Team, if you haven't yet, head on over to 3PillersMethod.com to start a five-day free trial on my app.

This is where you can go through the entire Three Pillars Method process to develop your own personalized nutrition plan for those weight, health, and fitness goals. That's 3Pillers Method.com, and the link is in the show notes. Let's get into the show. Hello and welcome to the Consistency Project podcast.

My name is Patrick Cummings.

As always, I'm here with E.C. Sinkowski. is in the show notes. Let's get into the show. Hello and welcome to the Consistency Project podcast.

My name is Patrick Cummings. As always, I'm here with E.C. Sinkowski. Every week on the show, we aim to simplify the science of nutrition, health, and fitness, cutting through the noise to focus on the principles and practices that will help you perform better, feel better, and of course live better. thank you so much for tuning into the show. Hello, E.C. How are you? Wonderful. How are you doing? I'm great. We're going to return to your bookshelf this time around. I always love talking about books with you because invariably you saved me from one book that I thought maybe I should read that and then it turns out I don't need to. So we're going to see if that's the same case today. We're going to talk about a book called Ultra Processed People, why we can't stop eating food that isn't food. I do like the title. And it's by Chris Van Tolliken. Hopefully I'm pronouncing that correctly. We're going to talk about a couple big ideas, why ultra-processed foods dominate our diets, the role of food manufacturers in shaping what we eat and how it's made and how ultra-processed foods affects satiety, caloric intake, broader health outcomes. And I really like what we're doing here. You pulled out 10 quotes that sort of warranted highlights from you. And we're just going to talk through the 10 quotes, which I think is a great way to get through a whole book. Again, as we often say, this isn't a wild, like, huge review. This isn't

a deep dive on the science of every single reference. This is what popped out at you as you were

reading. So that's what we're going to do. But before we get into the quotes, thoughts on the book,

why did you pick the book up? Or people asking you about this book? Give me a little context. Yeah, definitely a few requests on the book. It came out in 2023. I guess I kind of missed it when it came out.

So I thought it was more new. Shocking. I missed something in the media.

Yeah, so definitely had some requests about it. And like you said, it's ultra process. Now, we've really hammered that topic of ultra process but just to remind people that there's this categories categorization system

of processing where the fourth level four category is what they call ultra processed and the short

way to think about it is that these are the foods that have the ingredients the long list of ingredients

of things that you don't have in your kitchen all the additives and the different stabilizers and the emulsifiers. So we're not talking about, you know, the frozen green means that you bought that were already cut up, or we're not talking about a smoothie that you make at your home. Those are not what we're considering processed, even though there has some processing there. We're talking about these foods again that you only find kind of at the gas

station or in the snack aisle, all of that stuff. So yeah, so finally got to the book. And I would say

just generally, I really, really enjoyed the first half of the book. I think a lot of the topics

and even the studies that I think are really important were in this book. He referenced Kevin Hall a lot, who's one of the best researchers we have in obesity and weight gain and stuff like that. So definitely for the first half of the book, I was like, oh my gosh, this might actually be one of my favorite books. I would say the second half of the book, I didn't feel quite the same. Some of that as I felt like the science started getting a little bit more extrapolated. Maybe we're using a little bit more animal studies to make our points, which I don't love. And then starting diving into some areas that I just don't feel that I'm the expert on, whether or not that's economic development of developing nations or whether or not that's sustainability issues that I just, yeah, sure, I can read what he's saying

and understand his point, but I just wouldn't be somebody who's going to really offer the opinion on good, bad, or indifferent, right? But overall, good stuff. And I just thought, again, yeah, like you said, we don't need to do a blow by blow, but these were some lines that really stuck out at me that I thought would resonate with our audience. Take it. So at least recommend the first half of the book whether you get through the rest of it like at least

maybe this is on the list of books worth reading. Yeah. Yeah, I would still read it. I think there's a little bit of fear inducing towards the second half, but I think overall, yeah, it's better than not. Got it. We got to pat out those pages, right? You can't, you can't.

You need to find something to write about for the second app. Okay, great. So again, like I said, at the top, we're going to do 10 quotes. So we're just going to get through each one of these quotes. Here's the first one. Sometimes entirely novel products are created, but usually the aim of ultra-processed food is to replace the ingredients of a traditional and much-loved food with cheaper alternatives and additives that extend shelf life, facilitate centralized distribution,

and it turns out, drive excess consumption.

Yeah.

I really thought this was an interesting quote because it's what we're finding the problem with

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