UPF craze a backward step for food science
7 August 2023
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Christopher Snowdon writes for The Critic
IEA Head of Lifestyle Economics Christopher Snowdon has written for The Critic where he argues that Chris van Tulleken’s Ultra-Processed People is filled with baseless claims and bias.
Christopher wrote:
“If Jamie Oliver is the fun police, Chris van Tulleken is the Taliban. The selling point of books like Ultra-Processed People is the idea that everything you know is wrong.
“There is a randomised controlled trial which gave a small group of volunteers a two-week diet of either ultra-processed food or minimally processed food. The nutritional profile of each diet was similar (the same levels of salt, sugar, etc.) and the volunteers were offered twice as much as they needed to maintain a healthy weight.
“Van Tulleken considers it to be extraordinarily robust, but it only really stands out because the general standard of dietary research is so poor. The volunteers were not given ultra-processed versions of the same meals. They were given totally different meals, plus very different snacks, and they could eat as much as they wanted for free.”
You can read part one of the article here with part two here.
Christopher’s piece was also quoted in City AM’s ‘Can I quote you on that’ section (09/08/2023 – page 8).
Christopher wrote:
“If Jamie Oliver is the fun police, Chris van Tulleken is the Taliban. The selling point of books like Ultra-Processed People is the idea that everything you know is wrong.
“There is a randomised controlled trial which gave a small group of volunteers a two-week diet of either ultra-processed food or minimally processed food. The nutritional profile of each diet was similar (the same levels of salt, sugar, etc.) and the volunteers were offered twice as much as they needed to maintain a healthy weight.
“Van Tulleken considers it to be extraordinarily robust, but it only really stands out because the general standard of dietary research is so poor. The volunteers were not given ultra-processed versions of the same meals. They were given totally different meals, plus very different snacks, and they could eat as much as they wanted for free.”
You can read part one of the article here with part two here.
Christopher’s piece was also quoted in City AM’s ‘Can I quote you on that’ section (09/08/2023 – page 8).
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