think we have that in the kitchen. But no.

[Dr. Sanjay Gupta]

Well, he said, oh, gosh, yes.

[Meg Tirrell]

Ice cream.

[Dr. Sanjay Gupta]

Ice cream.

[Meg Tirrell]

So I don't know what your favorite. What's your favorite flavor? I don't know what your favorite flavor is.

[Dr. Sanjay Gupta]

You know, I Got a few.

[Meg Tirrell]

I got a few. Darkest chocolate and chocolate chip cookie dough. All right, Give these a look. See?

[Dr. Sanjay Gupta]

All right. Do you have reading glasses? I can't even. I can't even read this anymore.

[Meg Tirrell]

So, okay, so here are the ingredients.

[Dr. Sanjay Gupta]

Okay.

[Meg Tirrell]

Cream, skim milk, liquid sugar, which is sugar and water, water, wheat flour is probably the cookie dough we're talking about here. Sugar, brown sugar, egg yolks, butter, which is cream and salt expeller, pressed soybean oil, eggs, coconut oil, chocolate liqueur, cocoa processed with alkali, cocoa, molasses, guar gum, salt, vanilla extract, natural flavor, cocoa butter invert sugar, carrageenan, milk fat, tapioca flour, soy lecithin, annatto extract for color, turmeric extract for color, and milk.

[Dr. Sanjay Gupta]

Hmm. You know, I gotta tell you, in some ways I. That's a lot. But I thought it was gonna be worse. I thought there was gonna be a lot of things in there that were gonna be these multi, multi syllabic words that I couldn't possibly pronounce. What do you think when you read that list?

[Meg Tirrell]

That's a lot of ingredients. I mean, probably to explain the chocolate chip cookie dough, maybe I should have gotten just vanilla so we could compare. Well, but something like carrageenan.

[Dr. Sanjay Gupta]

Yeah. What is it?

[Meg Tirrell]

I don't know. I think it's some kind of maybe gum. I'm not really sure what that is or. And I certainly have never used it in my own kitchen.

[Dr. Sanjay Gupta]

Yeah.

[Meg Tirrell]

Okay, so this is. I had to really scour the shelves, which is why I was a little bit late coming in here this morning to try to find an ice cream that was not ultra processed. Let's see, where is the ingredient list? It's so small I can't find it. Okay, ingredients, Milk, cane sugar cream, cocoa powder processed with alkali, which I don't know what that is. Tapioca syrup, non fat milk. That was the closest thing I could find to non ultra processed. I don't know what the alkali thing is, so maybe that's still ultra processed. Here's the thing about these two, though. Does that make this one more healthy than that one?

[Dr. Sanjay Gupta]

Right.

[Meg Tirrell]

Kevin hall doesn't think so. His hypothesis is that you're going to. This is so hyper palatable. This is so energy dense. Even if it's minimally processed, it is going to drive you to eat to the same degree that the ultra processed ice cream is going to drive you to overeat. That's what his study is trying to figure out.

[Dr. Sanjay Gupta]

That's really interesting. I think it's a great point to sort of leave things on that at the same time that we may have these preconceived notions of just how problematic ultra processed foods are, maybe there are other foods that may not be as processed that still have that really high energy density, that hyper palatability that are still gonna really make you eat. And kind of knowing yourself in this regard probably is maybe the most important thing. What a pleasure. Always enjoy talking to you. Thank you.

[Meg Tirrell]

Likewise. Thank you.

[Dr. Sanjay Gupta]

Appreciate it.

Chasing Life is a production of CNN Audio. Our podcast is produced by Aaron Mathewson, Jennifer Lai, Grace Walker, Lori Gallaretta, Jesse Remedio, Sofia Sanchez and Kira Dehring. Andrea Cain is our medical writer. Our senior producer is Dan Bloom. Amanda Seeley is our showrunner, Dan Dezulla is our technical director. And the executive producer of CNN Audio is Steve Lichti, with support from Jamis Andrest, John Dionora, Hailey Thomas, Alex Manasseri, Robert Mathers, Lainey Steinhardt, Nicole Pessarou and Lisa Namoro. Special thanks to Ben Tinker and Nadia Kunang of CNN Health and Katie Hinman.

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