What Happens to Your Body If You Eat Nothing but Hamburgers: Examining the Risks of an Ultra-Processed Food

The video begins by describing the hamburger as "a dish in which a patty of ground meat, shaped into a round and grilled, is sandwiched in a round bun," and classifies it as a type of sandwich. It notes that layering in lettuce, tomato, onion, pickles and the like creates a complex flavor, and calls it "the king of fast food."

Although it is strongly associated with American cuisine, according to the video its roots lie in Germany. Europe had a dish called steak tartare, in which chopped raw meat is seasoned and eaten. Between the 18th and 19th centuries, a style of serving this ground-meat dish cooked spread in the German port city of Hamburg, and it became established as "Hamburg-style steak"—in other words, the prototype of the hamburg steak. This dish traveled to America with German immigrants, and by the end of the 19th century it was being sold between pieces of bread at food stands and elsewhere. As it spread as a convenient sandwich, the name "hamburger" took hold, the video says.

Hamburgers have a strongly unhealthy image, but the video says that looking at the nutritional makeup of a single burger, it isn't extremely unbalanced. One burger weighs about 100g. According to figures published by a world-famous hamburger chain, it contains 13.0g of protein, 9.5g of fat and 30.3g of carbohydrates.

In the video's assessment, the balance of the three macronutrients isn't badly off, with fat only somewhat high. However, it is high in salt and lacking in dietary fiber and vitamins. For that reason, the video gives it a "failing grade" for overall nutritional balance.

If you were to sustain yourself on hamburgers alone, how many would you need to eat per day? The video calculates this from calories. That company's hamburger contains 259 kcal. The daily energy requirement is said to be about 2,400 kcal for adult men and about 2,200 kcal for women. That works out to roughly nine burgers a day.

The video says this number, while likely to get boring taste-wise, isn't a particularly unreasonable amount. It then goes on to argue that the problem isn't the quantity but the nature of the type of food that hamburgers represent.

According to the video, at the cutting edge of nutrition science, hamburgers are sometimes classified as "ultra-processed foods." Roughly defined, these are highly processed foods containing additives not used in home cooking. Such foods are energy-dense and high in unhealthy types of fat, refined carbohydrates, sugar and salt. On the other hand, they are low in protein, dietary fiber, and micronutrients such as vitamins. The video treats hamburgers as a prime example.

As evidence, it presents a study of more than 40,000 French adults aged 45 and over. A 10% increase in the share of ultra-processed foods in the diet was associated with a 14% increase in all-cause mortality risk. The video also notes that studies under similar conditions have found increases of 12% in cardiovascular disease risk, 13% in coronary heart disease risk and 11% in cerebrovascular disease risk.

The scenario here is a diet that is 100% ultra-processed food. The video remarks that the risk doesn't even need to be debated by current science, and that the situation could fairly be called "slow suicide."

Next, the video turns to the hamburger's star pairing: fatty meat and the bun. The flavors go together brilliantly, but the combination is harmful to the human body, it says. When the saturated fat in the patty combines with the refined carbohydrates in the bun, LDL ("bad") cholesterol increases. Down that road lie arteriosclerosis, heart attacks, strokes and more, the video explains.

A lack of dietary fiber is also raised as a problem. According to materials from Japan's Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, the daily target intake of dietary fiber is at least 21g for men aged 18 to 64 and at least 18g for women. Yet even eating nine hamburgers provides only 14.4g of dietary fiber.

The video further states that such a diet is known to disrupt the balance of gut bacteria and reduce the microbial communities that metabolize plant-based compounds. Since even the ability to process the already scarce plant-based substances declines, it becomes a "vicious cycle," in the video's view.

Among the micronutrient deficiencies, the one the video singles out as requiring particular attention is vitamin C. The daily requirement for adults is said to be 80mg, with a recommended intake of 100mg. By contrast, a lifestyle of eating nine hamburgers a day provides just 9mg of vitamin C, according to the video. It points out that this is far too little by any standard and raises the risk of scurvy.

As a real-world example, the video presents a case report of a 65-year-old woman who developed scurvy after sustaining a diet of nothing but hamburgers. According to the video, the skin on both her legs was peeling off and the flesh looked as if it had rotted. That is far too great a price in suffering for the convenience of hamburgers, the video says.

While some things are lacking, there are also things present in excess. One of them is salt. It goes without saying that excessive salt intake causes high blood pressure, but the video continues that this isn't the only problem.

What the video emphasizes is the effect salt has when combined with other components. The complex flavor combination of fat, refined carbohydrates and salt in ultra-processed foods slips past the body's physiological satiety mechanisms. At the same time, it has been suggested that this may activate the brain's reward circuitry, the video says. The video describes this as "brain destruction and an appetite boost," summing up that hamburgers are simply too delicious for the human brain.

As a result, the video predicts that the originally assumed nine burgers a day wouldn't be the end of it, and that you'd end up eating even more. Furthermore, compared with eating unprocessed foods, eating ultra-processed foods reportedly decreases appetite-suppressing hormones and increases hunger hormones. In other words, the video explains, it works in the direction of making your appetite harder to stop the more you eat.

The video closes by describing a hamburger-only diet as "the gateway to an endless hell of continually eating poison." It then recommends at least making some adjustments, such as switching your drink to oolong tea or adding a salad as a side. Above all, the video concludes, hamburgers should be eaten as an indulgence, like a reward on special days. It ends with a line voicing the viewer's true feelings: "I know all that, but I can't stop."