It's the Bryan Lair show on WNYC Good Morning Again Everyone.

With us now, Chris Van Tulligan, author of a new book called Ultra Process People.

One of the things the book does is to explain a relatively new way of classifying foods and

reading food labels, like instead of just looking at nutrients to maximize and

ingredients to minimize, like salt, sugar, calorie, saturated fats, look for how a

food seems to stack up on a scale called NOVA, which we'll explain. The book

argues that Americans spend much less of our incomes on food than a century

ago, and that that could be a bad thing because of how food became cheap.

It's also a supersized-me style first-person book to some degree as the author

experimented on himself by going on and off ultra-process diets. Some of you

know Chris Van Tulligan as the feature doctor on a number of BBC programs. He's an

infectious disease specialist by training. Let's see what he has to say about

nutrition and other effects from corporate food dominance that make so much

food ultra-process. The full title of the book is Ultra Process People, the

science behind food that isn't food. Chris, thanks for joining us. Welcome to WNYC.

Thanks so much, Brian. It's a pleasure to be here. Can you start with this

four-point classification system known as NOVA? That's where you get the term

ultra-processed foods. I want to introduce the concept and maybe even go through

this version of the four food groups as they see them in brief. Yeah, I love

your introduction because you said this is a new classification and it is. It

started in about 2010. But in fact, this is just the scientific formalization of

a very ancient bit of thinking that probably both our grandparents would have

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