This is food that interferes with our body's ability to say, I'm full, stop eating.

In April this year, Dr Chris Vantullekin published a book about something he says is incredibly

dangerous.

It's the leading cause of early death on planet Earth.

He says that ultra-processed foods are causing obesity, disease and changes in our hormones

and yet we can't stop eating them.

We've got evidence from brain scanning, we've got evidence from psychiatric studies,

the evidence that this food is addictive is very clear.

You're listening to stories of our times from the times and the Sunday times, I'm Manvin

Rana.

Today, my ultra-processed foods have taken over our diets and our brains.

I'm Chris Vantullekin, I'm a doctor, I'm an academic at UCL and I'm a BBC broadcaster

and I've just written a book called ultra-processed people, why do we all eat stuff that isn't food

and why can't we stop?

And it's certainly got people talking.

When did you first become aware of ultra-processed food?

I was making a television documentary for the BBC about child obesity and it was going

to be the definitive work on that subject and it was going to draw together all the complexity

of the psychosocial, environmental, urban, planning, genetic, behavioral, cognitive influences

that come to bear on this incredibly intractable problem.

As we did more research, there was a researcher at the BBC called Lizzie Bolton who handed

me these two scientific papers, one defining ultra-processed food and one was a simple experiment

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