I stopped eating one type of food and lost more than a stone

Steffan Rhys was shocked when he stepped on the scales last week

A man has lost more than a stone simply by cutting out one type of food after “feeling a bit rough” at the start of the year. Steffan Rhys, an editor for the ECHO’s sister title WalesOnline, has stuck to his new way of eating for almost seven months, and now feels significantly better.

He said he decided to ditch ultra-processed foods (UPFs) in January but wasn’t planning on doing it for life, and still isn’t. Steffan also said he hadn’t weighed himself, as he doesn’t own scales, but last weekend he found himself in the home of someone who does.

When he jumped on them, he says, he was “shocked”. He had lost around a stone and a half, dropping from 11.5 stone to 10 stone. UPFs can lead to weight gain as they often contain high levels of fat, sugar, salt and other additives.

A new report published in the British Medical Journal has also linked UPFs to an increased risk of 32 harmful health outcomes, including cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and depression. And they make up a huge chunk of our diets, on average, with around 57% of UK adults’ daily food intake coming from UPFs, and an even higher 66% seen in adolescents.

READ MORE: ‘I stopped looking at my phone after 9pm each night to see if I could get a good night’s sleep’

READ MORE: DWP PIP changes proposed as Labour to overhaul benefits

Steffan said he has not cut down the amount of food he’s eaten, it’s just that he’s changed the content of it. He said he also exercises fairly regularly, but was already doing that, though it now feels easier to.

When Dr Chris Van Tulleken, an infectious diseases doctor at University College London, BBC science presenter and New York Times bestselling author, drastically changed his diet for an experiment so that 80% of it was made up of ultra-processed food, he “gained a huge amount of weight”. He told the Zoe Science and Nutrition podcast: “I just ate what I wanted, but with 80% of my calories coming from ultra-processed food.

“And what happened? I gained a huge amount of weight in one month. I gained so much weight that if I’d continued for the whole year, I would’ve doubled my body weight.”

So what is a UPF?

Dr Van Tulleken gave this simple one-sentence definition on ultra-processed food on the Zoe podcast: “If it’s wrapped in plastic and it contains at least one ingredient that you don’t typically find in a domestic kitchen, then it’s ultra-processed food.” But Steffan says there are lots of foods that you might not think obviously fall into this category, including breakfast cereals and granolas, pre-packed meat such as ham and bacon, vegan meat substitutes, some cheese, flavoured yoghurts, and flavoured corn chips.

He said that before 2024, he probably wasn’t eating an unusually high amount of UPFs in the context of the average diet, but was definitely eating a lot without realising. Steffan added: “The main ways I was consuming them were probably via the granola and flavoured yoghurt I ate for breakfast every morning, thinking it was healthy, and the supermarket bread sandwich with crisps on the side I had for lunch when working at home. At least I almost always cooked evening dinners from scratch.”

He now has nuts with Greek yoghurt for breakfast instead, cooks more legumes like beans (butter, black, cannellini etc), chickpeas or lentils either as a main or side part of a meal, eats more vegetables, and makes homemade dips such as hummus for dipping into when peckish.

Steffan said: “The good thing about having a diet like this is you don’t need to stick to it with 100% rigidity. In fact, experts say an 80-20% balance in favour of non-UPFs is sensible. At the moment, my diet is probably closer to 99-1% but that means that if I’m eating out I don’t need to worry excessively that the menu might contain certain foods as I’ve left myself plenty of room to manoeuvre.”

What harm can UPFs cause?

Research conducted by an international team from Deakin University in Australia and analysed data from almost ten million individuals across various previously published studies revealed that those who regularly consumed the highest amounts of UPF had a 21% higher risk of premature death and a 50% increased risk of dying from heart disease.

There was “convincing” evidence to show that higher UPF intake was associated with about a 50% increased risk of cardiovascular disease-related death, a 48-53% higher risk of anxiety and common mental disorders, and a 12% greater risk of type 2 diabetes. “Highly suggestive” evidence also indicated that higher UPF intake was associated with a 21% greater risk of death from any cause, a 40-66% increased risk of heart disease related death, obesity, type 2 diabetes and sleep problems, and a 22% increased risk of depression.

There was also evidence for associations between UPF and asthma, gastrointestinal health, some cancers and cardiometabolic risk factors, such as high blood fats and low levels of ‘good’ cholesterol, although the researchers cautioned the evidence for these links remains limited.

It’s always important to point out that the researchers acknowledged several limitations to the umbrella review, “including that they couldn’t rule out the possibility that other unmeasured factors and variations in assessing UPF intake may have influenced their results”, The Guardian reports. Some experts not involved in the research said “much” of the research included in the umbrella review was “weak” and that the findings do not prove cause and effect.

However, Dr van Tulleken said the findings were “entirely consistent” with a now “enormous number of independent studies which clearly link a diet high in UPF to multiple damaging health outcomes including early death”.

Dr. Federica Amati, head nutritionist at Zoe, the science and nutrition company, and author of Every Body Should Know This, told said: “This study reinforces that UPFs are detrimental to overall health and we should be delivering public health advice to reduce or avoid them. Across the pooled analyses, greater exposure to ultra-processed foods… was consistently associated with a higher risk of adverse health outcomes.

“This umbrella review reports a higher risk of adverse health outcomes associated with ultra-processed food exposure. The strongest available evidence is for direct associations between greater exposure to ultra-processed foods and higher risks of all cause mortality, cardiovascular disease related mortality, common mental disorder outcomes, overweight and obesity, and type 2 diabetes.”