The impact of ultra-processed foods on energy balance | Peter Attia and Michael Easter

What about, um, any, so, so here in the U S of course, or in the developed world, any one of us, myself included, who's thinking about their weight is kind of playing this game of how much should I eat. And, you know, there are all these great, you know, sort of models like, well, you know, always get up from the table when you're still a little bit hungry or really, you know, you know, count your calories or limit your carbs or limit your fat or, you know, we always have like kind of heuristics that we try to use to regulate caloric balance. Do they do any such thing or do they literally eat as much as they want of these bland foods, but their off switch just comes so much sooner because presumably nothing in their brain is being hijacked. Yeah. So there, I'll answer that with this. There was an interesting study from Kevin Hall at the NIH and they basically took a group of people and for two weeks, um, they fed them a diet. That was ultra processed food. I love this study, by the way. Oh, it's fantastic. And Kevin was a real skeptic going into this study. I think it's worth maybe giving a little bit of background. That's a great point. So a group from Brazil had basically come out and said that, you know, one of the reasons, uh, for the obesity crisis is because of, uh, the food is ultra processed there. The nature of the ultra processing itself as leading people to eat more. So he calls them up and he goes, you know, what Evans do you have? Like, why do you think that? And sorry to interrupt, but just to make sure the listener understands cause you and I know Kevin very well. Um, Kevin's an empiricist whose view is to the best of his knowledge based on his data. And Kevin generally has access to the most controlled studies because he runs a metabolic ward, right? It's the energy content of the food that is driving weight gain. Yes. And it is independent of the quality of the food. Yes. So a thousand calories of broccoli is as fattening as a thousand calories of potato chips. Yes. So he calls them up and he, you know, he says basically that, and then he goes, so why do you think that? And they go, well, ultra processed food has more, it's got more sugar, it's got more salt. And he goes, well, you just named all these macronutrients. Like you can't say that. And that doesn't make any sense. So what he decides to do is he's going to study this, see if there's any there there. Cause he's a skeptic, right? So it takes this group of people, uh, for two weeks, they eat a, uh, they were kind of differentiated, but for the first two weeks, they eat a ultra processed diet for the next two weeks. They eat a diet that is matched for everything, carbs, salt, all that, uh, for the other two weeks. But this food is minimally processed. So it's a minimally processed version of the diet. So for example, on one night of the ultra processed diet, you might be getting, you know, like the Swanson meatloaf with the, with the, uh, mashed potatoes that have the butter and all that kind of stuff, uh, on the unprocessed night, that version might be cut a beef, you know, some plain potatoes, that sort of thing. And what he finds is that when, and just to be clear, I believe you could, it was an ad lib feed study. Yes. You, the, the participant eats as much of the food as they want. They're not being restricted. Correct. So he's telling them eat as much as you want until you feel full. And what he finds is that when people are on the, uh, ultra processed diet, they end up eating about 500 more calories a day and they start to gain weight. When they're on the minimally processed diet, they eat less and they start to spontaneously lose weight. And so I think one of the reasons for this, uh, obviously there's a lot of potential reasons, but I think one of the things that he thinks is that, uh, speed becomes a factor. So when you process a food to the extent that it becomes, you know, an ultra processed food, i.e. a junk food, uh, it becomes a lot faster to eat and you simply, uh, end up eating more of it. And there's more triggers to continue eating more of it because it is so hyperpalatable and enjoyable. This leads to the three V's of snacking. Yes. So I talked to a, uh, a guy who's with the food industry and he says, if you want to get a snack food to sell, it's got to have three V's. It's got to have value. So it's got to be relatively affordable. It's got to have variety, meaning there's got to be a variety of flavors. The flavors have to be intense. And oh, by the way, if you're making one, just one snack food, that's not a good, that's not a good idea. Don't make just one original Pringles, make 20 Pringles, make barbecue Pringles, make sour cream Pringles on and on and on. Right. There's all this different varieties. And then, uh, three, the third V is velocity. It has to be fast to eat. So snacking was not a sort of cultural thing until about 1970. And once people start to really snack, I mean, this becomes, this is a concerted movement by the food industry to go, okay, uh, how do we sell more food? Well, let's invent this category called snacking. And once you see snacking start to take off, I think you really start to see the rise in obesity in our country and then to have it trickle out across the world in 1970. Yeah. It's kind of amazing to think that only 50 years ago, this concept, which seems so ingrained in how we live. I mean, you can't really go anywhere. Like think about every time you're on an airplane, there's like a snack basket, like everywhere you go, there are snacks. There are snacks. Yeah. And so, uh, and there's a, I think there's a lesson in that. Right. And so when you think about, okay, well, if I'm trying to eat less, how can I do that? Well, I think that the lessons from the Chimane suggest, and there's other research that backs this up is that foods that are minimally processed, easy way to think about that is our ingredients rather than have ingredients. Um, they cut the brakes that sort of lead people to overeat, meaning it's a lot slower to eat, uh, foods that are unprocessed. So let's go back to your, uh, the example of the, you know, thousand calories of brownie versus a thousand calories of broccoli. Yes. Those two things might make you equally fat, but I would love to watch a person try and eat 1000 calories of broccoli. It's never going to happen. It just takes up so much volume in your stomach. It's slow to eat. Whereas with a brownie, I mean, I've eaten a thousand calories of brownie before, right? I mean, it's, it's relatively easy to do and there's, we can do it after this podcast. No, no, I, I, um, you know, I get asked all the time about the carnivore diet, right. And, and people sort of say, what do you, what do you think of this? Does this really work? And I said, look, as someone who's never done it, but who thinks about this problem a lot, it doesn't really surprise me that if a person were limited to ribeyes and they couldn't eat a single other thing, but ribeyes, despite how calorically dense a ribeye is, and it's right at the top of calorically dense foods. Yeah. I can totally see how a person would lose weight. Now, if you said, well, it's ribeyes plus baked potatoes, plus, you know, this, plus this, plus this, and that's all I'm going to eat. Well, at some point it becomes a little bit comical. So, um, yeah, like I think if you were stuck eating one food for the rest of your life, you would wither away regardless of what that food is. And by the way, that might even apply to something as ridiculous as ice cream. Um, and, uh, conversely, if you want to make that even more extreme, if you want to increase the number of food choices, you have to pull a different knob or dial a different lever the other way, which is okay. Then you have to dial down the processing.