Dr Chris van Tulleken, the trusty medic from ITV’s This Morning and a familiar face on TV science shows, has voiced his take on what children definitely should not include in their diets. Presenting the BBC Two special ‘Irresistible: Why We Can’t Stop Eating,’ and penning the hit book ‘Ultra-Processed People’, he’s poised to delve into the profound impact of diet on our health and brainpower in the upcoming ‘The Truth About Food’ segment of BBC Four’s Royal Institution Christmas Lectures aimed at youngsters.
Van Tulleken shares a personal nugget, mentioning that his own kids never sip on soft drinks – highlighting it as the ultimate piece of health wisdom by sticking strictly to milk or water. He is on a mission to make science engaging with classic demos and firsthand trials – even going to the lengths of swallowing a camera-pill to give youngsters an epic tour of his digestive system, breaking down each stage of how we process our grub.
“We’re going to use cameras to get views inside the human body, and do lots of big experiments with kids about how the gut works and how your body breaks down and destroys food,” van Tulleken explains. Not stopping there, some segments will see tots transformed to atomic size for a front-row seat to what unfolds within cells and at the engine room of atoms.
“We’re going to use cameras to get views inside the human body, and do lots of big experiments with kids about how the gut works and how your body breaks down and destroys food,” says van Tulleken.
“And for some demonstrations, we shrink children down to the size of atoms and show exactly what’s happening inside cells and inside engines at an atomic level.”, reports Surrey Live.
The presenter, who doubles as an NHS infectious diseases doctor at the Hospital for Tropical Diseases in London, emphasises that his lectures are not aimed at changing children’s diets. “That’s not my ambition,” he clarifies.
“We really aren’t going to give anyone any advice – what we want is to give them information. Even if a child wants to eat different food, they don’t have a lot of control over it – they’re fed by the grown-ups who look after them. So we’re treading a very careful line here.”
He adds, “Life is about turning food into movements and respiration and all the other things life does, and I think kids are profoundly curious about it.”
However, van Tulleken, a father of three, believes there’s a deeper reason for educating children about nutrition. “Children in this country have been made very sick by our food system – a quarter of them live with diet-related disease, which is an obscenity.”
He argues, “So children have a right to knowledge and good health, and part of these lectures is about helping them understand how the food they put in their bodies affects them.”
While he insists on informing children about the consequences of their dietary choices, like the risk of constipation from not eating fibre, he maintains that he won’t dictate their eating habits.
“We’re not going to say you have to eat five portions of fruit and veg a day, and we want to be very careful warning about ultra-processed food (UPF). But we’re going to look at the science of it, and the proven effects on the body,” he explains. He insists that he will “never, ever give advice – I refuse to do it,” because he’s a food scientist, not a qualified nutritionist or dietitian, and points out: “If you give advice, it’s really hard for people to follow.”
He says it’s hard for parents to get rid of all UPFs in their children’s diet, and admits that even his children eat wholegrain UPF bread in their packed lunches, explaining: “Unless you make the bread yourself, or live near a bakery that sells real bread – which is up to 10 times more expensive than supermarket bread – it’s very hard to get rid of the final bit of UPF. So, no-one should panic – no-one’s saying you need to quit it entirely.”
His children don’t have soft drinks with their packed lunch, and drink milk or water. “That’s probably the most agreed on bit of health advice there is, that children should drink milk or water, not soft drinks,” he says.
“If your kids love soft drinks and you want to reduce them, you’re in a very difficult spot, because the drinks, of course, are engineered very cleverly so kids love them and want to drink lots of them. But kids, if they’re thirsty, will drink water and milk.”
“Soft drinks aren’t poisonous, but you know they’re not great either, and we think there’s some evidence they train the palate to really love sweetness, even the sugar-free ones,” he explains. He warns that consuming zero-calorie sweeteners might influence children’s taste for sweet things, leading them to favour sugary foods, which “sugar in a child’s diet is not great. It rots teeth and it causes other problems.”
However, he clarifies that parents using sugar in home cooking isn’t the issue. “The difficulty is the sugars in all the industrially produced foods. There are such high levels that you end up eating a huge amount,” he adds.
Discussing portion sizes, he expresses surprise: “Here’s a thing that amazes me,” he says. “A small bottle of fizzy pop is two servings. So you should drink one portion, then put the lid on and have the rest later.”
“I don’t know anyone in the history of drinking fizzy pop that has ever put the lid back on and not finished it. The same is true with packets of crisps.”
He explained the numerous methods used to engineer foods that lead to overconsumption, stating: “The properties of food that we think lead to weight gain are softness, energy density, high quantities and perfect ratios of fat, salt and sugar, flavouring, colouring and marketing and branding. All of that combines to mean that whether it’s crisps or ready meals or fast food, all of it you will eat to excess, and it won’t make you feel good.”
On what parents can do, he admits: “If a parent said to me, how can I read a pack and tell if something’s healthy or unhealthy – you kind of can’t. It’s very hard,” adding with a note of caution, “I’m very wary of being another man with privilege telling the nation how to eat.”
He empathises with parents, saying: “I personally find it very, very hard feeding my children healthily – it’s a challenge. It takes time, money, energy and effort. And if people are struggling, the main thing I would say to them is that’s normal, and it’s very hard.”
The Royal Institution Christmas Lectures will be broadcast on BBC Four (and iPlayer) at 9pm on December 29, 30 and 31.