The Untested Chemicals in Food

[00:00:00]Think about the last time you walked down a supermarket aisle. You're surrounded by thousands of brightly colored packages, flashing labels promising high protein, natural ingredients, and low fat. You pick a few up, bring them home, and within a few hours you find yourself completely unable to stop eating them.

[00:00:22]And if you're anything like me, you might relate to this.

[00:00:26]I just love couch drying and stuffing my face with crunchy, crispy, and flavorful foods while binge watching YouTube videos or a Netflix series. But, there's always this moment where a familiar bit of guilt creeps in and I ask myself, "Why do I have absolutely zero willpower to stop?" And if you can relate to this, this video is for you because I'm going to tell you [music] why you can't stop.

[00:00:54]And learning the why is the key to learning how to actually stop. Because the truth is, willpower isn't a problem.

[00:01:02]You're up against the smartest people in the world that have been hired by the biggest, most powerful corporations to make you addicted. We are trying [music] to willpower against a multi-billion dollar corporate infrastructure that has spent decades studying our brain chemistry for the sole purpose of overriding our natural satiety signals.

[00:01:23]And we also don't really know what actually is that we're actually stuffing our face with. For 99% of human history, humans were eating real food. Today, we're surrounded by something entirely different. Industrially produced edible substances filled with additives and flavorings that we have no clue what they actually are. Because while we might think these substances are edible and regulated as such, they are actually not.

[00:01:52]And companies can put whatever they want into the food that ends up [music] sitting in the supermarket shelves, just waiting for an unsuspecting human like you and me to walk along and pay our hard-earned money for it. And this fact is quite discomforting, seeing as this has not been the case for that long. So, ultra-processed foods are basically a global science experiment, and we're the lab rats. And here's another fun fact, the diet we're eating is killing us.

[00:02:21]So, welcome to the reality of today's food industry. In this video, we're going to crack open the black box that is today's food industry. We're going to look at the secret regulatory loopholes allowing untested chemicals onto our plate and into our bodies. We're going to talk about the advanced laboratory machinery designed to engineer your addiction to Pringles, candy, and even microwave lasagna. And how big corporations successfully captured nutrition science to blame you for a structural crisis. I've spent so much time researching this topic, I've read all these books and a lot of scientific papers, and I'll tell you all about it.

[00:02:59]And I promise you that at the end of this video, you'll be disgusted at the thought of eating ultra-processed foods ever again. But, first off, we're going to have a brief walk down the history lane of food. Because these industrially engineered edible substances haven't always been what us humans have been eating.

[00:03:18]Actually, what us humans eat has changed more in the last 40 years than in the previous 40,000 years.

[00:03:25]The history of ultra-processed foods is merely 150 years old. And their hyper-palatable, highly addictive diet that dominates our supermarkets and our couches hasn't even been around for a couple of decades. This is why I called you a lab rat earlier. Anyway, to understand why we are currently addicted to a diet that's killing us, we have to look at the timeline of food. The author of this book, Chris van Tulleken, has classified eating into three stages.

[00:03:54]So, let's start with the first age of eating, consuming the non-living. This started about 4.4 billion years ago until 560 million years ago. In this initial stage, which began with the origin of life approximately 4 billion years ago, single-celled organisms consumed stuff that had never been alive, such as rocks and metals. The end of this era was the moment key chemistry became biochemistry, and it was then that an evolutionary arms race began that eventually transformed single-celled ancestors into multicellular and more complex organisms, which leads us into the second age of eating, consuming other life. This age began when organisms evolved. Instead of extracting energy directly from rocks or the sun, they began to eat other living organisms or their waste products.

[00:04:48]Eating other living organisms has been the standard for animals for hundreds of millions of years.

[00:04:55]And this is where as humans come into play. The evolutionary lineage that led to modern humans began during the Miocene epoch, which started about 23 million years ago. And that's when things took a unique turn that led humans to develop away from apes.

[00:05:12]And to understand how and why this happened, we need to take a look at the evolution of food processing.

[00:05:20]Before humans came into play, food processing happened within the body, mainly chewing and digesting.

[00:05:27]In this era, eating was a full-time job.

[00:05:30]Our early ancestors, like Ardi, who lived 4.4 million years ago, had to eat roughly 12 lb of raw plant matter a day just to survive. Their bodies were built for this. They had large conical rib cage to house massive stomachs, and long intestines needed for heavy-duty digestion.

[00:05:51]And they spend about 6 hours a day simply chewing. Must have been quite exhausting, to be honest. But, around the time Homo erectus appeared, 2 million years ago, humans invented some new fascinating techniques to process food better. They began smashing, grinding, and especially cooking their food. Cooking made energy much more available. It upped the energy gain by 25% to 40%, and this led to biological adaptation. Because humans moved the work of digestion from the stomach to the kitchen, our physiology adapted. Our teeth, jaws, and gut became significantly smaller compared to other mammals of our size. Because we now process food outside of our bodies, this is why food historians call humans processivores. And humans becoming processivores had an insane effect on us.

[00:06:46]Because us humans were saving a lot of energy by avoiding having to spend hours of chewing raw meat and fibrous plants, the leftover energy was diverted to fuel spectacularly large and active brains.

[00:07:00]And this is what allowed humans to become even smarter finding and preparing high-quality food, further accelerating brain evolution. So, that was a pretty cool cycle. But, something else was developed, internal regulation.

[00:07:13]During this age, humans evolved complex internal systems involving regulatory neurons and hormones like leptin and ghrelin to precisely regulate intake based on the body's need for specific nutrients and energy. Hormones like leptin and ghrelin regulate satiety and our gives our brains the signal to stop eating. Sadly, modern food scientists have found ways to trick this ancient internal system, but more on that a bit later in the video. Because another thing happened at the very end of the second age of eating, the domestication of animals and grains, which happened 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. Humans began farming and dairying, which introduced new food processing traditions like making butter and yogurt to preserve milk for longer. But about 150 years ago, we entered an entirely new age of eating. And this is the age of eating that I will mainly focus on in this video. The third age of eating is the current era of ultra-processed foods. It is characterized by a fundamental shift away from consuming living organisms like plants and other animals to consuming industrially constructed edible substances. Unlike previous ages driven by energy needs, this age is powered by the flow of money. And by flow of money, I mean the flow that big corporations need in order to thrive in capitalism. This age began gradually as industrial processes started replacing whole foods with modified food fractions like liquid sugars and seed oils. And it all started around 1900 when the first commercial baby food was marketed in the Netherlands. In 1906, Will Kellogg added sugar corn to corn flakes, which signaled the birth of the food industry strategy of swapping traditional ingredients for addictive additives like sugar to drive sales. And 1911 marked the invention of Crisco.

[00:09:12]Instead of solidifying cottonseed oil by mixing it with animal fat like the other brands, Crisco used a brand new process called hydrogenation, which Procter & Gamble, the creator of Crisco, had perfected after years of research and development. Crisco was the first trans fat and was a cheap, shelf-stable lard substitute, becoming one of the first mass-produced UPFs.

[00:09:37]Lard is pig fat and has been a staple in human diets for thousands of years dating back to prehistoric times.

[00:09:44]People have been cooking with pig fat {slash} lard since the domestication of pigs, making it one of the oldest culinary fats in human history.

[00:09:53]But now there was Crisco, introduced by Procter & Gamble, who coincidentally would later go on to invent Pringles as well as many other ultra-processed foods. But 1911 was just the birth of their industrial processing. The 1950s marked the golden age of food processing. Following World War II, the sale of refrigerators and freezers soared. And the food industry scrambled to fill them with time-saving innovations like frozen TV dinners, frozen orange juice, and instant puddings.

[00:10:26]By this decade, ultra-processed foods began to constitute the majority of the diet in the UK and US. By 1955, the CEO of General Foods, Charles Mortimer, had coined the term convenience foods. He argued that convenience was the new controlling denominator of consumer demand and required to satisfy the public.

[00:10:48]This shifted the focus of food design from nutrition to speed and ease.

[00:10:53]And this shift coincided with an important cultural change, women entering the workforce. Post-World War II, a cultural shift and an expansion in clerical and service jobs led to a surge in the employment of women. By 1970, about half of single women and 40% of married women in the US were in the labor force, which obviously left less time for food preparation, a task that was historically linked to women. The food industry moved aggressively to capitalize on women's lack of time and the disruption of traditional cooking rhythms. But this convenience doctrine came at a price.

[00:11:32]By the 1970s, obesity rates, which had stayed flat for decades, began a sharp trajectory upward as government subsidies started propping up processed commodity crops like corn and soy.

[00:11:43]Schools began removing kitchens and replacing lunch ladies with heat-n-eat processed options like frozen pizza to cut costs. This trend eventually led to Kraft launching Lunchables. These meals for children use high loads of salt, sugar, and fat to make meat and cheese safe to eat months after manufacture.

[00:12:06]This created an entirely new category of assembled meals targeted specifically at children's desire of empowerment. And we all know who has a big YouTube channel targeting children and who tried selling their own version of Lunchables.

[00:12:19]Luckily, these were discontinued soon after their launch, largely due to a severe mold controversy and backlash over its health claims and intense criticism regarding its marketing to children. But anyway, back to the 1980s.

[00:12:33]Because the 1980s saw the rise of the snacking revolution. For centuries, eating had meant connection.

[00:12:39]Families gathering around a table for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. But in the 1980s, that norm shattered almost overnight, making it acceptable to eat anything anywhere.

[00:12:51]The food industry successfully transformed snacking into a fourth meal, engineering highly portable cellophane wrapped products built for mindless consumption. By the 1990s, the industry had perfected the use of hidden fats, emulsified oils tucked into doughs or spreads that bypassed the body's fullness signals, causing consumers to eat roughly 10% more without realizing it. In one of my previous videos, I talk about the rise of financialization. In the 1970s, with the election of Ronald Reagan in the US and Margaret Thatcher in the UK, the economy became increasingly financialized, and stock market returns became very important.

[00:13:30]Well, it was in this era of financialization that the industry was rewritten into a predatory system that prioritized company growth and market dominance over the biological welfare of the population. Basically, the food industry was re-engineered to satisfy Wall Street's demand for profit growth, effectively replacing the goal of human nutrition with the pursuit of maximum shareholder value. Okay. So, now we've gone through the three stages of human eating. Also, I do want to point out that while the third age of eating began a few decades ago, the second age continues today. Humans remain second age organisms whenever we consume whole foods, though modern society has made eating whole foods more expensive and time-consuming than eating third age industrially ultra-processed substances.

[00:14:18]And to maximize those profits to satisfy Wall Street, big corporations and their food scientists couldn't just keep using normal ingredients.

[00:14:27]They needed cheaper synthetic alternatives, and they needed chemical preservatives to extend shelf life for months and years, as well as artificial texturizers to replace real fats and hyper-potent flavorings to make humans addicted to foods. You've all seen these crazy words on food labels: polysorbate AT, carboxymethyl cellulose, xanthan gum, ethyl methyl phenyl glycidate, maltodextrin, phosphoric acid, natural flavorings, dimethylpolysiloxane, butylated hydroxyanisole, butylated hydroxyanisole, often shortened to BHA, as well as calorie sweeteners like sucralose, aspartame, saccharin, and acesulfame K.

[00:15:18]Listing all of them would be impossible, as first I really struggle with the pronunciation of them. And also, the total number of substances added to just the US food supply is estimated to be higher than 10,000. You've seen these names on the back of your cereal boxes and snack bars, sandwiches, and all other kinds of packaged foods. In fact, it is hard to find a packaged food without food additives these days. Trust me, researching this led me to try to avoid ultra-processed foods. And it's so tiring trying to find something without additives in it when I just go to the supermarket or just want to like eat something out. Anyway, what even is a food additive exactly? Legally, a food additive is any substance that is intended to become a component of your food or change its characteristics. But, there's a big question with these food additives. How do we know these chemicals are safe to eat?

[00:16:13]You might think the FDA, which stands for the Food and Drug Administration, you'd think that they test every single one of these additives, just like they do with medical drugs.

[00:16:24]At least, that's what I thought until I started going deeper into this topic.

[00:16:29]I mean, it makes sense. Billions of people eat food with additives every day and are putting these chemicals in their bodies. You'd think there'd be some kind of oversight.

[00:16:38]But, actually, that's not the case at all. Food companies can actually just mix in wild food additives willingly and sell the stuff without ever notifying anyone about it, let alone be concerned about the safety. To understand how this is possible, we have to go back to the year 1958. That year, the US Congress passed the Food Additives Amendment. As you might remember, the 1950s were a time where ultra-processed foods were really becoming a thing. Remember the fridges and frozen TV dinners and stuff like that. Anyway, so Congress was kind of worried about all of these additives entering the American diets. Um so, the Food Additives Amendment was supposed to force companies to prove a chemical was safe before putting it in our food. But there was a big but.

[00:17:24]>> [gasps] >> Congress created an exception for substances that were generally recognized as safe. Shortened to GRAS.

[00:17:32]This was meant for common things everyone already knew were fine, like vinegar, flour, and table salt. The idea was to save the FDA from wasting time reviewing ingredients that had been used for centuries. But over time this narrow loophole became a giant backdoor for the food industry. But let's look more closely at how today's food regulation really works. Today companies have three pathways they can choose from when they want to add a new chemical to the food they are selling. Path one is the FDA petition, which is sort of the honest way. It works like this. The company submits all their research data to the FDA for a full review. It's expensive, it takes years, and almost no one does anymore. If a chemical successfully passes all the rigorous testing, the substance is officially approved. This process is similar to getting a license for a new medical drug. Since the year 2000, so in the last 26 years, only 10 applications for new food substances have gone through this full approval process. So if companies want to add a new chemical to their foods nowadays, they usually take one of the other two pathways. Path two is voluntary notification, which is sort of the quick way. The company tells the FDA, "Hey, we've decided this is safe. Here's our research." They then hand over all of their research and testing, and if the FDA is satisfied with the submission, it issues a letter stating it has no questions about the manufacturer's GRAS determination. Remember, GRAS is generally recognized as safe. This letter is officially considered an agency opinion, meaning the FDA is simply acknowledging the company's conclusion rather than conducting its own independent safety validation or granting a formal [snorts] approval. The distinction between an opinion and an approval is further highlighted by the company's ability to withdraw from the process. If the FDA doesn't give them the no questions letter and begins asking difficult or clarifying questions that a company does not want to answer, the company can just simply ask to cease to evaluate the additive. And then can choose to take the third pathway. The third path is self-determination, which is the secret way. A company can simply decide for themselves that a chemical is safe. They don't even have to tell the FDA the chemical exists. This is what experts call secret GRAS, aka secret generally regarded safe, which is kind of a contradiction in itself because if it's secret it can't be like generally regarded, can it? But anyways.

[00:20:11]Now, if you're anything like me, now would be the point where you go, "What the hell? How is this legal?" Well, the law says GRAS must be determined by qualified experts.

[00:20:24]But who are these experts? Usually, the company going through secret GRAS hires and pays a panel of scientists to review the safety of their own product.

[00:20:33]Research shows that those scientists are only a very small pool of professionals.

[00:20:38]Just seven individuals. These guys have occupied almost half of all available panel positions in the last two decades.

[00:20:47]And funnily enough, these experts are paid by the companies. So, there's a massive financial conflict of interest.

[00:20:53]If one of the experts says a chemical's unsafe, they probably just won't be hired again. Hence, why all the companies turn to these seven people to sign off on whatever chemical they want to put in the food. Because these scientists have a proven track record of approving everything. Oh, and also the FDA never has to be notified about anything. Basically, these ultra-processed edible substances we eat every day are being green-lighted in secret by the people making a profit from them. Unsurprisingly, companies love this setup. And this has led to an estimated 1,000 substances in the US food supply that the FDA has zero information on. And because the FDA doesn't know chemicals exist, they can't track their cumulative effect. They don't know how these secret additives might interact with other chemicals in your diet to affect your thyroid, your hormones, your gut, or your children's development. Okay. So, when we started about food additives, I listed some.

[00:21:54]Remember these.

[00:21:56]So, let's start talking what effects these additives can have. Because unlike the FDA, actual scientists have actually done research on these substances.

[00:22:05]First, let's look at polysorbate 80 and carboxymethylcellulose.

[00:22:10]I've actually become really good at pronouncing this. I'm kind of proud.

[00:22:13]Anyway, you'll find polysorbate 80, which is also often labeled as E433, in stuff like pickles and ice cream, and carboxymethylcellulose, which is also often labeled as CMC or E466, in thick milkshakes and salad dressings. You can also buy online in big bags if you're into molecular gastronomy or diarrhea. And these two substances are so-called emulsifiers, designed to bind fat and water together.

[00:22:43]And they aren't just used in food, they're also used in different products like roll-on deodorants, toothpaste, moisturizing cream, shampoo, and hair dye. Several experiments published in prestigious publications like Nature show that at concentrations lower than what humans regularly eat, these emulsifiers strip away the protective mucus layer in your gut. This allows bacteria to touch the gut lining directly, causing leaky gut and chronic inflammation, as well as weight gain. In mice, these emulsifiers even induced increased anxiety. And if you don't really care a lot about your gut being inflamed or aren't really worried about getting anxious, this paper, which showed that the exposure to the dietary emulsifier polysorbate 80 accelerates age-related cognitive decline, might put you off the substance. Let's take a look at xanthan gum next. It is found almost everywhere in ultra-processed food. It is an exopolysaccharide, which is essentially the sugary slime secreted by a bacteria that causes black rot on vegetables. Xanthan gum is also widely used in the oil and gas industry.

[00:23:48]It serves as a primary additive in water-based drilling muds to make them more gel-like. But xanthan gum can also be used to replace more expensive molecules to give food a longer shelf life. Anyway, let's look at maltodextrin. This is a short glucose polymer derived from starch. It's used to give low-fat products like low-fat peanut butter a fatty mouthfeel or to give a surface sheen to milkshakes. It has the calories of sugar, but no sweet taste, which makes it a caloric ghost that bypasses your brain's sweetness senses. In tests, people unknowingly prefer water spiked with maltodextrin because their gut senses the calories and signals the brain's reward center to want more. Biologically, it is linked to cellular stress, intestinal inflammation, and helping pathogens like salmonella penetrate your gut's mucus.

[00:24:41]Another fairly common food additive is phosphoric acid. It's made by burning rocks in an arc furnace with coal.

[00:24:48]And usually, it's found in Coca-Cola.

[00:24:50]It's also found in processed meats, dairy products, and cereal bars.

[00:24:54]But it's not just found in foods. It is also used in semiconductor processing and road asphalt. In Coca-Cola, it is used because humans have a natural aversion to sickly sweet substances. The body tries to avoid absorbing sugar faster than it can process it. Coca-Cola contains roughly 9 teaspoons of sugar per can. Without phosphoric acid and other additives, this amount of sugar would be difficult to tolerate and no one would like the sickly sweetness of Coca-Cola. Basically, it masks all the sugar that gets you hooked to the drink.

[00:25:28]But apart from consuming too much sugar, there's another danger. Phosphoric acid is extremely acidic. It has a pH value of 2.4, if that means anything to you.

[00:25:37]Meaning it dissolves tooth enamel on contact. It is also linked to leaking minerals out of your bones, which leads to bone density loss. Yay.

[00:25:47]>> [snorts] >> But let's move on to butylated hydroxyanisole, often shortened to BHA. BHA is a chemical preservative used extensively in the food industry to prevent spoilage in products like chips and meat.

[00:26:03]It's also found in chewing gum. The International Agency for Research on Cancer categorizes BHA as a possible human carcinogen. This is based on consistent scientific evidence showing that BHA causes tumors in animals.

[00:26:16]Lastly, I want to talk about low-calorie sweeteners. Often marketed as diet or healthy alternatives, these synthetic chemicals, such as aspartame, sucralose, saccharin, and acesulfame K, are designed to provide intense sweetness without calories. And they are everywhere, from protein bars to diet food and drinks to ordinary things like bread. And you, like me, might have been a fan of diet Coke every now and then because you think, well, I mean, it basically doesn't have calories, so what's the harm?

[00:26:48]Well, turns out that consuming sweetness without corresponding calories creates a biological mismatch. The tongue signals the brain that energy is coming, but when the gut remains empty, the body may respond by increasing appetite and insulin release, which can lead to weight gain rather than loss.

[00:27:06]Furthermore, studies show that sweeteners like sucralose and saccharin can alter the composition of gut bacteria, potentially leading to glucose intolerance and inflammation. In a study on fruit flies, those fed sucralose became hyperactive and behaved as if they were starving, leading them to eat significantly more food. But it doesn't even stop there.

[00:27:27]Some sweeteners have faced historical bans or warnings. Sodium cyclamate was banned in the US in 1970 due to toxicity concerns, though it remains in use in the EU somehow. Saccharin was linked to bladder cancer in rat studies, and aspartame continues to face scrutiny for its effects on oxidative stress and inflammation. And these sugar-free sweeteners are used to aid the weight loss of an overweight population. But despite being calorie-free, multiple large-scale studies have found that drinking artificially sweetened beverages or consuming artificially sweetened food, like all the healthy protein bars or low-calorie candy, is associated with increased risk of obesity, metabolic syndrome, and type 2 diabetes. And many of these sweeteners have never been approved by the FDA. I could go on and on here and talk about food dyes and cereal and all kinds of modified starches, trans fats, emulsifiers, and many more. But I think you get the point. We're no longer eating food in the traditional sense.

[00:28:29]We're eating industrial formulations designed by corporations that elongate the shelf life of products, make us more addicted to their products, and make the production of them as cheap as possible.

[00:28:39]And all of this in a quest to maximize our consumption, and in doing so, the shareholder value for these big corporations. Okay, before we move on, I have to tell you a little story. Last night, I watched the England-Ghana game with one of my mates. The game was actually quite boring. Zero goals were scored. So, the only thing we did was drink beers and eventually go home.

[00:29:02]But, on my way home, I suddenly got really hungry.

[00:29:05]And because I knew I didn't have any greasy food at home, you know, the kind of food drunk you inevitably crave, I went to the Costcutter nearby tube station and bought a frozen pizza. And once it was done baking in the oven, I devoured it. And even though I had spent the whole day prior researching all the disgusting chemicals that the corporation that manufactured this frozen pizza had put into it, I just couldn't stop eating it.

[00:29:31]And the same is the case with lots of other foods.

[00:29:34]Even though they are bad for me, I just cannot stop eating them.

[00:29:38]Which brings us to how do corporations get us so addicted to food?

[00:29:44]We've been led to believe that overeating is a simple failure of willpower, but the reality is far more calculated. Modern food is mathematically engineered to be addictive. Using high-level regression analysis, industry scientists find the bliss point, the precise concentration of sugar, salt, and fat that sends the brain over the moon and overrides your natural satiety signals. The bliss point is the sensory sweet spot where food is most enjoyable.

[00:30:12]Think of it like an inverted U curve on a graph. This is the up slope. As you add more sugar, people like the food more and more. The peak, this is the bliss point.

[00:30:23]The maximum possible neurological reward.

[00:30:26]And the down slope is if you keep adding sugar past the peak, the food becomes sickly sweet and the appeal crashes. To find that exact peak, the food industry uses a process called optimization backed by high-level regression analysis. And this is the step-by-step engineering approach of it. The scientists create dozens, sometimes 60 or more, slightly different versions of a product.

[00:30:51]Like a new soda, for example.

[00:30:53]Varying the ratios of ingredients. Then there's the human data. They hire thousands of regular people to sit in professional tasting rooms. These testers sip, smell, and rate every version on a scale of 0 to 100. And then all those data points are dumped into a computer and sorted using a statistical method called conjoint analysis. The math looks for patterns to see how different variables, for example, like syrup level 11 versus packaging six. The regression analysis allows scientists to dial in the perfect recipe that hits the neurological jackpot every time. Now, seeing how these corporations weaponize data science to dictate our habits can feel a little dystopian. But it also highlights a massive truth about the modern world. Maths and data are the ultimate languages of leverage. If you don't understand how data works, you're at the mercy of the institutions that do.

[00:31:50]And if you're a parent, this is exactly why the way we teach maths and problem-solving to our kids needs a radical upgrade.

[00:31:57]Right now, standard education is struggling to keep up and a lot of AI tools are honestly just making our kids' brains passive by doing the homework and handing them the answers. That's why I want to introduce you to today's sponsor, Brilliant. Brilliant is an incredible learning platform designed for kids in grades 5 through 12, as well as college and university students. They just launched an interactive AI tutor named Koji, and he's a total game-changer.

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[00:33:44]And now, let's get back to the video. As you can see, the bliss point of food is no culinary accident. At least not when big corporations are involved. They have turned food preparation into a high-speed dopamine delivery engineering contest. And it really is high-speed.

[00:34:00]While cigarette smoke takes 10 seconds to stir the brain, sugar on the tongue sends an electrical signal to the brain in just 600 milliseconds, nearly 20 times faster than cigarettes and also faster than snorting cocaine. But addiction engineering doesn't just relate to sugar or flavorings.

[00:34:15]Everything is perfectly designed for you to get maximally hooked on the food. But apart from the bliss factor of food, there is another really important point that food corporations have to take into consideration to get you as addicted as possible to their stuff. Texture. Chris van Tulleken explains how most ultra-processed food has the same softness. Initially, I thought nonsense.

[00:34:38]Pringles aren't soft, they're crunchy.

[00:34:41]But, Ventura Tolican goes on to explain that after that one initial crunch in your mouth, it quickly turns into a soft paste that is both sweet and salty at the same time.

[00:34:51]This softness means that you can eat more of it faster, which is a key element in driving overconsumption, aka more profit for the food companies. The same relates to ultra-processed bread, cookies, or KFC hot wings. Hot wings feature a dry crust that functions almost like a shell, but once it fractures, it releases a burst of juices from the moist chicken inside, which is super soft, making the hot wings as desirable as any classic drugs. Research has shown that the softness of what we're eating is causing increasingly severe dental issues, overbites, and even irregularities in jaw size. But again, nothing is left to chance here.

[00:35:31]Food scientists use incredible machinery and research to dial in specific textures that override a consumer's natural satiety signals. A key texture design feature of the most popular ultra-processed foods is dynamic contrast, which is a mix of textures like a brittle exterior and a soft interior, which the brain finds highly arousing, according to research. But, while the aroma of food can be precisely analyzed using tools like gas chromatographs, the subjective sensation of mouthfeel is much harder to measure.

[00:36:07]But again, food corporations are one step ahead, and their food scientists don't just rely on consumer surveys here. They use machines like the Universal TA.XT2 texture analyzer. This is basically a machine that translates physical textures into mathematical data to help companies engineer products with the most perfect texture ratio. This level of engineering ensures that every bite provides a consistent high-speed sensory hit that keeps you coming back for more.

[00:36:35]And clearly, it works. Let's take a look at a McDonald's hamburger. These are designed to provide a sequence of textural experiences. The initial crunch of onions and gherkins, as well as a dry bun crust. But these ultimately turn really soft as soon as you've chewed on them once. This leads to consumers inhaling a burger in well under a minute before satiety hormones can even realize what's going on. And because the stop eating signal from our ancient biological systems have not evolved to handle food this soft, we often finish whatever ultra-processed substance long before our brain registers that we are full. And this is what has led to these obesity rates. But if you're wondering how food companies got so terrifyingly good at hacking our biology, the answer isn't just modern science. It's also corporate heritage. What most people don't realize is that many of the world's largest food corporations have a direct and significant history of being owned and operated by big tobacco companies. In the late 20th century, giants like Philip Morris and R.J.

[00:37:35]Reynolds used their massive cash reserves to acquire leading food brands, fundamentally reshaping how modern processed food is hyper-engineered, hyper-palatized, and aggressively marketed to consumers. In 1985, Philip Morris, the world's largest cigarette maker, bought General Foods, the owners of Jell-O and Tang for $5.7 billion.

[00:37:56]Three years later, they acquired Kraft, the makers of Lunchables, for nearly $13 billion.

[00:38:03]Later, adding Nabisco to their portfolio in in 2000. These mergers didn't just expand their portfolios. They made Philip Morris the largest food company in the world. And the cigarette companies took the exact hyper-addictive playbook used to hook the world on cigarettes and just applied it to food.

[00:38:21]But we need to move on because the funny thing is that even though these corporations do this insane amount of research to get you to over-consume their products, food companies still pretend that they want you to be healthy. Mainly, because they ran into a problem. See, once you've engineered a food so addictive that it actively drives a global obesity crisis, you kind of run to a massive problem. Governments start talking about sugar taxes and consumers start looking at your ingredients. And all of this health talk is threatening to hurt your bottom line.

[00:38:53]So, how does big food protect its profits? By taking over the health talk.

[00:38:58]If you don't want to change the food, you have to change the science.

[00:39:02]This is a strategy known as scientific capture.

[00:39:06]A deliberate multi-million dollar campaign by major food corporations to quietly buy influence over public policy, medical research, and fitness organizations. The most direct form of scientific capture is through research funding. Independent meta-analyses have shown that studies funded by the food industry are 7.4 times more likely to produce a conclusion favorable to the funder, aka the big corporations, than independently funded research. And a company that's particularly good at executing this playbook is Coca-Cola.

[00:39:37]Between 2008 and 2016, a network analysis identified 461 publications funded by Coca-Cola involving almost 1,500 researchers. Many of these scientists published papers they had no conflicts of interest while receiving millions from the corporation. But not just that, big corporations have also infiltrated organizations that train health experts and set standards of care.

[00:40:04]Like the British Nutrition Foundation, which acts as a sounding board for government policy, but is funded by nearly every major food giant including Cargill, Mars, and Nestle. Another one of these is the Global Energy Balance Network. It's bankrolled by Coca-Cola and and this network's aim was to shift the blame for obesity away from diet and towards a lack of physical activity, arguing there was virtually no compelling evidence linking sugary drinks to obesity. Coca-Cola then also bankrolled a huge campaign called Exercise Medicine. And this strategy was highly effective in deflecting regulatory pressure. This could be seen in Michelle Obama's Let's Move program.

[00:40:43]Even if the First Lady's campaign had been started with the best intentions, it eventually came to food industry pressure. In second term, the Let's Move campaign shifted its focus away from blaming the industry and toward exclusively promoting physical activity and school lunch improvements. Letting corporations meddle with nutrition science has led to an outbreak of claims that in order to be healthy, we should just move more, but definitely keep buying their products, which they now obviously have adapted now, like low-sugar protein bars. Because the reason you're fat is because you're just not eating enough protein, of course.

[00:41:19]And you definitely need electrolytes.

[00:41:22]But yeah, they've also invented loads of other products. This capture of science has fundamentally distorted the public's understanding of health. While exercise and protein are obviously valuable for overall well-being, the real scientific consensus outside of industry-funded circles is that inactivity is actually not a significant contributor to the obesity epidemic. The primary driver of obesity is consumption of ultra-processed food and drinks. And trust me, as someone who's definitely tried, it's just not possible to outrun a bad diet.

[00:41:54]Sadly.

[00:41:55]But it's not just science that has been captured. Actual regulatory bodies have been infiltrated, too. There's a permanent revolving door spinning between high-level corporate boardrooms of big food corporations and the government agencies meant to regulate them. A good example of this is Tom Vilsack. He served as a United States Secretary of Agriculture from 2009 to 2017 during the Barack Obama administration and again from 2021 to 2025 during the Joe Biden administration.

[00:42:27]And guess what he was doing between his two terms?

[00:42:30]He earned nearly 1 million per year as an executive at the Dairy Checkoff Program.

[00:42:36]The Dairy Checkoff is funded by and works on behalf of America's dairy farmers and dairy importers to build sales and trust. And Tom wasn't even coy about it and announced his industry role just four days after resigning from his government post. And it's just crazy we're letting this happen. No one thinks that Philip Morris executives should work with or fund the research around whether smoking harms you. No one thinks that tobacco legislation should be written by charities funded by British American Tobacco. So, why should food policy around health be any different? Anyway, researching for this video I became more and more disgusted with ultra-processed foods and I can happily say I'm almost ultra-processed food free. I basically just try to eat whole foods and buy unpackaged stuff.

[00:43:22]And yeah, that means I lose more time to cooking. Um, but after learning all of this stuff, I feel like it's the better choice for my health and ultimately also a bit of a political choice. Sometimes I will still accidentally have some ultra-processed foods when I'm out with friends or ravenously hungry after a night out. But making this video has really made me a lot less vulnerable to the appeals of ultra-processed foods. And I hope watching this video has left you a bit disgusted by these substances. But if you are still kind of craving ultra-processed foods, I highly recommend reading Chris van Tulleken's book Ultra-Processed People, which I'm sure will convince you for good that Pringles, Kit Kats, and frozen pizzas are indeed not food that should go in your body, but they're just industrially processed edible substances that are rather unappealing. Ultra-processed foods are everywhere, and it's so hard to distinguish unhealthy foods from healthy foods because nowadays loads of unhealthy foods claim to be healthy.

[00:44:26]Think of all the protein bars in your supermarket and also protein powders and whatnot. Everything. To spot them, I just try to follow a simple rule.

[00:44:34]If the product is wrapped in plastic and contains at least one ingredient you wouldn't usually find in a standard home kitchen, it is ultra-processed. Lastly, if you, like me, struggle with eating ultra-processed foods in moderation, I think abstinence is the only way. As we've seen, ultra-processed foods function like a drug.

[00:44:54]Just as a smoker can't easily have just one cigarette, it's probably easier for most people to be entirely abstinent from their binge foods rather than attempting to eat them in moderation. At least that's what the food scientists who've written all the books I've used in this video have suggested. We've been told that our health is a matter of personal willpower, but it's hard to exert a willpower against a system designed to break it. So, we just have to fight back against it. And you're not helpless. Every time you eat, you aren't just fueling your body. You're voting for the world you want to live in. Our way to fight back against the big food corporations is knowledge. Real food is the only lever we have left to fix our health and our planet. An understanding what real food actually is is a weapon.

[00:45:38]Anyway, if you like this video, um make sure to subscribe, leave a like, and let me know in the comments how you've been getting on with ultra-processed foods.

[00:45:48]Um I would love to know if you guys have also struggled as much with it as I have.

[00:45:53]Um and yeah, just let me know what you think.

[00:45:56]Anyway, see you soon. Bye.