How damaging for our health are processed snacks like Twisties and Doritos?
Chemist and science communicator George Zaidan has been crunching the data on crunchy treats for his book Ingredients: The Strange Chemistry of What We Put in Us and on Us.
Photo: Tamas Pap / Unsplash
George Zaidan Photo: Supplied
Don't eat anything your grandmother wouldn't recognise as food, All chemical additives are bad, If you can't pronounce an ingredient don't eat the food… It turns out these maxims don't have much basis in actual science, Zaidan tells Jesse Mulligan.
Reseaching Ingredients, he assumed he'd easily find information about how ultra-processed foods destroy our body from within but the reality is a lot more complicated.
While we know the relationship between the number of cigarettes a person smokes and the risk of developing lung cancer, we don't yet have data on how eating processed food correlates to health risk, he says.
Part of the reason is that to learn about the relationship between diet and diseases that take a long time to form, you have to follow what people eat for decades.
In the meantime, we can't yet say 'Yes, processed food is bad – you shouldn't eat it.
Zaidan is making his own call.
"I'm certainly gonna wait another few years and see how the chips fall."
George Zaidan's four recommendations for a healthier life:
- If you currently smoke, do your best to quit: "That is the thing that we know best will prolong your life the longest"
- If you can get exercise, get exercise
- If your diet is in the realm of a doctor-recommended diet, you're pretty much fine (unless you have a medical condition like diabetes in which you should ignore that and listen to your doctor)
- Worry a little bit less about food
Ingredients is based on George Zaidan's Youtube series of the same name.
