Insidious consumption

Many Gen Xers grew up being fed ultra-processed food, and it still shapes their diet. New research shows it is having an alarming effect on their health

- By Stephen Armstrong

Joe Wicks and Dr Chris Van Tulleken made headlines last month by creating the world's most harmful protein bar in Channel 4's Licensed to Kill. The sweeteners, goo, flavouring and other industrially produced edible substances they poured into an innocent-looking and apparently extremely tasty fake chocolate bar, have been linked to diarrhoea, other gut issues, an increased risk of stroke, cancer, and what Van Tulleken describes with alarming confidence as “early death”.

A nation trembled. But who should have been trembling in a very specific way? Generation X. Snagged silently between the gobby social media hoggers of baby boomers and millennials, those of us who'd been paying attention to US medical journals (a very specific subset, admittedly) would have seen, just one week previously, a paper from the University of Michigan, which discovered that this has all affected Gen X’s health in a very unique way.

It’s only the second piece of research in the US looking at the intersection between older age groups and ultra-processed food (UPF), and it points out that Generation X were the first generation to have UPF feature heavily in their diets from an early age. The results are clear. Twenty-one per cent of women and 10 per cent of men in Generation X meet criteria for addiction to UPFs, outweighing other addictions like alcoholism (1.5 per cent) and smoking (4 per cent ).

The term “ultra-processed foods”, just in case you’ve not come across it, was defined by the Nova food classification system, developed by researchers at the University of São Paulo, Brazil. It defines food in four categories depending on what’s been done to it during its production.