TV presenter Dr Chris van Tulleken challenged himself to eat a diet made up of mostly ultra-processed foods for a month.
“After the month was over, Chris reported poor sleep, heartburn, unhappy feelings, anxiety, sluggishness, and low libido. He also had piles from constipation. “I felt ten years older”, he says, but “didn’t realise it was all [because of] the food until I stopped eating the diet”.
Whilst we all know that eating processed food is not good for us, we still do it. The consideration is how much we eat. Too much, in this case, the impact is noticeable. If you eat mainly unprocessed food, with a little proceeded, the impact is certainly less. It, therefore, pays to eat non proceeded food.
In the world of money, so many people are investing in the same way as eating processed foods. The big difference, unlike Dr Chris van Tulleken, it’s difficult to see the difference. It’s hard to know the difference between, a ‘healthy non processed investment’ against a ‘processed one’.
On average, investors are paying over 2% for their money to be managed. Many are also not getting any outperformance which compounds the problem. It’s like eating processed foods.
The answer is to invest ‘healthily. As an investor, your question is ‘how do I do that? It starts by digging deeper about conflicts of interest and being discerning what information you take on board.