On Ultra-Processed Content
AI Summary
Cal Newport extends Chris van Tulleken's Ultra-Processed People framework to digital media. Ultra-processed foods, defined by a 2009 NOVA classification system inspired by Michael Pollan's "edible food-like substances," are made by breaking down cheap stock ingredients (corn, soy) into basic organic building blocks then recombining them into hyper-palatable combinations engineered to hijack desire mechanisms. They're literally irresistible — a bag of Doritos is hard to stop; a salad isn't.
Newport maps the same gradient onto media. Books and articles = minimally processed whole foods (5,000 years of cultural adaptation; we rarely worry about reading too much). 20th-century radio and television = moderately processed foods like white bread and canned soups — the format we weren't prepared for, and average household TV viewing crossed 5 hours a day in the 1960s. Podcasts, newsletters, blog posts share that mid-tier. Then social media = ultra-processed content. Stock ingredients are vast databases of user-generated posts, reactions, videos, quips, memes; recommendation algorithms recombine into unnatural-but-irresistible feeds; producers adapt to feed the algorithm, simplifying and purifying their output. A TikTok dance mash-up is a digital Dorito.
The analogy unlocks the cultural shift Newport wants. We're already comfortable choosing to largely avoid ultra-processed food without being labeled "anti-food" or rejecting progress — it's simply a healthier choice. Same logic should apply to ultra-processed content. To bypass these media for less processed alternatives shouldn't be seen as bold, radical, or reactionary. It's just a move toward a healthier relationship with information. Outraged tweets, aspirational Instagram posts, aggressive TikToks: these are digital Oreos. Push them aside. "I don't consume that junk."
Highlights
- ▸Social media is ultra-processed content: stock ingredients (user posts, reactions, memes) get algorithmically recombined into hyper-palatable feeds engineered to hijack desire — a TikTok dance mash-up is a digital Dorito
- ▸We already comfortably avoid ultra-processed food without being called anti-food — same framing should apply to social media; bypassing it isn't reactionary, just a healthier information diet
- ▸Three-tier media gradient: minimally processed (books, articles), moderately processed (TV, podcasts, newsletters — needs vigilance against over-consumption), ultra-processed (social media — engineered to be irresistible)
Original excerpt
When I visited London last month, a large marketing push was underway for the paperback edition of Chris van Tulleken’s UK bestseller, _Ultra-Processed People_: _Why Do We All Eat Stuff That Isn’t Food…and Why Can’t We Stop?_ It seemed to be prominently displayed in every bookstore I visited, and, as you might imagine, I visited a lot of bookstores.
Unable to ignore it, I eventually took a closer look and learned more about the central villain of van Tulleken’s treatise: _ultra-processed food_, a term coined in 2009 as part of a new food classification system, and inspired by Michael Pollan’s concept of “edible food-like substances.”
Ultra-processed foods, at their most damaging extreme, are…
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