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The Penguin books that shaped our everyday lives

Nutrition books showing Food for Life, Saturated Facts, Unprocessed, Ultra Processed People.

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Reading lists

7 books about nutrition and healthy eating

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Interviews

Interview: Ultra-Processed People author Chris van Tulleken on the economics of food

Operation Ouch!: The HuManual

Dan Green is the original concept creator, author and illustrator of the Busy Day series. Dan has over 25 years' experience illustrating and designing a wide variety of children's books for a range of clients and publishers.

Take a tour of one of the most complex, diverse and downright unusual places on the entire planet - the human body! Find out all about what makes YOU tick, from the wonders of the human brain to the tingling in your ticklish toes. From crazy bodily functions to bizarre real-life medical cases, this is the ultimate guide to getting to know yourself, inside and out! 
 
Operation Ouch! is a BAFTA-winning CBBC series, from the makers of Embarrassing Bodies and 10 Years Younger. It's presented by real-life doctors (and twin brothers) Chris and Xand van Tulleken.

Chris van Tulleken

A brilliant book . . . a real eye-opener. The bottom line is that if we keep consuming sugar, salt and fat on the scale that we currently do, it is going to cost all of us an unconscionable fortune in the future.

You’ve got to get this book in your life . . . Completely compelling . . . Read a page and think about it for the rest of the week

A devastating, witty and scholarly destruction of the shit food we eat and why

If you only read one diet or nutrition book in your life, make it this one. It will not only change the way you eat but the way you think about food. And it does all this without a hint of finger-wagging or body shaming. I came away feeling so much better informed about every aspect of ultra-processed food, from the way it affects the microbes in our gut to why it is so profitable to produce to why it's so hard to eat only a single bowl of Coco Pops to why any food that is marketed as 'better for you' is almost certainly not.

A wonderful and fascinating exposé of ultra-processed food, edible substances with strange sounding ingredients which are manufactured by some of the wealthiest companies on the planet and which, worryingly, form an increasing part of our diet. As Chris shows, not only have these foods been formulated to ensure that we eat them constantly and without thought, but they hijack our ability to regulate what we eat, primarily by affecting our brains. And he backs up his claims with a powerful self-experiment, along with lots of rigorous and often shocking research. Reading this book will make you question what you eat and how it was produced

BBC presenter and bestselling author of The Fast Diet

Packed with "I never knew that" moments, Ultra-Processed People is a wonderfully playful book that changed forever how I think about what I eat and why

Tim Spector, author of SPOON FED and FOOD FOR LIFE

An engrossing, infuriating read. Ultra-Processed People makes most fictional villains look quaint. Read it and fight back!

A much-needed, eye-opening exposé. Beautifully written, each page reveals hidden truths and asks you to re-think and re-connect to food in a way that has been lost for decades. Truly mind-blowing!

The past 10 years has seen an inflection point in human history, where more people in the world are now dying of eating too much, than of eating too little. This urgent and captivating read digs deep into one of the huge reasons, the rise and rise of ultra-processed food'

A fascinating, forensically researched and ultimately terrifying expose of the food we consume. Van Tulleken leaves no stone unturned, shining his spotlight into the dark corners of what masquerades as nutrition these days. Read it; your diet will never be the same again!

A totally fascinating book which put me right off my Doritos

Incendiary and infuriating, this book is a diet grenade, the bold and brutal truth about how we are fed deadly delights by very greedy, evil giants

Fascinating, but frankly horrifying investigation into our industrialised food system

A book everyone who cares about their health should read

It'll change what you eat . . . an unsettling examination of the food we eat and the industrial system that makes it

A fearless investigation into how we have become hooked on ultra-processed food . . . will have you scurrying to your cupboards

It will change the way you think about food profoundly

Has completely changed my eating habits, which will therefore change my life

In Ultra-Processed People, a persuasive mix of analysis and commentary, [Chris van Tulleken] shows how [ultra-processed] foods affect our bodies and how their popularity stems in part from shady marketing and slanted science

A tour of how the science of processing has allowed companies to produce goods that are no longer even faint echoes of the real food of which they are copies, and of what the evidence shows about the biology and psychology of eating in today's world. Van Tulleken is at his best when using his own scientific expertise to help readers through otherwise unnavigable science, data and history, explaining with precision what we are actually eating

A painfully eye-opening study of food and health

A scathing takedown . . . This impassioned polemic will make readers think twice about what they eat

Mindblowing. You'll never see food or your body the same way again

Alice Roberts, author of ANATOMICAL ODDITIES

The education provided by this book is unreal. As someone who grew up eating what I now understand to be ultra-processed foods and having carried that habit into adulthood, I'm pretty disgusted at how terrifyingly naughty the methods used to make them are, how cantankerous they cat within our bodies and entirely aghast at the overall impact on health. Mind blowing stuff.

[Chris van Tulleken is] starting a really important revolution and conversation around what we eat . . . Books come along once in a while, once every couple of years, once in a generation that meet culture at the exact moment with the exact language, with the exact appreciation of the reader – the nuance, the inclusivity. . . [Ultra-Processed People is] such a brilliant book, everyone needs to read it . . . it's these books that end up changing the world. . .

Steven Bartlett, creator of THE DIARY OF A CEO

Chris van Tulleken made ultra-processed food a household term with his powerful — and controversial — investigation into the way our food is made and what it is doing to our health. 
UPF is loosely defined as food that cannot be made outside a factory . . . this is an entertaining, brilliantly written book that will make you rethink what you are putting on your plate

Brimming with eye-opening research and gripping discussion, it uncovers the science, economics, history and production behind hot topic, ultra-processed food - and ironically, the book is very digestible

Chris van Tulleken made ultra-processed food a household term with his powerful - and controversial - investigation into the way our food is made and what it is doing to our health . . . This is an entertaining, brilliantly written book that will make you rethink what you are putting on your plate

Sunday Times, 'Science Book of the Year 2023'

[A] gut-curdling exposé of the food industry and how we are eating ourselves to death

Van Tulleken is an impressive anomaly in the field of public health, a serious scientist who is also a successful popularizer, communicating to both children and adults, and using his professional journey in medical research and examples from his family life to demonstrate how the public is being conned, over and over, in the interests of corporate greed.

A fascinating but horrifying investigation into our industralised food system . . . It will change the way you eat

Sunday Times Culture Magazine, '25 of the best non-fiction paperbacks of 2024'

I can say with confidence that this book has been literally life-changing for me... It is a staggering look at how a huge proportion of what we now eat... is ultra processed and a long way from what our families were eating just a few decades ago. It's jaw dropping stuff.

Why Do We All Eat Stuff That Isn’t Food … and Why Can’t We Stop?

IT'S NOT YOU. IT'S THE FOOD. 
 
'If you only read one diet or nutrition book in your life, make it this one' Bee Wilson 
 
'You've got to get this book in your life . . . Completely compelling . . . Read a page and think about it for the rest of the week' Chris Evans 
 
We have entered a new 'age of eating' where most of our calories come from an entirely novel set of substances called Ultra-Processed Food, food which is industrially processed and designed and marketed to be addictive. But do we really know what it's doing to our bodies? 
 
Join Chris in his travels through the world of food science and a UPF diet to discover what's really going on. Find out why exercise and willpower can't save us, and what UPF is really doing to our bodies, our health, our weight, and the planet (hint: nothing good). 
 
For too long we've been told we just need to make different choices, when really we're living in a food environment that makes it nigh-on impossible. So this is a book about our rights. The right to know what we eat and what it does to our bodies and the right to good, affordable food.

Chris van Tulleken

Books by Chris van Tulleken

Articles featuring Chris van Tulleken

The Penguin books that shaped our everyday lives

7 books about nutrition and healthy eating

Interview: Ultra-Processed People author Chris van Tulleken on the economics of food

Videos

5 ways to identify ultra-processed foods

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