Brief Summary
This video documents an experiment where the presenter switches to an 80% ultra-processed food diet for four weeks to investigate its effects on health. The experiment, overseen by an obesity expert, measures changes in weight, hormone levels, and brain activity. The results show significant weight gain, increased hunger hormone levels, decreased fullness hormone levels, and new connections forming in the brain that link reward centers with automatic behaviors, similar to what is seen in addiction. The findings raise concerns about the impact of such diets, especially on children whose brains are still developing.
- Weight gain and increased BMI
- Hormonal changes increasing hunger
- Brain changes linking reward and automatic behavior
The presenter is switching from a healthy diet to one consisting of 80% ultra-processed foods, mirroring the diet of approximately one in five people in the UK. The aim is to determine the health effects of altering the proportion of ultra-processed foods in his diet. The experiment is being supervised by a leading obesity expert to ensure scientific validity.
The presenter's first meal is fried chicken, which he finds delicious due to the added chemicals like monosodium glutamate and sodium phosphates. He notes that the food is engineered to be extremely palatable, making it difficult to stop eating. He also consumes lasagna, appreciating its taste and convenience, and expresses a desire for more immediately after finishing. Cereal is also consumed, which he describes as an amazing bit of food engineering. He finds himself craving food more often than before, despite eating whenever he feels hungry.
The presenter consumes a stuffed crust meat feast pizza and reflects on the long list of ingredients, considering what he is tasting and how it feels in his mouth. He describes the food as "hyper-palatable" and hard to stop eating due to its soft texture. He experiences constipation and discomfort.
While camping, the presenter spends the day eating motorway junk food and wakes up feeling hungover due to the salt and sugar content. He hasn't had a bowel movement in 48 hours. He examines a processed meal that appears healthy, noting that it is industrially produced with multiple chemicals, despite having green traffic light labels for saturates and sugars.
Now three weeks into the diet, the presenter is nearing the end of the experiment. He consumes a pudding flavored with potassium sorbate, which he doesn't enjoy but can't stop eating. He experiences heartburn and a headache, leading to insomnia and a craving for more food at 4 a.m.
After four weeks, the presenter's weight increased by 6.5 kilograms, his body mass index rose, moving him into the overweight range, and his body fat increased by three kilos. If the weight gain continued at this rate for six months, he would gain six stone. His hunger hormone levels increased by 30 percent, while his fullness hormone levels decreased, creating a "double whammy" effect.
Brain scans reveal that the diet has linked the reward centers of the presenter's brain with areas that drive repetitive, automatic behavior. Eating ultra-processed food has become something his brain tells him to do without conscious desire, a pattern similar to that seen in addiction. The changes observed in the brain scans over just four weeks are significant and not typically seen in normal circumstances.
The presenter and the obesity expert express concern about the impact of ultra-processed food diets on children, whose brains are more malleable. The expert acknowledges that she has been feeding her own children quite a lot of ultra-processed food and that this experiment has made her more aware of her children's diet.
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Transcript
Full transcript of “What Are We Feeding Our Kids? - BBC News”. Click a timestamp to open the video at that moment. Need another video? Use the YouTube transcript generator.
0:00 i'm going to switch from my normal healthy diet it's pretty healthy i eat about 20 ultra processed food to an 80 ultra processed food diet and that is the same diet sounds extreme but it's the same diet that around one in five people in the uk eat so i want to find out if changing just doing nothing but changing the proportion of ultra processed food in my diet has any effect on my health my experiment will be run by one of britain's top obesity experts to make sure the results will be scientifically valid my first meal is a national favorite fried chicken it's the end of the first day i don't want any anyone to interrupt my
0:48 oh my god it's really good how about hot it's crunchy on the outside and salty quite peppery the chicken's moist what makes it ultra processed is the chemicals that are added like monosodium glutamate sodium phosphates and spice extracts to name just a few is it good it's like tickling some weird bit of my brain it's like crisps this is my crisps oh yeah exactly it would be impossible for me to not eat i've eaten three of these the reason i ate these lasagnas the whole time is because they're tasty they are really
1:35 quick you've got to admire the science that goes into this sort of stringy stringy cheesy bits i know i'm going to finish this and immediately want another one this is all in the name of science [Music] my observation is simply this is delicious and if i was served this in some amazing fancy restaurant as a dessert that i'd never experienced before i think it was a bit of sort of culinary genius you get the bowl of dry cereal you pour on the milk the milk goes brown the texture changes it's all snapping and crackling you know an amazing bit of food
2:22 engineering the rules of my experiment are that i eat whenever i feel hungry which is what i always do but previously that meant eating three meals a day with the occasional snack now i find myself craving food much more often [Music] i'm entering week two of my changed diet now what i'm having lyra is a stuffed crust meat feast pizza encourage her sorry i never would have thought of this but when you read this very long list of ingredients it just makes you think much more deeply
3:07 about what am i tasting and what are they trying to get me to taste and how does this all feel in my mouth this is definitely what the scientific paper is called sorry hyper-polishable so it's just really really really eatable delicious food it's really hard to stop eating part of that is because it's so soft it's like it's got a crunchy bit hmm well you don't have to do hard i'm not getting tired you are a pooing baby i'm gonna i'm gonna i'm gonna pick you up so you can poo in comfort sorry i'm having the opposite problem
3:54 from baby sasha i don't know what this is about this is just a video of me not having a poo but needing a poo i'm definitely gonna get piles [Music] and i'm also taking my diet on holiday [Music] i've gone camping i spent the whole day eating motorway junk and went to bed in my head or swollen in the camper van with the brothers-in-law and the brother i wonder if i'm going to get physically used to it so i don't wake up every morning feeling hungover because of the salt and the sugar and that and the fact i
4:40 haven't done a poo in 48 hours [Music] it's one of my five a day so it's healthy and it's actually got it's actually green on the traffic light system for saturates and sugars so this has all the appearances of a healthy meal some foods that look pretty healthy can still count as ultra processed foods because they're industrially produced and have multiple chemicals in the ingredients list our fibre source of protein gluten free i'm three weeks into my 80 ultra processed food diet to measure how it affects my body and there's only seven days to go time for some pudding flavoured with delicious
5:25 potassium sorbate you can really taste the potassium sorbate i'm not enjoying it but i can't stop sound like marriage it's um four a.m i haven't come to the kitchen i can't sleep i've got a heartburn i've got a headache i feel like eating more food it's nice having a cat when you're up at night well let's start with how you were when we started so four weeks ago magnificent what would you say a standard man in early middle age yeah
6:12 that is you after i have the increasing man boob and also your stomach is looks quite yeah your weight went up by 6.5 kilograms in four weeks that's quite a lot isn't it and your body mass index went up by two points which took you into the overweight range and then the body fat went up by three kilos if the weight gain continued at that rate for six months i would gain six stone next are my hormone levels i'm particularly interested in the ones that tell my body if i'm hungry or full have they changed and what we found is that the hunger hormone in your blood went up by 30 percent once you've been
7:00 on the diet so that's why i felt hungrier yes and what about the hormone that makes me feel full we saw a decrease in the fullness hormone so you've got a double whammy you've got an increase in the hunger hormone and a decrease in the hormone that's telling your brain that you've eaten finally professor bataham wants to know if eating a high ultra processed food diet has affected my brain we've repeated the scan from a month ago to compare the results blue is how areas of your brain talk to each other before the diet and the red are the new functional connections in your brain after four weeks on the diet so everything that's red is a new connection between parts of
7:47 your brain that wasn't there before comparing these scans has revealed that my diet has linked up the reward centers of my brain with the areas that drive repetitive automatic behavior so eating ultra processed food has become something my brain simply tells me to do without me even wanting it shockingly this is something you might see in a person with addiction if you just took people and scanned them at four week intervals you don't normally see a bunch of connections change that that does seem to be a real result yeah this is terrifying isn't it i mean i really really didn't expect this when i came in this morning i was surprised by the changes in the mri scan really surprised with just four weeks my concern is that
8:32 children's brains are still developing and they're much more malleable than mine which means the changes are likely to be even greater there are lots of children in this country who are on my diet from a very early age do we have any idea what that's doing to them no but the other thing is chris i'm a mum and when i look at what i've been feeding my children then actually they were having quite a lot of ultra-processed food really even as a obesity expert it's made me far more aware about what i'm actually giving my children
