Revisited: You Are What Your Eat

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Yes, so you are what you eat, especially when it's
ultra processed. Yeah. So, if the old saying you are
what you eat still applies, we are an ultra process society.
You know. A recent study of what we eat has
shown that seventy percent of the American diet now consists
of ultra processed foods, accounting for over half of all

(00:22):
the calories that we consume. Now, it's perhaps for that
reason that the usobesity rate has contdued to rise, reaching
a record level of forty one point nine percent most
recently according to the CDC. But here's the thing. While
ultra processed or highly manipulated foods are now the majority
of the foods we eat, the types of ultra processed

(00:43):
foods we eat aren't the same. A new study published
in the medical journal Nutrition and Metabolism shows that the
source of our ultra processed foods might be the biggest
contributing factor to weight gain or loss. Now, we've long
known that working fruit and veggies into our diet is
a net positive. In the world of ultra processed foods,

(01:05):
it's actually become that much more important. A summation from
a lead researcher from the study concluded this filling your
plate with plant based foods, even if they are considered
ultra processed instead of animal products, can have a positive
impact on your weight and overall health. In the study,
two hundred and forty four overweight adults were split into

(01:26):
two control groups, those who ate a typical diet with
mostly ultra processed foods and those who ate a plant
based diet with mostly ultra processed foods, and at the
end of the sixteen week study, those with a typical
diet maintained their weight, those with the plant based diet
dropped an average of thirteen pounds, leading to these three conclusions.

(01:49):
The biggest weight loss predictors were number one, eating less
processed animal foods, number two cutting back on unprocessed animal foods,
and number three reducing an ultra processed animal foods. So
the studies showed that even if a diet isn't particularly
healthy as ultra processed foods often lack good nutritional value,

(02:10):
the original source of the food that's actually the most
important factor pertaining to weight gain or loss.