Chris van Tulleken Longlist Interview

How does it feel to be longlisted?

There is no book prize list I would rather be on, and when I saw the other names on the list with me, to be in their company had a sense of unreality.

How did you conduct your research?

This book has been gestating for six years and involved investigating the food industry around the globe. I’ve seen first-hand how the UPF industry, comprising some of the most powerful corporations on earth, has commodified the ill health of our planet’s most disadvantaged whilst working as a doctor and academic in Brazil, South Asia and Central Africa. However, some of the most interesting research was speaking to food industry insiders who explained the extent to which money is the only incentive within the food system. It revealed how these companies will be unable to change unless their activities are regulated by governments.

Based on your research, how dangerous could ultra-processed food become for our society?

Poor diet has overtaken tobacco as the leading cause of early death on planet Earth. It causes not just weight gain and obesity but also cancer, inflammatory disease, malnutrition, metabolic illness, mental health problems and dementia and it drastically shortens life expectancy. It is the new tobacco, and we should consider the corporations that make it as the new tobacco industry.

Do you believe it is possible for us to ever have a true, holistic grasp of what we are really eating and how it affects us?

Yes. For hundreds of millennia, humans going back to pre-history have had a very sophisticated understanding of what comprises a healthy diet. That knowledge has been destroyed by the marketing and proliferation of an ultra-processed diet, comprising substances and made using processes that create products that no one can fully understand. If you want to understand food, speak to a good chef or a parent who cooks real food for their kids.  

What are you working on next?

My research now focuses on economic incentives that drive poor human health across lots of sectors. Ultra-processing is not a phenomenon confined to food. The same techniques, and some of the same companies, benefit when it comes to gambling, alcohol, vaping, oil, and technology. The primacy of financial incentives within the companies that affect our health are called financialisaton, and it is the reason why our world is full of products and substances that so many of us struggle to stop using. All my work is now about limiting the harmful influence of corporations over human health. This is explicitly not anti-capitalist or anti-growth, it is about increasing freedoms and rights, especially for the most disadvantaged.