Adrian Albert

“It’s soft and typically calorie dense, so you eat it at a rate that your body can’t keep up with when it comes to feeling full. Things like protein isolates, refined oils and modified carbohydrates are absorbed so quickly they may not even reach the part of the gut that sends the fullness signal to the brain. They’re not things you have evolved to eat. Some of the additives are well known to cause harm – be particularly aware of emulsifiers and artificial sweeteners. Emulsifiers can thin the mucus lining of the gut, allowing faecal bacteria to leak into the blood stream and inflaming your whole body. The non-nutritive sweeteners that tell your body sugar is coming but don’t supply any calories seem to cause metabolic stress and changes to the microbiome. Other additives that affect the microbiome are maltodextrins, modified starches and lots of the gums and thickeners. Flavour enhancers (glutamate, guanylate, inosinate and ribonucleotides on ingredient lists) drive excess consumption. Again, they tell your body a lie about the nutritional content of the food you’re eating when they’re added out of context.”
― Chris van Tulleken, Ultra-Processed People: Why Do We All Eat Stuff That Isn't Food… and Why Can't We Stop?

“(Someone who is repeatedly touching his neck is more often an indicator of a liar.)”
― Thomas Erikson, Surrounded by Idiots: The Four Types of Human Behavior and How to Effectively Communicate with Each in Business

“These “almost constantly” numbers are startling and may be the key to explaining the sudden collapse of adolescent mental health. These extraordinarily high rates suggest that even when members of Gen Z are not on their devices and appear to be doing something in the real world, such as sitting in class, eating a meal, or talking with you, a substantial portion of their attention is monitoring or worrying (being anxious) about events in the social metaverse. As the MIT professor Sherry Turkle wrote in 2015 about life with smartphones, “We are forever elsewhere.”
― Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness

“Ostrowski found that xanthan gum is actually a food for a new bacterial species. From looking at population data, it seems that the gum has driven the colonisation of this bacteria into billions of people. It’s completely absent from populations who don’t eat it – whom Ostrowski could only find in remote groups of hunter-gatherers. Moreover, if you have this bacterial species, then you may also have another novel species that eats the breakdown products made by the first one. The effects of these bacteria are not understood, but it’s clear that xanthan gum creates a food chain in the human gut and, since the bugs it feeds can colonise infants at an early age, it may be having profound effects on immune system development.”
― Chris van Tulleken, Ultra-Processed People: Why Do We All Eat Stuff That Isn't Food… and Why Can't We Stop?