This is The Guardian.

The Guardian Archive Long Read.

Hi, my name is B Wilson.

The name of my article, which was published in 2020, is how ultra-process food took over

your shopping basket.

There were a few different things that prompted me to write the article.

I'd been researching this new way of thinking about food which would come out of Brazil,

which judged the houseiness or not of food, not by sugar or fat or salt, but by the extent

of processing.

And then the real trigger for writing it was, I came across this amazing new piece of

research from the state, Spice and Uncle Kevin Hall, that proved under laboratory conditions

that people who ate a lot of ultra-processed food, gained weight, and also that it messed

with their natural mechanisms for hunger and fullness.

But the thing I really struggled with was how could I take these quite technical stories

about food which had to do with science and make them relatable?

And I went through so many drafts of this article and it was only really what I thought,

no, this is not something technical.

It was the reason that I had binge eating disorder as a teenager and that was the point at

which it really clicked for me and I thought, ah, it's all of these things that I thought

there was something wrong with me when I was a teenager and I just couldn't stop eating

things like white-sized bread and breakfast cereal and crisp and treats and snacks.

And obviously, there's many things that cause them to overeat.

...