Why is it so much easier to overeat processed foods than whole foods?
Amy Hudson and Dr. James Fisher explore the science behind why processed foods are unhealthy, breaking down how they influence hunger, fullness, calorie intake, and overall nutrition. They explain why whole foods naturally support better satiety and share practical tips for choosing foods that keep you fuller while providing more nutrients. Tune in to learn why small changes to your food choices can have a big impact on your long-term health.
Show Notes
Extra Elements Called Out In Audio – Or Elements That Should Be Edited Out
We eat on average 50 faster when it’s processed or ultra processed compared to whole foods. We’re, dare I say it, now just shoveling. Yeah, I’m picturing like a vacuum cleaner just suctioning up whatever is nearby. Welcome to the Strength Changes everything podcast, where we introduce you to the information, latest research, and tools that will enable you to live a strong, healthy life. On this podcast, we will also answer your questions about strength, health, and well being. I’m Amy Hudson. I own and operate three exercise coach studios. My co hosts are Brian Sigan, co founder and CEO of The Exercise Coach, and Dr. James Fisher, leading researcher in evidence based strength training.
And now for today’s episode. Hi, everyone. Welcome back to the Strength Changes everything podcast. I’m Amy Hudson here with Dr. James Fisher. We are going to be talking today about some recent research that has come out that Dr. Fisher has looked at related to processed foods and ultra processed foods as opposed to whole foods. We know that nutrition is a huge component of our health and it has implications to a lot of areas for us in terms of our metabolic health, weight, I mean, energy levels. So this is pretty interesting. I am super excited to hear what he has to say. Hey, Dr. Fisher welcome back to the podcast, first of all. And what have you been up to in terms of studying this? And let’s hear what you’ve come across. Thanks, Amy. Yeah, so this is really interesting. And I’ve been reading around this topic. I’m fascinated by this. Nutrition hasn’t been a key area of interest for me as extensively as kind of muscle physiology and strength training. But obviously, GerriAnn who we’ve had on the podcast, you know, talks about the metabolic comeback, and of course, talks about the nutrition playbook that she wrote, that’s the metabolic comeback guide, and the nutrition guide for the exercise coach.
And I find nutritional approaches really interesting. Some people are very opinionated, whether they talk about vegetarian or carnivore or Mediterranean diet, and so forth. And I really like the exercise coach approach is not so opinionated. It’s very much a whole food approach. So, when we talk about this, just to kind of briefly touch back on it, it’s the idea of minimally processed. So, you know, meat direct from the butchers rather than out of the can or the packet or off the shelf, fruit as close to from the tree as it can be, and vegetables from the ground rather than juiced or so on and so forth. And I really like this approach. I find it quite easy in my own lifestyle. But I also find that it’s quite interesting from a research perspective. And there are a few things that I’ve found really quite startling in this.
That I wanted to touch on. So, there’s a number of studies I’m going to kind of just really touch on, but really they’re kind of shock factors, I guess, if that’s okay. Oh, that’s okay. Let’s go. Okay. So, we can think of a spectrum of unprocessed to ultra processed with sort of processed foods, I guess, somewhere in the middle. And there’s a number of studies that have looked at unprocessed versus processed or unprocessed versus ultra processed foods. And early on it’s worth kind of clarifying that the processed or ultraprocessed food is lacking important macro and micronutrients. So it has lower nutrient density. So basically the food is of lower quality. And one of the kind of key ones that’s highlighted in that is there’s less dietary fiber. So dietary fiber can be really important in maintaining cholesterol levels, but also just in maintaining a healthy digestive system and so forth. So, and I don’t think that’s going to be surprising to anybody to hear that processed and ultraprocessed processed food is lower in macro and micronutrients compared to unprocessed food. But in the next study that I read, they said that per thousand kilocalories, there was less than half of the micronutrient content in processed food compared to unprocessed food.
And it made me think when we talk about kind of vitamins and minerals that we take in from food, we’re only getting half of that if that food is. Coming out of a packet rather than coming from the meat or vegetables or fruits that we can, you know, that we can see were once meat, vegetables, fruits, or fish, or so forth. So, a bit of a scary one to start off with there for me, but it’s going to get worse. Okay. Just a question for you. So, are you saying that if I have a plate of whole food that equates to 500 calories and a plate of processed I eat the whole food plate, I’m getting double the nutritional value in terms of vitamins and minerals as I would as eating the processed plate. Right? Is that what you said? That’s exactly correct. That’s a perfect synopsis.
Okay. So, yeah, it’s like half. So, yeah, you’re really kind of deficient for the same amount of calories. Okay. Interesting. Yeah. Okay. So then. I read through this further, I found that there’s a big difference in the energy density. So there’s higher energy density in processed or ultra processed foods to the extent where there’s around double the number of kilocalories per gram in ultra processed foods compared to unprocessed foods. So now, if you took two plates that had the same amount of food on them by weight, there would be double the number of kilocalories in the Compared to the whole food. Okay. And I’ve seen posters before where it shows like a volume of food on a plate that shows how many calories it equates to. And then there’s this tiny amount of processed food on a plate and it’s the same amount of calories. And it just is, yeah, that makes sense. So it’s a lot more calorie dense. Yeah. Is the second point you’re making. Okay. Yeah, absolutely. And then the last point is that there is poorer satiety. So, satiety is how full we feel. So, when we consume food, it sends signals.
There’s multiple things happening, first of all, that all in combination send signals to our brain to say, hey, you’re full. You should stop eating now. Okay. Now, one of the first things is our chewing. So, when we chew food that’s a signal to our brain to say we’re chewing food, we’re consuming you know nutrition, and you know we don’t need to keep doing this for a prolonged period because we’ll fill up. Well the evidence suggests that when you consume ultra processed foods you don’t chew as much so you don’t send the same signals. Now I when I first read this, it shocked me. I was like, why don’t you chew as much? And then of course, when you go back to the nutrient content, you can see that we’re simply not getting the same palatability, the same stimulus in our taste, in our mouth, that we have to break down.
It’s processed, so it just breaks down in our mouth as a product of our saliva, and so we don’t have to chew it as much. Wow. Bit of an interesting one there. And I’ve also heard that Is it true that the more you chew, the better it can also improve your digestion of the item later? Right. So when we chew, we’ll also produce saliva. We also send signals around the rest of our body to prepare the rest of our digestive system for the food that’s about to come. So if we don’t chew, we’re more likely to have digestive issues, whether that’s bloating or gastric issues around there.
So, yeah, absolutely. So chewing is a key part. It’s not just that that’s to break down the food, it sends signals around the rest of our body to be full, to prepare for digestion and so forth. Yeah. Okay. Okay. The next one around satiety was also that we eat on average 50 faster when it’s processed or ultra processed compared to whole foods. So this of course might link back to the fact that we’re not chewing as much, but now if you think about sitting down for food, you’re going to consume that food around 50 percent, or in fact, the statistics were greater than 50 faster. So we’re not just eating more and it’s not just higher in calories and lower in nutrients, but we’re now consuming it at a faster rate. So that’s obviously not good for our digestion, it’s not good for sending signals to our brains about being full. We’re, dare I say it, now just shoveling. Yeah, I’m picturing a vacuum cleaner just suctioning up whatever is nearby and then and yeah, I mean, all of the implications that you said to the digestion later on and the overeating because you haven’t received the signal that you’re full yet.
It’s sort of a vicious cycle can definitely see that. And then the final point that I’m going to touch on here, which is potentially the most shocking of all, was a group that did a double crossover study. So they spent one week on ultra processed foods and one week on non processed foods. And it was only a week long, thank goodness. And for one meal of the day They were given ultra processed. And for the other meal of the day, they were given, and then they had a two week washout. So they had one week of ultra processed, two weeks to kind of have their normal diet, and then one week of whole food or non processed. And when the participants were in the ultra processed week, they ate on average more than 800 kilocalories more per day. Okay. So and if that’s not shocking enough, that equated to them putting on about 24 pounds of fat in that week alone. So they had one week where one meal was ultra processed food. They consumed an extra 800 calories a day, a kilocalories per day. They put on nearly two and a half pounds of fat in that week alone.
Oh my gosh. It was fantastic frightening. I mean, this is like stuff that everybody should hear and understand. And I think to some degree it’s intuitive, but I think when you say it like this and you say research shows that people eat more, they eat faster and they’re receiving half of the amount of nutrients and they’re putting weight on because of the density of the calories and the amount that they’re eating. And it makes the case why eating whole food is so much more appropriate for somebody who is looking to keep their, manage their weight and not gain weight quickly, which isn’t healthy and or, you know, feel fuller and or be healthier because we need the nutrients and it all, it all makes sense if you think about it this way, right?
And so, yeah, I like, I mean, it’s eye opening and Makes total sense. And so to shift away from You know, is this an ultra processed food? Is it made out of complete ingredients that I don’t recognize coming out of a package? Or is it a whole food? Is it something that might grow out of the ground? Or I know where it’s a single ingredient item. I know not only is it going to improve my satiety by eating it, it’s not like I’m getting more full from the higher calorie food. It’s sneaky like that. Yeah. I’m getting. I’m getting more full and better nutrition from the whole food. So yeah, it kind of drives that home, doesn’t it? Yeah, and it’s really interesting because I get that people make food choices based on personal or moral or ethical values or socioeconomic factors or geography or time constraints or things like that. But we can even make good choices for bad food. And of course, the idea of this is not perfection, it’s progress, it’s education, it’s understanding. So I was having a conversation with somebody the other day and the example that we were talking through was bread or potato chips.
And you can, you know, if you go into the supermarket and you pick up two bags of potato chips, you’ll see some have three ingredients. You know, they’re basically as close to potatoes as they they could be in the form of potato chips and the back next to it will have ingredients. So it’s even just been able to pause, look at the ingredients and say, hey, hold on a second. If this has got three and this has got 50, what are the other 47 doing? And they’re really there to try to, well, they’re often their salts or their fats or their things to kind of increase the shelf life or try to make them more palatable because some of the other nutrients are missing.
And I would bet almost every time the one with three ingredients compared to 50 has greater micronutrient content. And the same is true of bread. You know, bread really should have a handful of ingredients. And if you look at a loaf of bread, sometimes it lists, you know, dozens and dozens of different ingredients. So even we can even just start to make a more educated choice with the same foods that we eat, we can just look at the healthier option. Absolutely. Yeah absolutely. This has been super eye opening. If you’ve listened to this today and you’re a little bit motivated now after hearing this conversation to make some smarter food choices, if you are an exercise coach client, please do pick up a copy of the Nutrition Playbook. It’s available at your studio and it really does explain and go through foods. We call them the super villains. What are those foods, including processed foods, is in that list of Foods that we may be eating on a regular basis. That may not be helping our body out. And why is that? How are they leading to or could potentially lead to spiking blood sugar, increasing our inflammation levels, or adding to digestive distress for people?
What should we be eating? And then, twice a year at our studios, we have a nationwide metabolic comeback challenge where your coaches and a team of national support people can help you through. A focused 30 day period of eating only whole foods. It’s called the metabolic comeback, where we combine twice weekly strength training with whole food eating to create what we call a whole new you. Eating whole foods and being intentional about that, learning how to build the healthier habits around food choices that are going to help us maintain muscle mass, decrease that blood sugar, lose body fat while maintaining our strength levels, decreasing that inflammation in our body. It’s such a wonderful opportunity to participate in if you are already a client. And if not, if you’re listening to this, I mean, we are here to help you. So definitely check that out. You can ask about it at your local exercise coach studio. You can pick up the nutrition playbook even on Amazon, the exercise coach nutrition playbook. If you’re interested in learning more about this topic, we’re here to support you. We’ve got so many whole food recipes for you and resources.
If this is something that you want to think about for yourself and improve In this area of your life, man, it’s super motivating. To me, even just hearing some of this research, right? It’s like, okay, wow, yeah, I can see that is true and it makes total sense now that you’ve spelled that out. Do you have any other closing thoughts, Dr. Fisher, to leave listeners with about this topic today? No, I think we’ve covered everything that I just found really interesting the last few days. So thanks for letting me go through those data points. Yeah, thank you for sharing it with us. Man, it’s eye opening. Well, we look forward to seeing you next week on the podcast. Until then, we hope you remember strength changes everything. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please share it with a friend. You can submit a question or connect with the show at strengthchangeseverythingcom Join us next week for another episode and be sure to follow the show on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts so that you never miss another episode. Here’s to you and your best health.
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