Is Your Snack Lying to You? How Ultra-Processed Foods May Be Rewriting Your Mood, Mind and Motivation

You start every morning with the best intentions. You read labels, you choose cereals with ‘whole grains’ on the box, you grab snacks that promise natural ingredients. So why do you still feel sluggish by 3pm? Why does your mood crash after lunch? Why does eating healthy feel impossible, even when you know better?

The frustrating truth is that the packaged foods lining our supermarket shelves – no matter how innocent they look – may be the biggest culprit behind these daily struggles. What we think we’re eating and what we’re actually consuming are often worlds apart.

What Exactly Are Ultra-Processed Foods?

The term ‘ultra-processed’ sounds dramatic, but it’s actually quite simple. These are foods that have been stripped down to basic components and then reconstructed with industrial ingredients you wouldn’t find in your kitchen. Think sugary cereals, packaged snacks, ready meals, and even those ‘health’ bars that promise to solve all your nutritional problems.

Luis Luyando, co-director of a new documentary exploring this food crisis, puts it bluntly: ‘We’re not just eating snacks – we’re consuming substances designed to addict, distract and deteriorate.’

Recent research supports this stark assessment. A study published in Neurology found that people eating 11 or more servings of ultra-processed foods daily had 2.5 times higher likelihood of developing early Parkinson’s signs compared to those eating fewer than three servings. Even more concerning, just five days of eating high-caloric, sugary, fatty foods can impair brain insulin function long after you stop the unhealthy eating.

The Sneaky Side Effects: More Than Just Weight

The documentary ‘Food Lies: Mentiras Procesadas’, which premiered on YouTube earlier this June, features insights from dietitian Belén Maldonado, clinical psychologist Carina Castro Fumero, nutritionist Michelle Peiret and researcher Simón Álvarez. Their message is clear: the effects of these foods extend far beyond your waistline.

When your brain’s cognitive regions – like the hippocampus, which affects memory and mood – become insulin-resistant from processed foods, you’re not just dealing with blood sugar spikes. You’re experiencing changes in mental clarity, emotional stability and energy levels that can last well beyond your last meal.

These experts highlight how everyday foods can trigger sugar crashes that leave you reaching for another snack, creating a cycle that becomes increasingly difficult to break. The real cost of eating well isn’t just financial – it’s the hidden health price we pay when we don’t understand what’s actually in our food.

The Hidden Ingredient Problem

Take titanium dioxide, a common food additive that recent research suggests may disrupt the body’s endocrine system by interfering with hormonal responses to food and dysregulating blood sugar levels. As Tom Neltner from Unleaded Kids explains, ‘When you start messing with glucose levels – that’s diabetes.’ Yet this ingredient appears in countless products without most consumers realising.

Why Even Health-Conscious Women Get Fooled

How do we fall for these tricks? The documentary’s associate producer, Enrique José Rodríguez, brings expertise in branding and consumer behaviour to explain how intelligent people make choices that work against their health goals.

The packaging is designed to bypass your rational mind. Terms like ‘natural’, ‘organic’ and ‘whole grain’ can appear on products that are still heavily processed. A cereal box might boast about added vitamins whilst hiding the fact that those nutrients had to be added back because the processing stripped them out in the first place.

Even foods marketed as healthy alternatives often contain the same industrial ingredients as their obviously unhealthy counterparts. That protein bar promising clean energy? It might have more ingredients than a chocolate bar, many of them unpronounceable chemicals designed to extend shelf life and enhance flavour.

Simple Ways to Regain Control

The experts featured in the documentary don’t advocate for perfection – they emphasise awareness. Co-director Willy Martin explains: ‘People deserve to know what’s in their food and how it’s impacting their lives. We created this as a wake-up call.’

The first step isn’t dramatically overhauling your entire diet overnight. Start by reading ingredient lists rather than just the marketing claims on the front of packages. If you can’t pronounce most of the ingredients, or if there are more than five ingredients for what should be a simple food, it’s probably ultra-processed.

Building a healthy relationship with food begins with noticing how different foods make you feel. Do you crash an hour after eating that morning cereal? Does your mood dip after reaching for packaged snacks? Your body is giving you information – you just need to start listening.

When possible, choose foods that are as close to their natural state as possible. An apple is better than apple juice, which is better than apple-flavoured snacks. Plain yoghurt with fresh fruit beats fruit yoghurt loaded with artificial flavours and preservatives.

A New Kind of Wellness Message

What makes the 13-minute ‘Food Lies’ documentary noteworthy isn’t just its message, but its approach. Rather than preaching perfect eating or promoting a specific diet, it simply asks viewers to think critically about what they’re consuming.

The film combines investigative storytelling with visual impact to reveal how these foods reshape not just our bodies, but our minds. It dares to ask uncomfortable questions: What if breakfast is poison? What if what we eat is programming us? What if your food is lying to you?

This approach reflects a growing frustration with wellness content that feels unattainable. Instead of promising transformation through restriction, the documentary suggests transformation through awareness.

Start Where You Are

The solution isn’t about achieving dietary perfection or cutting out every processed food from your life immediately. It’s about recognising that the foods you trust might be working against you, and that small changes in awareness can lead to significant improvements in how you feel.

Try tracking what you eat for one week alongside notes about your energy levels, mood and cravings. You might be surprised by the patterns that emerge. That afternoon slump might correlate perfectly with your lunch choices. Those evening cravings might be your body’s response to the additives in your afternoon snack.

Mindful eating factors can help you become more aware of not just what you eat, but how it makes you feel. The goal isn’t guilt – it’s information. Once you understand how these foods affect your brain, your mood and your energy, you can make choices that actually support how you want to feel.

Your snacks might have been lying to you, but now you know how to start listening to your body instead.