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Industrial food supply in the supermarket: "Many people depend on such products"
Photo:
alvarez / Getty Images
SPIEGEL:
When was the last time you consumed an "ultra-processed" food product?
Hall:
I just ate a mug of strawberry yogurt.
There are additives such as thickeners, emulsifiers and sugar in it - making it an industrially processed food product.
These typically contain cheap raw materials and ingredients that are not used in home cooking.
SPIEGEL:
Supermarkets and discounters are full of such products.
They wanted to know if and what happens when a person only eats it.
How did you proceed?
Hall:
We billeted 20 test subjects for a month and fed them either whole foods for two weeks or with meals in which more than 80 percent of the calories came from ultra-processed industrial foods.
People were allowed to eat as much as they wanted.
To person
Icon: enlargePhoto: private
Physiologist
Kevin Hall
leads a group in the Laboratory of Biological Modeling at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, USA, and studies how certain foods affect the brain and metabolism.
SPIEGEL:
What did you find out?
Hall:
When there were ultra-processed food products, the test subjects spontaneously ate too much.
On average, you ate around 500 more calories each day than you would on a whole foods day.
Some even have almost 1,000 calories.
They gained an average of one kilogram in the two weeks that the ultra-processed diet was on.
In the whole food weeks, however, they lost weight.
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