Dhruv Khullar
Appearances
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and the Confounding Politics of Junk Food. Plus, Kelefa Sanneh on the Long Influence of Kraftwerk
What do you make of some of the other ideas? I mean, I'm thinking about things like no ultra-processed food in schools. I'm thinking about taxes on certain types of foods or food additives, changing the subsidies to corn and soy, for instance. You know, what do you make of those types of proposals?
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and the Confounding Politics of Junk Food. Plus, Kelefa Sanneh on the Long Influence of Kraftwerk
Yeah. Okay, gotcha, gotcha. As I understand it, there's this, what I call the vitamin era, you know, around the Great Depression and the World War II. There's the nutrient era, maybe mid-century to the 90s, where people are focused on individual nutrients, and then kind of more of a dietary pattern era. Maybe we've been in that one since the 90s.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and the Confounding Politics of Junk Food. Plus, Kelefa Sanneh on the Long Influence of Kraftwerk
How does ultra-processed food fit into that framework, if at all?
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and the Confounding Politics of Junk Food. Plus, Kelefa Sanneh on the Long Influence of Kraftwerk
So, Marion, you're someone who's probably thought about this more than anyone that I know. What's your relationship to food? How do you make the right decisions? Okay. And how do you choose the right foods?
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and the Confounding Politics of Junk Food. Plus, Kelefa Sanneh on the Long Influence of Kraftwerk
Yeah. Marion, this is so helpful. Is there anything that I haven't asked about that you want to make sure that we get to or that you want to add?
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and the Confounding Politics of Junk Food. Plus, Kelefa Sanneh on the Long Influence of Kraftwerk
I guess time will tell. Thank you. Lively. This was great. You're fun to talk to. This was a lot of fun. Yeah, I appreciate it.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and the Confounding Politics of Junk Food. Plus, Kelefa Sanneh on the Long Influence of Kraftwerk
Four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding. But the price has gone up, so now I only buy one.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and the Confounding Politics of Junk Food. Plus, Kelefa Sanneh on the Long Influence of Kraftwerk
When I started researching this topic, I knew that I wanted to talk to Marion Nessel. She really put on the map the ways in which politics and economics influence our food environment and ultimately our health.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and the Confounding Politics of Junk Food. Plus, Kelefa Sanneh on the Long Influence of Kraftwerk
I want to talk a little bit about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. You know, he has many controversial claims, of course, on vaccines and other parts of health. But he is very concerned about ultra-processed foods and rates of chronic disease in this country. And what do you make of, you know, the potential that he's going to drive real change in this area that's towards the good?
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and the Confounding Politics of Junk Food. Plus, Kelefa Sanneh on the Long Influence of Kraftwerk
The rhetoric seems to be there, but are we going to see the requisite action? And what would that action even look like? Like if you were to counsel RFK Jr. on how to actually make a dent on ultra-processed foods and the chronic diseases that are associated with it, what would you want to see him do?
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and the Confounding Politics of Junk Food. Plus, Kelefa Sanneh on the Long Influence of Kraftwerk
Yeah. What exactly are ultra-processed foods like? How do we define ultra-processed foods when we're trying to study them?
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and the Confounding Politics of Junk Food. Plus, Kelefa Sanneh on the Long Influence of Kraftwerk
I brought some groceries that I was hoping that we could go through together. And you can tell me whether they're ultra-processed, and if so, what is making them ultra-processed. Okay. Let's take a look here. What do we got? Oh, Doritos.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and the Confounding Politics of Junk Food. Plus, Kelefa Sanneh on the Long Influence of Kraftwerk
I can probably guess which category this falls into, but just take a look and tell us what makes it ultra-processed.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and the Confounding Politics of Junk Food. Plus, Kelefa Sanneh on the Long Influence of Kraftwerk
You don't have that in your home kitchen? No.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and the Confounding Politics of Junk Food. Plus, Kelefa Sanneh on the Long Influence of Kraftwerk
This is something that I would walk past in the grocery store and think, okay, 100% whole wheat bread. This has got to be good. This cannot be ultra-processed. What do you think?
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and the Confounding Politics of Junk Food. Plus, Kelefa Sanneh on the Long Influence of Kraftwerk
That sounds extremely ultra-processed.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and the Confounding Politics of Junk Food. Plus, Kelefa Sanneh on the Long Influence of Kraftwerk
Yeah.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and the Confounding Politics of Junk Food. Plus, Kelefa Sanneh on the Long Influence of Kraftwerk
All right. What do we got here? We have yogurt. So most people would think yogurt. That's pretty healthy. We have a very vanilla yogurt here. So maybe there's some trouble there.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and the Confounding Politics of Junk Food. Plus, Kelefa Sanneh on the Long Influence of Kraftwerk
A yogurt that has an emulsifier or a thickener is surely not the same as a bag of Doritos or gummy bears, right? No, it's not. But how do you help people understand that nuance? Is it like if you could make it at your home, but it has this one ingredient, it's probably okay?
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and the Confounding Politics of Junk Food. Plus, Kelefa Sanneh on the Long Influence of Kraftwerk
But then aren't we just back at square one where ultra-processed foods is a fancy way to say junk food? Oh, sure.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and the Confounding Politics of Junk Food. Plus, Kelefa Sanneh on the Long Influence of Kraftwerk
So tell us a little bit about the ways in which people have been studying this concept and why you think it's such a consistent story.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and the Confounding Politics of Junk Food. Plus, Kelefa Sanneh on the Long Influence of Kraftwerk
I had a chance to go to the NIH to observe one of these clinical trials recently, and it's hard to overstate how meticulously they go about doing things. I mean, someone comes into the lab, every bite that they put in their body is measured. The chefs who are cooking the food, they are basically doing chemistry experiments in the kitchen to try to make sure that
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and the Confounding Politics of Junk Food. Plus, Kelefa Sanneh on the Long Influence of Kraftwerk
The amount of salt and fiber is exactly matched in ultra-processed and processed diets. When people were on the unprocessed diet versus the ultra-processed diet, on the ultra-processed diet, they ate 500 calories more each and every day, which is an enormous increase.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and the Confounding Politics of Junk Food. Plus, Kelefa Sanneh on the Long Influence of Kraftwerk
So the headline finding here is that ultra-processed foods tend to make people eat more than they otherwise would. And it seems there might be two reasons for that. One is hyper-palatability, and so combinations of sugar and fat, exactly, yum.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and the Confounding Politics of Junk Food. Plus, Kelefa Sanneh on the Long Influence of Kraftwerk
These combinations of things that you don't often find in nature, but you find in ultra-processed foods in high quantities. People can't eat just one, as you said. The other big driver seems to be calorie density. So for every bite that you take, there's just many more calories per bite. So, of course, you're going to tend to eat more.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and the Confounding Politics of Junk Food. Plus, Kelefa Sanneh on the Long Influence of Kraftwerk
Your body may not have time to realize it's full before it's already consumed many more calories. you could envision ultra-processed foods doing a number of other things to the body. I mean, one is changing the microbiome. And so maybe the microbiome changes in interesting ways. You process food differently than you would on a more natural diet, let's say.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and the Confounding Politics of Junk Food. Plus, Kelefa Sanneh on the Long Influence of Kraftwerk
Two is changing the endocrine system in some way, the hormones that help us regulate how full we feel and how our body responds to food. And the third is our taste buds. You know, if you're getting big hits of salt and sugar and fat, your taste buds are going to adapt in a way that they want more of that over time.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and the Confounding Politics of Junk Food. Plus, Kelefa Sanneh on the Long Influence of Kraftwerk
Yes. Okay.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and the Confounding Politics of Junk Food. Plus, Kelefa Sanneh on the Long Influence of Kraftwerk
I want to ask you about the dietary guidelines. So a group of experts. Yes. —met in the fall to preview their recommendations for the next five years of dietary guidelines for the United States. And that group of nutrition experts at least seem to say that we don't have enough high-quality evidence to make a strong recommendation against ultra-processed foods.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and the Confounding Politics of Junk Food. Plus, Kelefa Sanneh on the Long Influence of Kraftwerk
I think they talked about some caution around processed meats, but they declined to basically tell people in a clear way that you should avoid ultra-processed foods. What did you make of that? —