All language subtitles for Irresistible.Why.We.Cant.Stop.Eating.2024.1080p.WEBRiP.x264-DARKFLiX.1

This programme deals with
Eating Disorders

My friends, my family,
think I'm obsessed with this.

I mean, they're right. I am.

I mean, look at this.

So this - this is, what we're walking
through, is the food environment.

We could be anywhere in the UK.

It's all industrially processed food.

It's extremely convenient...

..it's very cheap...

..and it's so appealing.

And yet we know that
this food environment

is driving a catastrophe.

The evidence is increasingly clear
that pre-prepared, packaged,

highly processed food is linked to
weight gain, obesity, some cancers,

dementia, type 2 diabetes,

and early death from all causes.

We're in the middle of a food crisis,
but we can't stop eating.

And if you want to understand why,
you have to go and speak

to people who have worked inside
the food industry.

We've worked with Heinz,
Cadbury's, Pringles.

Bird's Custard.
Campbell's Soup.

Unilever.
PepsiCo.

Kellogg.
Dr Pepper.

These foods are engineered
to be addictive.

How have we sleepwalked
into this situation?

What is the food we eat today
doing to our minds?

And how has it become
so irresistible?

Britain will be left a sick
and impoverished nation,

according to former
government food tsar,

if we don't do something
about our junk food habit.

My name is Chris van Tulleken.

I'm an NHS doctor, I'm a scientist,

and I'm part of a growing group
of doctors and academics

who are increasingly worried
about the effect that

the global food system
is having on all of us.

When it comes to obesity, the way
that we've understood the problem

is it's a failure of willpower.

People are just making bad choices.

They're somewhat lazy.

It's basically their fault.

This is American government data for
men and women of all different ages -

the different lines are
different ages - for obesity.

What you see is between
1960 and 1975,

there's a fairly steady percentage
of obesity in the population.

But in the mid-1970s,
obesity starts going up

in all of the groups simultaneously.

Now, if you're saying
willpower is responsible,

what you're proposing is that all of
these groups of people simultaneously

lost moral responsibility,
and that's not plausible.

Something else happened
to our food in the mid-1970s

to make it irresistible to people.

Good afternoon. How are you?

My name is Howard Moskowitz.

I'm an experimental psychologist.

And in the 1970s,
people think that I revolutionised

the food industry.

I'd like to talk to you about
the way the science came about.

You know, you read all the time
in the newspapers -

it's a sinister plot,
generally by one or two scientists

in a laboratory,
like Ming the Magnificent, saying,

"How should we make the people
of the world fat?"

Well, let me tell you
my own history.

I was called by the vice chairman
of Campbell's Soup,

and they said to me,

"We're competing against a company
which manufactures ragu."

They used to make it out of
Contadina tomato paste and water,

like my mother did in the '50s.

I said, "I think you can make
a better pasta sauce."

And they said, "How?"

And I said, "Let's figure out
the actual food ingredients

"that you can blend, and let's
make different combinations,

"and we'll test them."

And we ended up creating 45 dishes,

and we got people to taste them
and rate how much they liked them.

I realised very simply
that if you systematically

varied the ingredients
and you tested them,

nature would reveal itself
in stunning clarity.

So this is the origin of the bliss
point with which I am identified.

The easiest way to demonstrate
a bliss point

is add sugar to coffee.

As you add more and more sugar,

you like it more and more
up to a certain point,

and then you like it less and less.

The highest level is
where you like it most.

That's the bliss point...

..where you have the bliss.

And that became the basis

of a multi-billion dollar
30-year run.

I found that I could consult
with companies like Unilever,

Pepsi Cola, Tropicana,

Dr Pepper, and Spam.

Sales almost always go up

because you're making
a delicious product

and you know that people love it.

Very simple.

But over the years,

products became more complicated
and more artificial.

The road to hell
is paved with good intentions.

From the 1970s,
food companies started to realise

that if they used proper scientific
development processes,

they could sell us a lot more food.

My name is John Ruff, and I've spent
40 years in the food industry

across seven different countries.

Companies spend a lot of time
optimising all aspects

of their product - the flavour,
the taste, the texture.

People want their product
to be as good,

if not better, than the competitor,
so it will sell more.

In research and development, we used
to use a phrase called the funnel.

And the funnel was the
product development funnel.

You need 100 products to be in
what's called advanced development.

You need 1,000 in early development.

You need 10,000 ideas.

Often those ideas don't
get off the drawing board,

don't get off the paper,

or they'll make some early
prototypes or mock-ups.

OK, seats numbers 1 to 14, you'll
be now testing the Midget Gems.

We use trained sensory panels
to give us ratings.

Is it squishy? Is it hard?

Is it soft? Is it crunchy?

That's very much how
the food industry operates.

The food company really almost
has to sort of provide products

that consumers want, otherwise
they will go out of business.

I've spoken to lots of people
who work at food companies,

and they've told me
about these tasting panels.

Two of the most important things
that are measured

are how quickly do people eat,

and how much of the food
do people eat?

Because that's what drives sales.

But these tasting panels
have a subjective element,

so some companies started
taking it much further.

One of my remits
when I first joined the company

was the way that
they would get information,

and that would be always
word of mouth.

It would be focus groups,
it would be questionnaires,

and I just railed
against that stuff.

I'm a neuroscientist.

I introduced brain scanning
to Unilever.

I'm not interested in
talking to a consumer.

I want to find out what they like
by digging deeper,

because we're not really aware
of why we like what we like.

And one way to get that is with
the neuroimaging capabilities.

What we would do is basically
lie someone in a brain scanner

and feed food into their mouth.

And we looked at the activity
that was coming into that brain.

And one study that we did
was feeding people

in one of these brain scanners
different types of ice cream.

And what we found is that
this area right at the front

of the brain here - it's called
the orbitofrontal cortex,

and it's a reward system area,

and it was glowing like a furnace.

You're looking at what the brain
is telling you.

You can't fudge it.

And it's grown and grown and grown
as a way to predict

what product is going to be
successful and what isn't.

And the ice cream business
used that brain imaging data

to basically make the claim that
ice cream makes you happy.

And this is the article
that was in the newspapers.

Slightly unfortunate that
it's got an obesity thing.

Yes.

HE LAUGHS

This is contrast, isn't it?

Yeah.

You can edit that out, can't you?

The brain scans predicted

which foods people would like
or which ones they'd love,

but they also helped to show
something about those foods

that would be really crucial
for the food industry.

If you want to sell a lot of food,
texture is massively important.

One thing many people don't realise
is that factory processing

changes the textural properties
of that food.

Now, that makes the food
much softer.

And an interesting fact
about soft food

is you're not chewing it as much.

That actually short-circuits
the normal satiety mechanisms

that you would have if you were
actually chewing food properly.

So a food which you have to actually
put some work into chewing -

so a crunchy carrot - is having
that benefit in terms of the fact

you're spending a lot more time
chewing it.

With a soft food, you don't do that.

So you're bypassing
a normal mechanism

that tells you that you're full.

Once you've worked out that playing
around with the texture of a food,

making it softer, tricks that normal
satiety or fullness mechanism,

clearly there's an opportunity there

for some kind of
scurrilous behaviour

in making food softer
so that people will eat more,

and therefore you sell
more of your product.

So there is an opportunity there,
of course, you know, to basically...

..not do the right thing,
shall I say?

So much of the packaged food
that we eat is incredibly soft.

My kids love these.

You don't typically think
of this as being a soft food,

because it's a bit crunchy,

but actually,
after that initial crunch,

you can just crush it
with your tongue, right?

It's got no resistance at all.

But in terms of the
calories per gram,

it's got way more calories
than even a very fatty burger.

So the softness and
the energy density

mean that you consume it
incredibly quickly.

And there's a food industry term
for these

very light, puffy foods
that melt in the mouth.

It's called
vanishing caloric density.

Gone.

The thing that makes us eat a lot
isn't just what we do to the food.

It's also about logos, marketing,

branding, the box the food comes in.

Here we've got a very crinkly
packet of crisps.

The noise is quite loud.

Extraordinary.

Of course that's going to make
you think, "Fresh, fresh, fresh."

I'm Professor Barry Smith.

I work on sensory science with
neuroscientists and psychologists.

Pringles are often irresistible.

It's in their slogan.

# Potato crisps in a tube

# Pop it up and get in the mood

# Once you pop

# You can't stop. #

When I worked for Pringles,

they were really worried
about the competition from Doritos,

and they were trying to think
of ways to innovate.

And one idea was,
"Let's make the tube bigger

"so that we can get
our whole hand in there."

And I said, "No, no, no, no,
don't do that."

People like struggling
to get their hand in.

They're like foraging bears.

They're trying to extract the food

and that searching out
something to eat,

that's increasing your desire.

CRUNCHING

Eating is a multi-sensory
experience.

There's the look of the food.

There's the smell of the food.

There's the feeling of the food
on your fingers.

Even the sound of food matters.

When you open a fizzy soda,
you've got two noises.

You've got the click and the tear.

Sound engineers and manufacturers

work really hard to get
that sound just right.

And that's sonic branding.

Many companies have asked me
to work on sonic branding for them,

and I think I can mention
when I was working with Kellogg,

they said,
"Ooh, what's sonic branding?"

And I said, "You invented this!"

Most people will remember,
as children,

the experience of lifting a bowl
to their ear.

And what are they listening for?

Snap, Crackle, and Pop.

That's sonic branding at its best,

and that's the original.

# It's fun to put Snap, Crackle,
Pop into your morning. #

Look at all this.

The food companies are using
branding to grab our attention.

It's salt, fat, sugar
wrapped up in appealing packages.

We've got cartoon characters.

There are tigers. There are monkeys.

There are bright colours everywhere.

But to sell even more food,
industry had to change

the culture of how we eat,
the number of times a day we eat,

and this is called snackification.

I am Dr Yanaina Chavez Ugalde.

I am currently a research associate
at the University of Cambridge.

I trained as a food engineer
in Mexico and I worked for Cargill.

It's a company that makes
most of the raw ingredients

that go into processed foods.

Name it - flour, sugar, oil,

high-fructose corn syrup, cocoa.

In the last several years,
I started to see an influx

of packaged products from the USA
into Mexico.

I started to see my peers
getting bigger.

I started to hear about diseases
like type 2 diabetes,

cancer in younger people.

I started to ask questions about,

what is our impact as a food company
in the health of our nation?

And that's why I changed careers.

There's a lot of competition
out there,

and food companies make their money

by the amount of products
we consume from them.

So there's a stomach share
that they're fighting for,

and there are hours in the day

in between breakfast,
lunch, and dinner.

What happens between those hours?

They want us to snack.

ALARM BEEPS

You wake up and
this is what you have.

Snack number one -

breakfast shake, ultra-processed.

This is heavily marketed
for you to have on the go -

do not sit down, do not take time
to crunch through something.

Snack number two of the day.

It's empty calories.

Energy-dense, nutrient-poor.

Midday, you're starting to get
a little bit peckish,

and what do you have?

Veggie straws.

This is a good example of a
health claim snacking product.

Whereas before we would
have had food, actual food,

now we are marketed into believing

that this is actually
a healthy replacement.

Some snacking products have now
been made to be linked

with being physically active.

So after the gym, I have a
high-protein, low-sugar bar

instead of having
a healthier option.

You finish having dinner
and you have these snacks

that are sold to you
as "more to share,"

where, in fact, you can just finish
them watching the TV by yourself.

I do like them
and I cannot stop eating them.

SHE LAUGHS

And I literally can't.

Oh, God.

If you're a food company,

there are two main ways
you can make more money.

You can sell more food,
so you can grab more stomach share,

or you can use cheaper ingredients.

I'm Suzy Glaskie, and I used to work
for the food industry

for nearly 20 years.

And now I really want to

lift the lid on how
food industry marketing

is robbing us of our health.

The first time I really started
to feel differently

about the food industry
was when Sunny Delight came out.

Sunny Delight...

It was sold as great
for all the family.

Any more?
Coming right up.

Thanks, Mum.

So when can we move in, then?

On your bike!

And when I looked
at the ingredients,

I realised this was
a really cheap product

which had been dressed up
to be something healthy.

And I think that's where
I drew the line.

So the main thing that I worked on
were modified starches,

and these were really,
really clever.

They can make snack foods
crunchy and crispy,

and they can make yoghurts creamy

and smoothies glossy.

When we eat starch in a whole food,

it's digested slowly.

But if that same starch
is highly processed,

then it's broken down
very quickly by the body,

and it spikes our blood sugar.

And that then leads to
a whole host of health problems

and also to our body storing fat.

One of the starches
that I worked on,

you could add it to a jam,
for example,

and it would give the sensory
experience of having a strawberry

without it actually being
a strawberry.

Fruit is expensive.

It's difficult to handle.

It spoils quickly.
It's expensive to transport.

So it's kind of padding out products
with stuff that's just cheap,

but which mimics the real stuff.

We develop food and beverage
products for companies of all sizes,

so we've worked with
Heinz, Cadbury's, Pringles,

Green & Black's Chocolate.

Cost is such a big focus
when we're developing products -

from the ingredients,
the manufacturing, the shipping,

and then from distributors
to retailers.

Everybody wants to make a profit.
They want to make a margin.

Here are the ingredients
that you need to make

a home-made lemon cake.

We've got lemons, unsurprisingly,

flour, sugar, butter, eggs,

some bicarbonate of soda,
and some salt.

But if you're going to make it
in a factory,

we've got quite a few things
that we need to consider.

And so I have here a slightly
longer list of ingredients...

More than double. ..that you might
see in a cake from a supermarket.

One of the main considerations
has to be the shelf life.

Of course, yeah. Because
your lovely home-made recipe,

you're talking days...
Exactly.

..before it starts to go mouldy
and just frankly, stale. Yeah.

Whereas something in the supermarket

is going to need months
of shelf life. Exactly.

You'll see here, we've got potassium
sorbate as one of the preservatives,

and that is to inhibit the growth
of mould and yeasts

so that your cake doesn't go off.

It's quite bitter, a bit like biting
on a paracetamol or something.

And so some of the ways that
you might mask some of these

bitter tastes might be with
the flavouring, for one, the salt.

And then something else
that you can't ignore

with an ingredient list like this
is how much cheaper it will be.

Across the board, we're substituting

rich ingredients like eggs
and butter with cheaper ones,

but also some of the ingredients
from stabilisers and starches.

Yeah. It's all allowing you
to use cheaper ingredients.

If you sit in my clinic,
if you work in this hospital,

you see the toll that diet-related
diseases takes on our patients.

There's incredibly strong evidence
that the cause of the pandemic

of obesity and diet-related disease
that's sweeping the globe

is industrially processed,
packaged foods.

Previously, describing these goods
was really hard scientifically.

We called it junk food or fast food.

And then a little while ago,
a friend gave me this paper.

It's published in an obscure
Brazilian public health journal.

It says,
"A new classification of foods

"based on the extent and purpose
of their processing."

Not an appealing read,
so I ignored it,

left it on the desk for weeks.

But I eventually got around
to reading it.

And I thought, if it's true,
this might be the most important

scientific paper published
so far this century.

Carlos Monteiro was proposing
something really radical.

Previously, we'd focused on
sugar, saturated fat, and salt

as being the problem.

And he said, "Well, maybe
it's the industrial processing

"that is making us all
eat a lot of these

"and having maybe other effects
as well."

We've been doing food processing
for thousands,

probably hundreds
of thousands of years,

without significant health problems,
where we take whole food

and we smoke it, we salt it,
we preserve it, we ferment it.

It's essential for human life.

Ultra-processed food
is entirely different.

And the full definition is very long,

but if you're wondering if something
you're eating is ultra-processed,

look at the ingredients list.

And if you see things that
you wouldn't expect to find

in a home kitchen, then it's
probably an ultra-processed food.

When I first read this paper,
it seemed really important,

but I had some doubts,
and I wasn't the only one.

Lots of people were very sceptical
about it.

My name is Dr Kevin Hall.

I'm a senior investigator here
at the National Institute of Health.

I first heard about this idea
of ultra-processed foods,

which basically says that nutrients
aren't important at all.

It's really about the extent
and purpose of processing,

and it seemed a little crazy to me
because we have

a whole history of nutrition
science, focusing on nutrients.

And then along comes Carlos
and says, you know,

"You've been focusing on the wrong
thing for the past several decades."

So we enlisted the help
of our dieticians

here at the NIH Clinical Center,

and I gave them what I thought was
maybe an impossible task -

"Can you design two diets?

"In one case, all of the foods
come from minimally processed foods.

"And alternatively,
an ultra-processed diet

"that is matched for the salt,
the sugar, the fat, the fibre."

And the idea of the study
was to bring 20 men and women

into the Clinical Center, where
they would live with us for a month.

So you have an hour to finish it,
or less.

We'd take complete control
over their food environment

and present them with meals
and very simple instructions -

"Just eat as much
or as little as you'd like."

And what they didn't know was that

at the end of each of the meals,
we were measuring their leftovers.

He ate most of the tater tots.

The dieticians downstairs
will actually weigh it back,

and we'll know the exact quantity
that's left over.

We were measuring
their weights every day.

We were measuring how many
calories their bodies were burning,

their oxygen consumption,
their carbon dioxide production.

My hypothesis going in
was that we would see

very, very little difference in the
number of calories people ate.

And of course, I was wrong.

It turned out that the people,

when they were on
the ultra-processed diet,

they spontaneously overate calories,
about 500 calories per day

greater than when they were
on the minimally processed diet.

I'm going to take your temperature,
if that's all right. Sure.

What we discovered was that
the ultra-processed foods,

despite being matched
for their nutrient composition,

they tended to have
many more calories per bite.

Another thing that we found
was that we ended up preparing

and presenting people with foods
that were high in sugar and fat.

That's something that's very rare
to see in a food in nature.

These are so-called
hyperpalatable foods,

and we ended up presenting
people with more of those

hyperpalatable foods
on the ultra-processed diet.

At the time it was published,
Kevin Hall's experiment

was so important because
it was really good quality evidence

that ultra-processed food
does make you eat too much of it.

Now it's just one scientific paper

in a huge and rapidly growing
body of evidence.

I think one of the biggest problems
with this kind of food

is that so many of us
struggle to stop eating it.

APPLAUSE

Hi, everyone.

I'm so thrilled to be here today
to speak with you on my research

that looks at parallels
between addictive substances

and ultra-processed food.

I'm Dr Ashley Gearhardt.

I'm a professor of psychology
at the University of Michigan

and the director of the Food and
Addiction Science and Treatment lab.

Both fat and sugar are converging
on the same neural reward centre,

so it really seems to be
hyperpalatable food products

that kind of mimic
the reward profile

that we see with addictive drugs.

When we look at the sorts of foods

that trigger those key diagnostic
indicators of addiction,

it's really clear what it's not.

It's not minimally processed foods,

like fruits or vegetables or beans,

or lean meats, like chicken breasts.

It's really processed foods
that deliver high doses

of refined carbohydrates
like sugars and starches,

typically alongside
high levels of fat.

It's chocolate, it's ice cream,
it's pizza.

It's foods that don't exist
in nature.

One of the first things that we did
was try and understand

how do we identify someone
who might actually

be experiencing an addiction?

So we created the
Yale Food Addiction Scale,

which is the major tool used

to measure an addiction
to ultra-processed food.

We've really looked at
the diagnostic criteria

that we use to diagnose somebody
with an alcohol addiction,

a tobacco addiction, asking people
about their experiences

of losing control over their intake,
really intense cravings,

continuing to use even though you're
having really negative consequences.

"When I started
to eat certain foods,

"I ate much more than planned."

Yes, every day.

I'm Sarita, I'm 48 years old,

and I'm a food addict.

Processed food has this control
over me.

I don't want to binge
on a bowl of broccoli.

It's the crap food.
There's something in it.

And I've struggled with
drug and alcohol addiction,

and the parallels are too similar
for there not to be a link.

Most people in my position
binge in the evenings.

I will start with cereal,
and it's always really sweet cereal,

so BLEEP is a good one.

I would pour as much of that
into a mixing bowl -

not a normal bowl, a mixing bowl -

and start with that.

You're talking, you are talking
a box of cereal

and three or four huge bars
of chocolates,

and a couple of packets
of biscuits -

way more food than you'd think
a person could eat.

Then after that, it's just about
how quickly can I purge it?

By purging,
I mean making myself sick.

I'm an intelligent person.

I'm a fitness fanatic.

I know that my bingeing behaviour
is really bad for me

and could end in heart attacks
and diabetes and all sorts of stuff.

That's why I know it's an addiction,
because I don't seem to care.

I don't care.

So I wanted to give you
a bit of a sense of the people

who've come into our lab.

This individual had severe food
addiction, and they said,

"I can't even be in the same room
as any type of doughnuts,

"because I will finish a dozen
all by myself, and I'm a type..."

The potency and the reward power
of these ultra-processed foods

can trigger an addictive response
that leads them to consume these

in such a compulsive way that,
even if they want to cut down,

even if they know it's killing them,
they find they can't stop.

We have to eat to live.

So giving up drugs, you just
quit completely and that's it.

But how do you stop
eating processed food?

It's everywhere you go.

Food addiction is a growing
field of study.

There are lots of people
who have well-founded concerns

about demonising an entire category
of food, and I understand that.

But, personally, I find it
really hard to disagree

with the testimony of many
of my patients,

who feel that they are addicted
to these products.

You have to make products
taste palatable,

but what's happened is that
palatability has been turned into,

"Well, it's too good.
It's addictive. It's too tasty."

I mean, is there a point
at which you can make a food taste

good enough that people will eat it,

but not too good that it's going
to be called hyper-palatable?

Yeah, but you know what?

If somebody makes the
hyper-palatable one,

they'll stop eating the other one
anyway.

We have to make products
that taste good.

People want that.

We're not going to mandate

that everybody's got
to make their food taste bad,

I don't think.

It's not a world I want to be in.

We have a growing body of evidence
that, for some people,

this food is addictive.

And that makes me think about
the tobacco industry.

Laura Schmidt.

I'm a professor at UC San Francisco
in the School of Medicine.

I'd been working on ultra-processed
foods for a while,

and one of my colleagues said, "Hey,
you know, I've been poking around

"in the tobacco archive, and
I know you're interested in food.

"You might want to check these out.

And it turns out that there
were hundreds of thousands

of documents in the tobacco archive
about food companies.

From the 1960s, RJ Reynolds,
the tobacco company,

starts buying up food subsidiaries.

Why would a giant tobacco company
buy up a food company?

And the answer was something
we did not expect.

The people in the tobacco companies
had a bunch of artificial colours

and flavours, developed in their
labs, that they were making

to add to cigarettes,
flavours and colours like menthol.

Their labs are developing them
to put into cigarettes

and create different products
to target new consumers.

They call them line extensions.

# You've come a long way, baby

# To get where you got to today... #

Virginia Slims,
for women who want to get thin.

Marlboro, for men who are
couch potatoes

but actually want to be cowboys.

# Listen while I tell you a story

# The tale of the Marlboro brand... #

They were targeting children.

Joe Camel was a cartoon mascot that
RJ Reynolds put on Camel cigarettes

because they really wanted
to make kids know the brand

so that, when they became cigarette
consumers, they would smoke Camels.

One survey found six-year-olds
in the US as familiar with

Joe the Camel as with Mickey Mouse.

The tobacco industry had cultivated
this strategy of taking a single,

utterly boring product
and making it come alive

with colours, flavours, branding,
marketing, cartoon mascots,

to target different
consumer markets.

And we found this memo,
and this memo was written in 1962,

by the guy who ran the labs,
to the CEO of RJ Reynolds.

And he literally says here, "It's
easy to characterise RJ Reynolds

"merely as a tobacco company.

"In a broader and much less
restricting sense, however,

"RJ Reynolds is in
the flavour business."

And here, he's talking about
a merger with a company called

Pacific Hawaiian Products Company.

And they only make one thing,
and that's Hawaiian Punch.

Hawaiian Punch was one flavour
and one colour.

It was bright red,
and it was being marketed to adults.

And within a couple of years,
they had transformed this product

into a children's beverage.

Hey, how about a nice
Hawaiian Punch? Sure!

# What gives Hawaiian Punch
its punch?

# Its punch? #

They intuitively understood that
getting the kid hooked was the goal,

because that kid is going to be
a lifelong consumer.

What's so brilliant
about the marketing strategy

is you can take that tobacco model
and apply it to the food industry.

You can make massive numbers
of line extensions.

Wasn't that a refreshing commercial?

Very sophisticated advertising
campaigns that allow you to kind of

get inside the minds of consumers

and make them want
what you have to sell.

We know that people in food
companies were putting people

in a brain scan to observe what
goes on in the brain when people

are exposed to the food products
that they were developing.

Whether or not they intended to make
all of these foods addictive,

I don't know.

What we can say is that, if
you're eating a brand that was ever

owned by a tobacco company,
there's a stronger likelihood

that it has been developed
to make you want more.

The biggest cigarette companies
in the world were also

the biggest food companies.

They were the same companies.

And of course, over decades,
the tobacco industry perfected

the techniques for denying
any of their products were addictive.

Hi, I'm Steve Parrish.

Today, we're going to set
the record straight.

Cigarettes neither alter
a person's mood

nor do they impair an individual's
ability to function.

Those people who term smoking
an addiction

do so for political and ideological,
not scientific reasons.

I retired in 2008
from Altria Group Inc,

formerly known as Philip Morris,
the tobacco company,

where I was the senior Vice
President of corporate affairs.

In the early 1990s, there was
really a sea change in attitudes

about the tobacco industry
in the United States,

and it seemed like it was
the year of the perfect storm.

In 1994, when there
were Congressional hearings...

Please consider yourself
to be under oath.

..members of Congress asked the CEOs
of the various tobacco companies,

do you believe cigarette smoking
is addictive?

Do you believe nicotine
is not addictive?

I believe nicotine is not
addictive, yes.

Cigarettes and nicotine
clearly do not meet the classic

definitions of addiction.

I don't believe that nicotine
or our products are addictive.

I believe nicotine is not addictive.

I believe that nicotine
is not addictive.

I believe that nicotine
is not addictive.

And I too believe that nicotine
is not addictive.

At the end of a two-day hearing,
the expert committee decided

that, yes, cigarette smoking
is addictive.

And then, a few years later,
our company, Philip Morris,

decided to change its position
and acknowledge the fact

that cigarette smoking is addictive.

When our company made
that announcement,

it caused quite a stir,
and even a bigger stir

when we announced that we were
in favour of

the Food and Drug Administration
regulating the tobacco industry.

When Philip Morris companies saw
that there was a continual decline,

year over year over year,
in cigarette smoking,

it just made sense for the company
to look beyond tobacco.

And there were similarities
in the products, not in terms

of the products themselves,
but where they were bought and sold,

grocery stores, convenience stores,
and places like that.

Yeah, you know, I don't know
the answer to that question.

I don't know whether
specific food products

would meet that definition
of addiction.

I would leave that to people
who have studied the products

and studied the science there.

I don't know whether any companies
would admit addiction

of a particular food product,
but I would hope that the companies

would listen to the science
and say and do the right thing.

I think right now we are,
with ultra-processed food,

a bit like where we were in the '60s
with cigarettes.

And, in my opinion, the food industry
is using many of the same techniques

that the tobacco industry used
to protect their interests,

and lots of scientists
have experienced this first-hand.

I'm Dana Small.
I'm a neuroscientist.

I'm interested in how the brain
and the body work together

to optimise behaviour.

Pepsi came to us and they were
interested to know

whether they could reduce
the amount of sugar in beverages

to make healthier drinks.

Now, to keep the calories down,
you might add some artificial

sweeteners to increase
the sweetness,

but without getting the calories.

So we designed this study where
we had five different beverages,

and they had different
amounts of calories,

but we wanted them
to be similarly sweet.

So we used sweetener,
which doesn't have any calories.

Yeah, this is not very elegant,
but in she goes.

Sorry.

She'll actually be in there
receiving little tastes

of the different flavours
and then swallowing and then waiting

for the next flavour to come.

When you look at brain responses
to these different flavours,

you can see the dopamine
and reward system.

And what we found
was completely unanticipated.

We actually didn't see a negative
impact of just drinking, like,

a diet drink.

But when we had a diet drink
and we added calories...

..that's when we saw changes.

So, for example, it's OK
to have your diet soda by itself.

But if you have the diet soda
with French fries,

you're going to have artificial
sweeteners and carbohydrates,

and that's when you're going to
get into trouble.

There's a lot we don't understand
about sweeteners but,

in very simple terms, if you put
a sweet taste on the tongue,

it signals to your body
that sugar is on the way.

And if sugar doesn't then arrive,

that seems to have several
unexpected effects on the body,

and it may even lead to weight gain.

If the effect we've observed
generalises, then it follows

that consuming diet food
can actually lead to weight gain,

rather than weight loss. Now, that
needs to be tested experimentally,

but the logic is straightforward
to that prediction.

We were discovering something
pretty important

and, rather than being able
to continue with this,

PepsiCo dropped us.

We're experimenting.

We're trying to figure things out.

But during this process,
you could discover something

that is harmful.

So that leaves them vulnerable
to lawsuits,

which is exactly what happened
in the tobacco industry.

National surveys fail to show
any link between body mass index

and consumption
of ultra-processed foods.

Melissa Mialon found that, out of 38
papers questioning the science

around ultra-processed food,

33 of them had authors with
connections to the food industry.

So the food industry exerts its
influence in a lot of subtle ways,

and I've had personal experience
of some of these.

The companies have been very,
very keen to get in touch with me,

to invite me to give talks
and presentations,

to fly across the Atlantic.

Most of the time, I say no.

In one instance, I thought,
"Well, let me get the contract

"and see how all this looks."

Is this a really well-known
food company, then?

So this is one of the big...

Yeah, this is a big food company.

So I got a contract,
and they offered me about £20,000

for a two-hour meeting.

And I cannot understand
why they want to pay me,

so I got a lawyer to help me
understand this.

So here's the relevant bit.

It says that I will not make
any statement as shall disparage

the food company or its products,

or bring the company name
into disrepute.

So for about £20,000, they buy my
silence on ultra-processed food.

Their most effective strategy
is to fund people who sound credible,

who create confusion and doubt.

That is what the tobacco industry did
so beautifully.

The situation seems overwhelming,
but there is hope.

First of all, we did control tobacco,

not perfectly, but we did it.

The second thing is,

if you look at countries across
South and Central America,

they are bringing in policies
that are making a difference.

My name is Juan Castro.

I'm trained as a doctor.

If I look at some of these
Colombian warning labels, you know,

it feels quite shocking
to have a warning label

on these very sort of
everyday products.

You know, you might pause
if there was a big black octagon

on your kids' breakfast cereal.

Well, the food industry would say,

"Oh, the definition of
ultra-processed food

"includes lots of healthy foods, like
wholegrain, ultra-processed bread,

"fish fingers, baked beans."

Now, this makes me incredibly angry.

This is food that I do feed
my children, OK?

The fish fingers -
very high in salt and fat.

The baked beans -
very high in salt and sugar, OK?

The supermarket
ultra-processed bread,

even if it's got whole grains -
very high in sugar and salt.

So is this the worst food
you can buy? Absolutely not.

But is it the foundation
of a healthy diet?

It certainly isn't, no.

And in lots of countries,

all of those products would get
warning labels for salt, fat, sugar.

For years, the phrase was
"everything in moderation."

You know, it's as true today
as it was

when whoever first coined it.

We're faced with so many challenges
in the world today,

and certainly in
providing a food supply.

Some of the discussion that,
you know, I hear,

whether it be on chemicals
or ultra-processed foods,

seems to be designed
to stop us from doing that.

And I don't think that's
a very smart place to be.

Researchers say ultra-processed
foods now make up 73%

of the US food supply.

Global obesity rates have doubled.

Now they've found ultra-processed
food can cause harm

similar to smoking.

..from the University of Oxford
highlights the enormous financial

power of unhealthy
ultra-processed foods.

Imagine you're trying to cut down
on ultra-processed food

or avoid it altogether.

For a start, it might be
the only food you can afford,

and that is true
for millions of people.

But it's everywhere,
and it's engineered and then marketed

by some of the smartest people
on Earth to be irresistible.

So if someone is watching this
and they are struggling

with their weight, with diet-related
disease, I just want to reach out

and grab them and go,
"This is not your fault.

"It is not you. It is the food."