Today I want to spend a few minutes talking about why I feel so strongly about avoiding ultraprocessed items. I am going to share a story about an event that happened some years back, when someone I worked with decided one morning to pick up some cupcakes on her way into work. It was a very nice gesture, and I am sure that she had the best intentions. But this is an example of the fact that we must take personal responsibility for what we put into our mouths, because nothing will change if we do not. The only way Big Ultra Processed will stop selling these things is if we stop buying them. Call them items, things, or products, but you will see in a moment why they cannot be called food.

I kept the ingredient list for those cupcakes for a long time, and I share it here now, word for word:

Sugar, water, partially hydrogenated vegetable oil (soybean, palm, cottonseed, or canola), mono & diglycerides, TBHQ (preservative), enriched wheat flour, bleached flour. Contains 2% or less of high fructose corn syrup, dextrose, glycerin, egg white slides, nonfat milk, soy flour, calcium acetate, sodium probaking powder, sodium pyrophosphate, sodium aluminum phosphate, calcium phosphate, cornstarch, modified food starch (corn, tapioca, wheat), salt, corn flour, propylene glcol, mono & diesters of fatty acids, agar, soy lecithin, polysorbate 60, guar gum, xanthan gum, invert sugar, natural and artificial flavor, maltodextrin, sodium stearoyl lactylate, glycerol esters, sorbic acid, citric acid, sodium benzoate, phosphoric acid, malic acid, microcrystalline cellulose, titanium dioxide, carrageenan, tragacan, hydrated silica, sorbitol, propylene glycol, confectioner’s glaze, cocoa processed with alkali, pectin, turmeric, hydroxyl methylcellulose, chocolate liquor, natural tocopherol, sodium stearate, caramel color, coconut oil, artificial colors (red 1, 3, 40; yellow 5, 6; blue 1,2), corn oil, sorbitan, mono and tristearate, egg yolk.

Yes, this was the actual list. Franken-food. Noted food writer Michael Pollan says that you can eat anything you like, just as long as you make it yourself in your own kitchen. A comparison of any recipe for homemade chocolate cupcakes with the ingredients listed above makes clear the profound differences. Homemade cupcakes have the capacity to nourish you, especially if you make them with whole-grain flour, high-quality dairy, best-quality cocoa, and so on.

But that list above? To be nourished is out of the question. The purpose of that product is to optimize shelf life and profits. From the perspective of the consumer, the best you can hope for is to be entertained. But there’s more here than meets the eye. The research shows that some one-third of American women suffer symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome. One look at that list gives me a strong suspicion why.