Specialists › Eating & lifestyle › Chris van Tulleken

SpecialistEating

Chris van Tulleken

Infectious diseases doctor, London · Associate Professor, UCL Division of Infection and Immunity · author of Ultra-Processed People · BBC science presenter

Go-to expert for: ultra-processed food and health

Who and why

Chris van Tulleken is an NHS infectious diseases doctor and associate professor at University College London, where his research looks at how food companies affect health, especially children's nutrition. His 2023 bestseller Ultra-Processed People made him one of the best-known voices on ultra-processed food. He is a long-standing BBC science presenter and gave the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures on food in 2024.

Why it matters after 50: Ultra-processed foods make up a large share of what many people eat, and studies link high intake to weight gain and chronic disease. Knowing how to spot them helps older adults choose more home-cooked and minimally processed food.

What Tulleken recommends

  • A simple test: if a food comes wrapped in plastic and has at least one ingredient you would not normally find in a home kitchen, treat it as ultra-processed.Note
  • Read the ingredient list. Everything you need to judge the food is on the packet.Personal habit
  • Ultra-processed foods tend to make people eat more without noticing. In a controlled trial, people ate about 500 extra calories a day on an ultra-processed diet.Some evidence
  • Do not assume that diet or low-fat versions are a safe swap. In his view, removing fat or sugar does not remove the problem, because the processing itself matters.Note
  • Do not blame yourself if you find these foods hard to resist. He argues they are designed to be easy to overeat.Note

Signature: Ultra-Processed People (2023)

His bestselling book explains the NOVA idea of ultra-processed food for a general audience and argues that these products drive overeating and poor health. He also pushes for public policy, such as warning labels and limits on marketing the least healthy products to young children.

In your plan

Choose him for eating: fewer ultra-processed foods, using his simple kitchen-ingredient test. He gives no protein number, so we add a target of 1.2–1.6 g per kg.

Build my mix

Research and honest caveats

NIH inpatient trial of ultra-processed diets

20 adults lived in a research unit for four weeks; on an ultra-processed diet they ate about 500 more calories a day and gained about 1 kg over two weeks, compared with a minimally processed diet matched for calories, sugar, fat, fibre and carbohydrate on offer.

Hall et al., Cell Metabolism, 2019

NOVA and the case against ultra-processed food

A large review by the team behind the NOVA food classification argued that diets built on ultra-processed foods are a key driver of rising chronic disease worldwide.

Monteiro et al., The Lancet, 2025

  • Most evidence on ultra-processed food comes from observational studies, and the key trial was small and short. The UK Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition (2023, updated 2025) found the links concerning but said it is unclear whether processing itself causes harm or whether these foods are simply high in calories, saturated fat, salt and sugar, and it raised concerns about how the NOVA definition is applied.

Career highlights

  1. 2016Won the Max Perutz award for his HIV research
  2. 2017Completed a PhD in molecular virology at UCL
  3. 2023Published Ultra-Processed People
  4. 2024Gave the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures on food

Sources