What Happens to Your Poop When You Only Eat Ultra-Processed Food? This Guy Found Out
IN HIS X bio, thirty-one-year-old Scott Hickle refers to himself as the world's shittiest founder. Hickle is the co-founder and CEO of Austin-based startup Throne. Using a downward-facing camera that clips to your toilet, a Throne device captures video of your pee and poop and uses AI models to track your hydration and gut health.
After a couple of stressful days in early May of this year messed with his stomach, Hickle, who monitors his gut health daily with a Throne, wondered what would happen if he deliberately tried to wreck his gut.
He decided to spend 30 days eating only ultra-processed foods (UPFs). Studies have shown links between eating UPFs and irritable bowel syndrome, inflammatory bowel disease, and colon cancer.
From May 28 to June 27, Hickle ate only UPFs including frozen food, pizza, and chips. One day he ate nothing but Krispy Kreme donuts. And he kept track of his experiment using a wide range of tech.
After June 27th, Hickle went back to his usual low-carb, high-protein, healthy-fat diet. MH talked with Hickle about the results of his experiment and whether he'd do it again.
MEN'S HEALTH: You set out to see if you could wreck your gut by only eating ultra-processed foods for a month. How did you monitor your health during that time?
SCOTT HICKLE: I kept using my Throne to measure my hydration and stool frequency and consistency. And to check for blood in my stool.
I used my Whoop band and Oura ring to track my sleep, heart health, and activity level. I weighed myself on a Wyze scale and tracked my workouts with the Hevy app. And I started wearing a Levels continuous glucose monitor to measure my blood sugar.
I checked my blood pressure twice a day and used a Google sheet to self-report my mood, energy, and attention. I also had baseline blood work and gut microbiome tests done before I started the UPF diet so I'd have a point of comparison.
MH: How did eating UPFs for a month make you feel?
SH: I had this surplus of energy the first week because I almost doubled my carb and sugar intake. But my blood sugar was erratic, which pretty quickly had a negative effect.
When I was in the middle of a blood sugar spike, I felt like Superman. And when my blood sugar was crashing, I felt like a zombie – so grumpy and negative. My gut felt okay except for one day when I ate only donuts and another when I ate only super-spicy food. The day I ate spicy food I was out walking with a friend and all of sudden I knew that if I didn't make a beeline to the nearest bathroom I was going to shit my pants.
MH: Did you ever hit a low point?
SH: The tail end of the UPF diet was the worst. I felt like the kid who got caught smoking cigarettes in high school and his parents forced him to chain smoke until he threw up. It even affected my workouts. That last week I was lifting lower weights with more effort. I felt pretty lethargic overall.
MH: Did the month of eating UPFs affect your gut health and other biomarkers?
SH: The microbiome test showed that a couple inflammatory markers in my gut were high, but my overall gut health stayed strong. And besides donut day and spicy day, my stool stayed in the healthy range on the Throne.
My heamoglobin AIC, which measured my average blood sugar, was fine both at baseline and after thirty days eating UPFs. But I knew from the Levels that my blood sugar was spiking and crashing daily, which shows the importance of continuous health monitoring.
My cholesterol actually went down after the UPF diet. Maybe because my normal diet is much higher in protein and that includes meats and eggs, not just lean chicken. But my dual X ray absorptiometry (DEXA) scan that measured my body composition showed that my adipose fat – the "bad fat" that surrounds my organs – went up 5.5 times during that month!
MH: How did going back to your regular diet make you feel?
SH: I felt 100 percent better. Frankly, I felt even better than that. I had felt so low that baseline felt like plus 10 percent.
MH: Did the data show that?
SH: Definitely. My energy, mood, and focus were much better. Everything was pretty much back to baseline besides the adipose fat. My blood sugar spikes went down the day I started eating healthy again. There was like a 46 percent decrease in the number of times my blood sugar spiked, which is fascinating.
MH: Now that the experiment is over, do you think you'd ever do it again?
SH: Nope. It was a pretty painful experience. And to have a longer-term impact on my gut health, I'd have to commit to that diet for months or years. That's not something I'm up for.
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