Here are the surprising results a dietitian got after eating ultra-processed food for a whole month

With the upsurge in social media usage, there's also a rise in awareness against consuming too many ultra-processed foods. Many doctors and health experts warn people of the serious and fatal risks of eating processed and ultra-processed food items every day. So a dietician, Jessica Wilson who goes by @jessicawilson.msrd on Instagram decided to try it out for real. In July 2023, Wilson shared a video on Instagram as a response to a doctor who followed a diet consisting of 80% ultra-processed food for a whole month. When she experimented with the same, the results were shocking.

Wilson was quite concerned about the impacts that Dr. Chris van Tulleken faced after a month of eating mostly ultra-processed food which he revealed in an interview with NPR. The doctor inferred that such foods were highly addictive in nature and people need to be warned about their negative health outcomes. How sensational this doctor's experiment was, bothered Wilson. "We have the same examples of ultra-processed foods that we hear time and again. It's soda, 5t's sugary cereals, it's microwaveable meals - things that are easy and low cost to make," the dietician said in her video. Wilson pointed out the sensationalism of van Tulleken stemmed from "race, class and access."

Wilson added, "The criteria for what makes an ultra-processed food is incomprehensible." So, she announced that she was going to start making ultra-processed foods more than 80% of her diet. For this, she got the help of a food engineer so that her meal plan could be formulated to suit her experimentation. Wilson kick-started her ultra-processed diet on the 1st of September 2023. In a follow-up Instagram post, she revealed how her diet was going to be. 80% of her meal would be "restaurant made," or "pre-prepared from the store," and  "a sauce and/or protein with at least 5 ingredients which can be added to a starch like white rice, pasta, or tortillas and vegetable." Also, she ensured to consume foods with additives like thickeners, emulsifiers, sweeteners, colors and flavors.

The remaining 20% of Wilson's diet consisted of low-calorie healthy food items like fruits, vegetables, eggs and nuts. She used her Apple watch to compare her movement and agility between August and September. Also, Wilson recorded her sleep, happiness, anxiety, constipation and appetite because these were the factors that worsened for Van Tulleken. Almost at the end of her experimentation, on 26th September 2023, the dietician shared the results and it was nothing less than flabbergasting. After 2 weeks, Wilson faced less frequent hunger, more movement even after work, less afternoon fatigue and less grumpiness, according to her Instagram post. There was no impact on her work-related anxiety or sleep habits.

In fact, Wilson's husband said, "You’ve been complaining less and doing more." Though the ultra-processed diet became boring after 3 weeks, the dietician highlighted that she was "faring much better" with the diet. "How can this entire category of foods be something we’re supposed to avoid?" Wilson told the Time. All the dietician wanted to do was break the stereotypical notions about the consumption of ultra-processed foods which are the only affordable options for many destitute families. "I think the public deserves to have something other than scary stories about UPFs," she wrote in her Instagram post.   

You can follow Jessica Wilson (@jessicawilson.msrd) on Instagram for more content on dieting and ultra-processed foods.