Sam Srisatta, Participant in NIH Study: Yes, so I do have a couple of these sensors.
Meg Tirrell: He's not sick. He's a 2participant in a 3clinical trial, one of the first of its kind, measuring his movement, his blood, his 4gut microbiome, even the air he breathes, all to try to better understand how our health is affected by 5ultra-processed foods.
¡°Oh, I think your food's coming in." We saw the kind of food he got. It had eggs and spinach and yogurt. But we don't know. That could be processed. It could be unprocessed. That's part of the trial.
Ultra-processed foods contain 6additives and ingredients you wouldn't find in your own kitchen. They were shown in a previous 7NIH study to drive overeating and weight gain, according to researcher Dr. Kevin Hall.
¡°Are ultra processed foods just junk foods?¡±
Dr. Kevin Hall, Senior Investigator, National Institutes of Health: What we often think of as junk foods probably 8captures a big chunk of the ultra-processed foods kind of category. But there's a lot of things that people would be surprised that are in the ultra-processed foods category and could potentially be healthy for you. So, things like whole grain breads that you might buy from the supermarket. Most of those are 9considered ultra-processed because of some of the additives and 10preservatives that are in there as well as how they're 11manufactured. There's a lot of debate about whether or not all ultra-processed foods are bad for you.
¡°And that's what this trial is trying to find out.¡±
Dr. Kevin Hall: What are the mechanisms? What is it about this category of foods that is driving people to 12overconsume calories?
Meg Tirrell: Dr. Hall's team has two ideas about what might be causing people to overeat some ultra-processed foods. Their 13energy density, or how many calories are in each gram of food, and their 14hyper-palatability. When foods contain just the right combinations of salt, sugar, fat, and carbs to make us not want to stop eating them.
