The FT has reported this morning that:
The UK should increase tax on tobacco, alcohol and “unhealthy food companies” to raise £10bn a year by the end of the decade to boost the nation's health, a leading think-tank has said.
They added:
The centre-left Institute for Public Policy Research's commission on health and prosperity also recommended tighter regulation in areas such as food packaging and gambling advertising, as it proposed enlisting employers, communities, businesses and investors in the effort to improve wellbeing.
They also noted the suggestion that the savings could rise to £18bn within a decade.
The article suggests that the report's authors are very close to Labour and Wes Streeting has taken careful note. IPPR is the most influential Labour think tank right now. Its director at the time of the election now works in Downing Street (although I gather that so far no Labour adviser had got a contract and they at not happy as a result).
I support this initiative. Ignoring the harm the supposed food industry is doing to its well-being right now is at least as dangerous as climate change, and may actually impose a lot more cost, about which I will post more soon.
If we are serious about tackling the costs of healthcare, creating well-being, beating inequality and delivering fit old-age then tackling the curse of ultra-processed foods and the massive sugar contents within them is essential.
What is more, the sugar lobby knows this and hates attention being drawn to the issue. Every time I mention this trolls appear here fur the first time to defend sugar. Why, I wonder, could that be? Might they be paid to do so?
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Big Food who make ultra-processed food, is bad on two fronts:
1. The product is bad for your health, consisting of chemicals rather than foods you might have in your cupboard. (even more so in the USA)
2. Misleading advertising that has shifted the blame to healthier foods.
Suggested reading
The Big Fat Surprise: why butter, meat, and cheese belong in a healthy diet (2015) Nina Teicholz
https://amzn.eu/d/667Fwib
The Salt Fix: Why the Experts Got it All Wrong and How Eating More Might Save Your Life (2017) Dr James DiNicolantonio
https://amzn.eu/d/8166ytk
Sugar – Pure, white and deadly (2016) John Yudkin
https://amzn.eu/d/h2n6o03
I would add the work of Robert Lustig.
Absolutely:
Fat Chance: The Hidden Truth About Sugar, Obesity and Disease (2014) Dr. Robert Lustig
https://amzn.eu/d/aCWKmeG
Metabolical: The truth about processed food and how it poisons people and the planet (2021) Dr. Robert Lustig
https://amzn.eu/d/fMUwa9x
Thanks
Shameful that the Dimbleby report wasn’t actioned:
https://www.nationalfoodstrategy.org/
I might have mentioned it before but having seen how sugars are used to in the production of 3D printing, I’m quite sure that many of our biscuits etc are now just held together by sugars rather than fats, and are brittle and utterly tasteless. They are not being baked; they are being extruded.
I have a weakness for a particular coffee francise. I used to enjoy something chocolately with my large coffee. I stopped buying any of the cakes because flavour started to go down (cheaper ingredients?) but sweetness went up dramatically. I assume that packing out a cakes/biscuits with sugar disguises the falling quality and is cheaper?
Yes
And you get a bigger dompanine hit that then fades quickly, so you want to go back for more
That’s the whole business model in a sentence
The result is obesity and declining public health
That is the whole of my argument
PS A sugar troll did turn up and was deleted
This was my introduction to the ultra processed food scandal, it’s a devastating rundown of the bizarre lengths we’ve gone to – as a society – to industrialise food, and what it is likely to be doing to our health (and the planet).
Ultra Processed People by Chris Van Tulleken
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1529160227/ref=sspa_mw_detail_0?ie=UTF8&psc=1&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9waG9uZV9kZXRhaWwp13NParams
Thanks
I take issue with your assertion that harmful food is as serious as climate breakdown. Future generations will be able to fix the harm done by processed foods. Climate breakdown may be irreversible.
One makes dealing with the itheruch harder
And their causes are similar
It’s pointless to pretend corporate abuse can be dealt with in silos
Harmful food is indeed having a devastating effect on climate change and biodiversity loss. Most Ultra Processed Products (can`t call them Food) are made from the monocultural production of Corn, Soya, Wheat, Sugar, as per Industrial Agricultural practices across many parts of the world. These practices are destroying soils at an alarming rate, the very soils that should be storing carbon, and so absorbing heavy rainfall and so preventing flooding and many other things besides. And guess what, Industrial Agriculture is powered by the huge multinational corporations that this blog mentions in other contexts. Wake up , this is huge.
Thank you
And you are right: they are not food
Rather than do the usual “economic expert let’s tax it”, why not legislate to ban the use of harmful ingredients all together plus any ingredients used must not be harmful to health?
The food industry will scream, but so what.
Both are options
Isnt a calorie just a calorie?
Does sugar have a property that makes you fat?
Why not read what Ian Tresman posted?
You will find the answer is no.
“Isnt a calorie just a calorie?”
Fill a car with petrol, and it goes 400 miles.
Fill the same car with diesel, and it goes nowhere.
Clearly a calorie is not just a calorie.
If your calories do not include the essential macronutrients protein and fat, you die.
If your macronutrients are mainly carbohydrates, then you could end up with type 2 diabetes.
Thanks, Ian
And some calories are actually toxins
I stopped buying plenty of products with added sugar years ago.
But it really is just ‘calories in, calories out’ (CICO) at the end of the day. If people ate an isocaloric diet, there would be no mechanism in this universe by which they could lay down fat.
So it’s overconsumption of any foods, not any particular ingredients, that is the issue.
Not quite
There are definitely much better and worse foods
CICO is a falsehood peddled by the food industry.
It’s quite simple; carbs/sugar spike your blood sugar; insulin is produced to handle the blood sugar; insulin promotes fat storage; eventually that storage runs out of capacity and you end up with metabolic disease.
It’s more about feedback loops but that’s sort of there
Delighted to read this discussion and the recent increase in number of articles. Thank you for picking this us Richard.
It makes me think is this because
1) Wes Streeting and Keir Starmer have raised the issue of preventative health care, even to the point of risking unpopularity, even provoking with the whole “nanny state” jibe, and so the media can see the direction of travel and are waking up to the health costs of Ultra Processed “food”,
2) or, there’s a quiet briefing somewhere before the October budget,
3) or hospitality gifts for the PM is not as yet coming from the Industrial Fast Food sector? ☺️ Tongue in cheek, and below the (expanding) belt line, sorry, but I think we can expect there will be some considerable push back going on from the Industrial Food System behind the scenes.
Or, more seriously, maybe the media are mindful of the influence of the centre-left Institute of a Public Policy Research thinktank, and have how food figures in their ‘Our Greatest Asset: The final report of the IPPR Commission on Health and Prosperity’ (Sept 2024)
https://www.ippr.org/articles/our-greatest-asset
I’ve always thought that many of the ‘snacks’ and uhp ‘foods’ sold on supermarket shelves should be labelled as “Non-Food Edibles” as they are so lacking in any nutritional value.
Of course there would be great hue and cry from the profitunists who fill their bank accounts by causing harm to health.