I have knocked Labour a great deal of late, so I must give credit where it is due.
The Guardian has noted this morning that:
Junk food advertisements will be banned from television before the 9pm watershed, the government has announced. Online ads for products that are high in fat, salt and sugar will be banned altogether. Both measures, which are intended to help tackle childhood obesity, will come into force in a year's time.
Plans to ban children from buying high-caffeine energy drinks, which form part of the same public health drive and appeared in Labour's election manifesto, are expected to be announced next month.
Both moves are vital. Growing ill health of all sorts cannot be tackled, with costs contained, unless the curse of ultra-processed and junk food providing g instant and addictive dopamine hits is tackled. So these are moves in the right direction.
However, they are also not enough. The massive health crisis these foods are creating, from increasing obesity to the rise in diabetes and dementia, with effects also seen in other physical and mental health, requires much more, including:
- Planning controls on fast food outlets
- Statutory limits on fructose content in food
- Total advertising bans
- Massive health warnings on packaging
- Selective tax changes
- Regulation on food displays in supermarkets highlighting risks
- Statutory requirements for changes in school and hospital meals
- Eventual bans on these abusive substances.
We have done it on tobacco.
There have been succesful moves on salt.
Now, we need to do it with fructose, in particular.
The economy needs this, but much more importantly, so too do the people of the UK. They can no longer suffer the corporate abuse that these supposed foodstuffs deliver.
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One cheer for Labour
You clearly mean well, Richard, but fructose in and of itself is not the enemy. “Added sugars” is. That’s what needs tackling.
We actually need more people to be eating more whole foods, such as fruits and vegetables, which are abundant in fructose. The healthiest people on the planet, athletes, eat plenty. It’s all about balance.
You’re throwing the baby out with the bath water with your myopic fixation.
Sorry – but please read the science
Fructose is the added sugar
By all means eat fruit – but what do you think added sugar is? Added fructose creates addictive dopamine highs – hence fast food addiction – and big food knows that. I am really not being stupid here. This is the problem. And you’re falling for their cover story.
I think your description of “added fructose” best clarifies the issue.
Following largely an eliminating sugar and added fructose and reducing insulin resistance with a simpler dietary regime over Covid time I dropped 30kg, reversed diabetes2 and better managed a 20 yr heart condition. So the science about added fructose and healthier simpler real food and life activity regimes has worked very well for me at least.
If labour actually follows through with the partial banning on junk food and high energy drinks, it would be a good start. Your fuller recommendations would be much better.
You make clear type 2 diabetes is treatable
On the other hand, it suits Starmer’s chosen image: as a flint-faced, joyless Scrooge determined to extinguish the last gleam of a love of life from the old, the vulnerable, the poor: anyone Reeves sees as an obstacle to “growth”.
It is welcome, but I’d have to have a real good look at it to be totally convinced.
And who is watching what they get up to next?
To be a bit pedantic (it is a vice of Aquarians), I think the problem is mostly with sucrose and less so with fructose. Sucrose is produced from sugar cane and sugar beet, and is, I just discovered, the only type of sugar that mouth bacteria can use to form plaque. Sucrose is sometimes deemed an unnatural sugar, as it is not very common in nature. Fructose is the ‘natural sugar’ found in all fruits, many vegetables, etc. Apple juice, for example, is mostly fructose and often used to sweeten e.g. orange juice. In terms of harm, at the worst end you have sucrose, at the least harmful would be glucose. Glucose is the simplest sugar that will be absorbed by the body without any need for digestion. Glucose is, of course, the natural transport mechanism for moving energy about the body. Obviously, excessive glucose is still harmful, fattening, etc. Sucrose has to be broken down into glucose in the digestion, and as a complex sugar has more calories per gram. If you compare glucose, fructose and sucrose, it is the latter that tastes the sweetest, hence the modern cravings for it. Sucrose was essentially not available before 1800, so people had to use e.g. honey or fruit as a sweetener.
No, it’s fructose
We’ll have to disagree – and it’s fine in fruit but even when juiced it’s a problem: it creates manipulable dopamine highs (and then troughs) which are the basis of fast-food over consumption
If you’ve been relying on Google to tell you that fructose and not sucrose is th main sweetener, juts bare in mind that google is biased to the US, where the use of HFCS is very common as corn syrup is heavily subsidised by the government. It isn’t used much in the UK and Europe as sucrose is cheaper over here.
I am relying on academic research, mainly read by my wife who has eight medical qualifications and I thionk 31 letters after her name as a result.
Science is repeatable by nature, since your body can turn sucrose into fructose & glucose within seconds thanks to saliva you can test your hypothesis – get as much water as you like see if you can eat 1000 kcals of it without being sick, American large drink, you won’t any more than you could drink 1,000 of cream or steak.
You can’t drink 1000 kcal of sugar because it’s NOT ultra processed, can’t drink 1000 kcal of cream because it’s not ultra processed, can’t eat 1000 calories of steak because not ultra processed. Ultraprocessing stops bodies signal to stop and changes brain structure, aka antidepressants resistance.
You are correct that Sucrose is the sweetest sugar, but it does genuinely need to be broken down in the small intestine prior to the glucose being absorbed into the bloodstream. One could postulate that less overall sugar may be absorbed when we eat Sucrose as due to the increased sweetness of Sucrose, we people may choose to ingest less of it than the equivalent amount of Fructose. Of course, this has never been proved in scientific studies! However, we know that the Food Industry has battled hard against possible reductions in the amount of sugar added into processed foods. A lot of these food and diet studies are afflicted by publication bias and corporate bias.
In the USA, High Fructose Corn Syrup = HFCS (https://www.fda.gov/food/food-additives-petitions/high-fructose-corn-syrup-questions-and-answers) dominated the Food industry from the late 1970s, which probably did help precipitate the exponential rise in Obesity. HFCS was much cheaper to produce than traditional sucrose so helped generate cheaper food and greater profits in the 1980s through to the early 2000s. The downside is that this different form of added sugar is unusual for the body. When the human liver gets presented with a lot of excess Fructose it converts it into Fat. The repeated pressure on modern livers to convert excess added Fructose has probably contributed significantly to the rise in what Doctors call ‘Fatty Liver’ or Non Alcoholic Steatohepatitis (NASH), as well as Insulin Resistance and Type 2 Diabetes.
See reference – https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19381015/
Overall, Worldwide sugar consumption needs to come down and the Food Industry needs reigning in on a scale akin to how Big Tobacco were forced to desist from nefarious practices.
Predictable headlines in the Daily Mail this morning about “Nanny State Starmer”. They won’t even credit it him for an obviously good policy that would benefit everyone
Here in France advertising junk food (high in salt, fats, sugar or other sweeteners) is allowed, but has to be accompanied by a government health warning.
Difficult to know where we’ll be getting all this healthy food from when Starmer’s administration is seemingly intent on driving farmers out of business. No word on that at all I gather. Further, today we see open admission that when the power cuts come there’s no provision at all to assist domestic customers, disabled, energy-dependent, whatever
https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/hospitals-would-not-initially-be-protected-from-electricity-cuts-in-a-national-power-outage-government-admits/
Do they now intend to starve us on top? Another step towards the future I’ve been predicting then for some time, one where Britons routinely find themselves dying cold, diseased and hungry in the dark.
All together now; ENGERLAAAAAAND!
I am sure that you were being witty and sarcastic!
It is the mass production of convenient, super sweet processed foods over the past four decades that has lowered the price of food and helped slowly drive farmers out of business. The successful war against “dangerous” animal fat that the likes of Dr Ancel Keys helped to promote lead to a denigration of animal produce in favour of “more healthy” cereals. Of course, that is not unique to the UK but it has been a significant factor in the undercutting of farmers and the over promotion of a sugar-rich, high carbohydrate diet. A return to more traditional, more local Farm produce, and less ultra-processed food production will be expensive overall but could significantly increase the returns that Farmer’s can make.
In my view, the false dietary advice recommending the dramatic reduction in animal fat consumption, that was promoted by Western governments for nearly four decades is one of the human race’s biggest con tricks.
My first thought on reading this news was “what about online advertising?”
The sheer amount of junk food ads I have to wade through on YouTube…
I think you can take a subscription out to have advertising free youtube. Obviously you’d miss out on contributing a few pennies to all Richard’s marvellous videos.
Nothing about a ban on gambling advertising then or reverting to the old situation where gambling debts could not be recovered via the courts?
What exactly are the implications of the following?
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/sep/13/uk-government-to-buy-electricity-system-operator-from-national-grid-for-630m
Is this also something to cheer about?
I know a man who can answer that
Mike?
At my last school (I’ve moved on to another school this year) we had a blanket ban on energy drinks…
But sold coke & mars in the bending machines and sausage rolls in the canteen.
Nope, I still can’t figure that one out
This just published in The BMJ, you couldn’t make it up:
“UK government’s nutrition advisers are paid by world’s largest food companies, BMJ analysis reveals” BMJ 2024;386:q1909 (11 Sep 2024)
https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.q1909
“More than half of the experts on the UK government’s advisory panel on nutrition have links to the food industry, a BMJ analysis has found. At least 11 of the 17 members of the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition (SACN) have conflicts of interest with the likes of Nestlé, sugar manufacturer Tate and Lyle, and the world’s largest ice cream producer, Unilever.”
This is exactly what Robert F. Kennedy was banging on about in the USA, that their agencies have been “captured” by vested interests, who are not advising for the better health of the population, but for profit for the manufacturers concerned. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7ZjQPUfoBc
No wonder people get angry here when I mention sugar
Who paid all the trolls who have appeared on this issue?
It might be worse than that.
“In the 1960s, the sugar industry funded research that downplayed the risks of sugar and highlighted the hazards of fat, according to a newly published article in JAMA Internal Medicine.”
Source: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/13/493739074/50-years-ago-sugar-industry-quietly-paid-scientists-to-point-blame-at-fat
“Sugar lobby paid scientists to blur sugar’s role in heart disease – report” (2016) – The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/sep/12/sugar-industry-paid-research-heart-disease-jama-report
“Sugar industry paid for dietary research in 1960s, analysis shows” (2016) The BMJ
https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.i4936
Counter-argument
“The Made-Up Story About How Big Sugar Shifted the Blame to Fat” (2018)
https://slate.com/technology/2018/03/big-sugar-isnt-to-blame-for-steering-us-away-from-fat.html
It has been reported that baby formula marketed in less prosperous countries by Nestle is of less nutritional value than that that in the wealthier. I have no idea if that is true. What is true is that youngsters in Britain are shorter than their continental contemporaries. Is this not shameful? In my local General Hospital (Kindly donated in part by the USA in 1945), the A&E interminable waiting room is graced by enormous child-friendly vending machines offering a wide selection of sugar and salt, and nothing else. I`m afraid that anger is my own response to this affront to the most vulnerable of us all.
I wrote in irate haste. Nestle, NBC News, May 3, 2024. Boycott Nestle.
I don’t troll, but I don’t food fashion either. Go to work on an egg. Six slices a day is the well balanced way. Five a day.!! (Give men a break) The best bit of the potato is the skin, the bit under the skin the other bit….. sugar is poison, fat is poison, chocolate is probably poison too. If people are unhappy they eat shite. Any shite.
Bad eating habits are NOT a problem they are a symptom.
I remember when butter was bad for us and margarine was supposed top be the thing.: plant-based Industrial lubricant without a market(?). Blue band only became acceptable to housewives when its price was DOUBLED to make it comparable to the (then) price of butter. And suddenly it was fashionable on the table. Flora followed. And others followed the leaders and I ate butter. And I still do. (And I’m still here fulminating about food fads.). Super foods? My arse.
This oil-based margarine crap has since been largely discredited though many have not noticed, but that is their problem. Has not God given them taste buds?
As for sugar. Give me sugar for saccharine and aspartamine any day. The problem is not an addiction to sugar, but an addiction to sweetness. And you can’t cure stupidity. Like you will probably never persuade me to prefer black coffee to white coffee. It’s what I…..like. Black coffee tastes metallic to me. It hits the wrong part of the tongue. (Or something)
Anyway I read your blog for economic wisdom. I don’t take any notice of supposed dietetic experts on what I eat. I sure as hell won’t alter my diet because of what your column says, though I accept the iniquities of exploiting a gullible market for financial gain and deplore it. I’m prepared to accept the sugar lobby is over powerful and over influential, but I don’t eat enough of it to give a damn. Those who do probably also think McDonalds serve food. (Ray Albert Crok deals in real estate. He doesn’t do food.) You can only do so much to help people.
I also deplore the governments’ pricing of tobacco which by now must be ninety per cent of the value of the product; supposedly in my interests. I call that sanctimonious bollox. And we both know (unlike Alf Garrnet) that it finances no government spending. This is an insidious form of fascism. PAH! And seriously recessive taxation. {Pigou be damned.)
You’re welcome to disagree
I am interested in solutions to the problems our society faces
Ignoring poor diet and ultra processed food is akin to ignoring climate change. Both are big business created problems and controlling both is not fascist – it is vital.
This reminds me of Sir Ronald A Fisher (1890-1962), a distinguished statistician who applied his work to evolution, Darwinism and Mendelism (the Modern Synthesis); who in later maturity produced ‘The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection’ (which ends with an exposition of his ideas on Eugenics); and who was of such immense influence he was supported by the tobacco industry to inveigh against the early medical evidence challenging the safety of smoking. Fisher (a smoker), with supreme hubris described tobacco as a harmless “soothing weed”, and was once reported in a 1957 newspaper as protesting at the “terrorist” propaganda against smoking. Experts are typically expert only in a very, very narrow area of expertise.
He wrote this during a long controversy on cancer and smoking. It has relevance to the follies of today. It isn’t new. Was saw the same thing over Covid; and other medical issues.
“If, indeed, the statistical departments engaged in university teaching, were performing their appropriate task, of clarifying and confirming, in the future research workers who come within their influence, an understanding of the art of examining observational data, the fallacious conclusions drawn, from a simple association, about the danger of cigarettes, could scarcely have been made the basis of a terrifying propaganda.
For this reason I have thought that the fallacies must be attacked at both of two distinct levels; as an experimental scientist, and as a math- ematical statistician. The lecture on The Nature of Probability was to a non-mathematical audience, on the general question of the validity of inferences from facts available on lung cancer” (RA Fisher, ‘Smoking. The Cancer Controversy: Some Attempts to Assess the Evidence’, 1959).
Who decides what level of sugar or salt or fat is high , in USA the producers of childrens sugar coated cereals agreed to reduce the sugar content and then advertised their products as low in sugar , closer examination found that the sugar content had been reduced from 42% to 37%.
So what is the definition of Labour,s HIGH.
In England, it is Public Health England, Helen
“Public Health England exists to protect and improve the nation’s health and
wellbeing, and reduce health inequalities. It does this through world-class
science, knowledge and intelligence, advocacy, partnerships and the delivery
of specialist public health services. PHE is an operationally autonomous
executive agency of the Department of Health.”
Recommendations are here – https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/618167/government_dietary_recommendations.pdf
Thank you Richard: Excellent post.
You your list, may I add the Food Foundation recommendation to, “Improve transparency by introducing mandatory public reporting by food businesses against a range of health and sustainability metrics to de-risk business investment in more healthy and sustainable food offerings (delivering the promises of the Food Data Transparency Partnership).”
Agreed
Should read “To your list…” (not You your…!)