There is a sentence in The Lancet's new series on ultra-processed foods (UPFs), published this week, that makes clear exactly what the issue with them is. It says that UPFs are;
emblematic of a food system increasingly controlled by transnational corporations that prioritise corporate profit ahead of public health.
That is not a nutritional observation. It is a political economy diagnosis. And it is one that governments have been unwilling to make for far too long, although the need to do so has been apparent; I have been discussing this issue for some time.
Let me spell this out then: we do not eat UPFs because we lack willpower. We eat them because corporate power has redesigned our food environment to make UPFs unavoidable, cheap, aggressively marketed, and engineered to undermine our capacity to choose better. That is the heart of the matter. We are living with a food system that is designed to undermine our health in pursuit of corporate profit, and that is exactly what it is achieving at enormous costs to us and the state.
This needs some unpacking, as the issue is deeply significant, not least for the future health of the people of this country and the ever-growing costs of the NHS, which UPFs are fuelling.
What UPFs really are
The Lancet series repeats what many public health researchers have been warning for a decade: UPFs are not simply “foods that are high in sugar or fat”. They are industrial formulations built from commodity crops like maize, wheat, soy and palm oil, which are processed into extracts, powders, stabilisers and additives, and then combined with colourings and flavourings, before being packaged in plastic and sold as food, when they are nothing like that which we ate only a few decades ago, and throughout human life until then. This is not food; it is an industrial product designed for shelf life, transport efficiency, and profit margin. And our bodies are not adapted to survive on them. That is the problem.
Critics claim that the UPF category is too broad because it includes fortified cereals and flavoured yoghurts (which, in my opinion, are most definitely UPFs). But this misses the point entirely. UPFs rarely exist as individual products: they form dietary patterns. Once they enter a household, they displace real food. The harm to health arises from the system. And the system is now dominant.
In the UK, around half of all calories consumed come from UPFs. In many poorer countries, consumption is rising at alarming rates as global corporations push aggressively into newly “liberalised” markets. Ultra-processing is becoming the world's default diet.
The political economy of engineered diets
What the Lancet shows is that UPF consumption is not an accident. It is the result of concentrated corporate power.
A tiny handful of transnational corporations – Nestlé, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Unilever and a few others – dominate the global market. Their business model depends on turning cheap commodities into branded substances with high retail margins. And because their profits depend on volume, they market UPFs with relentless intensity, often targeting children, women, and lower-income households.
They also make them addictive, to the extent that they are designed so that they do not satisfy the craving for food for long, leading to excess consumption when that is not required, with the obesity epidemic being the inevitable result.
The consequences are profound:
- Chronic disease has become a corporate externality. Obesity, diabetes, heart disease and gut disorders are rising because our food environments have been re-engineered around industrial ingredients. The NHS pays the bill. The corporations collect the profit.
- Inequality shapes what people eat. People on lower incomes eat UPFs not because they prefer them but because the alternatives are unaffordable, inaccessible, or simply absent. Cheap calories have replaced nutritious meals because wages are low, rents are high, and time is scarce.
- Planetary health is collateral damage. Industrial processing is fossil-fuel intensive; global supply chains are carbon heavy; and UPFs are wrapped in plastic. These harms are baked into the system.
This is not a consumer-choice problem. It is a structural problem created by deregulation and a food industry allowed to act without constraint.
What a government that cared would do
The Lancet recommendations are clear. They call for a comprehensive, state-led response that takes corporate power seriously. That means:
- Proper regulation. This requires:
- Front-of-pack warning labels.
- Limits on additives that signal ultra-processing.
- Marketing bans aimed at children, and
- Restrictions on UPFs in schools, hospitals, and public institutions.
- Real competition policy would require an end to industry self-regulation. Dominant firms will need to be broken up if need be. Mergers that have concentrated market power must be stopped.
- UPFs must be taxed to reflect their social and health costs. The revenue should be used to subsidise whole foods and minimally processed meals so that low-income households are better off, not worse. Positive VAT rates on UPFs and negative VAT rates on real foods (an idea currently unused, but which is technically possible) could help address this issue, creating significant price differentials in the process.
- Rewriting agricultural policy could end subsidies that funnel public money into commodity crops used for ultra-processing. Support for local producers, horticulture, community kitchens, and short supply chains should be provided instead.
- Protecting the vulnerable is essential, meaning that any UPF strategy must be designed with equity at its core. Cheap industrial calories have replaced real food because wages have been suppressed, childcare is unaffordable, and time poverty is endemic. You cannot change diets without changing the economic conditions that shape eating.
In short, governments must treat UPF consumption as the predictable outcome of corporate design and not a failure of individual choice.
What this tells us about the state we live in
What worries me most is that the UPF crisis mirrors almost every other crisis we face.
Whether we are talking about fossil fuels, financial markets, private equity in social care, or the rentier takeover of housing, the pattern is the same: concentrated corporate power reshapes markets and society until the public carries the cost and the private sector keeps the rewards.
UPFs are simply the edible version of neoliberalism.
If we are serious about rebuilding public health, we cannot do it without rebuilding democratic control over the economy. That means acknowledging that food, and all its health consequences, is too important to be left to markets designed around shareholder return.
Where this leaves us
The Lancet is right: this requires a coordinated global response. But in the UK, we do not have to wait for the world. A government with courage could act tomorrow. It could pursue the agenda I noted above.
If it does not act, the cost will not simply be measured in NHS budgets. It will be measured in the lives shortened, the communities hollowed out, and the ecological damage that follows from a food system designed for profit rather than care.
Ultra-processed food is the predictable outcome of an economic system that treats people as consumers first and people second. Changing that is not a dietary project. It is a democratic one. And it is long overdue.
Taking further action
If you want to write a letter to your MP on the issues raised in this blog post, there is a ChatGPT prompt to assist you in doing so, with full instructions, here.
One word of warning, though: please ensure you have the correct MP. ChatGPT can get it wrong.
AI: How to use it as a campaigner
We have produced a guide on how to use AI as a campaigner, for which we're already getting good feedback. It's available as a free download here. Take a look. We think you'll find it useful.
Comments
When commenting, please take note of this blog's comment policy, which is available here. Contravening this policy will result in comments being deleted before or after initial publication at the editor's sole discretion and without explanation being required or offered.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
There are links to this blog's glossary in the above post that explain technical terms used in it. Follow them for more explanations.
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
Buy me a coffee!
There are suggestions that Big Food has more than influenced our dietary “choices” over the years, including:
❌Regulatory capture of the American Heart Association, the American Diabetes Society and the Food and Drug Administration
❌Poor food advice, such as their influence on “editing” the food pyramid and dietary plate.
❌Information on dietary cholesterol, saturated and unsaturated fats, salt, and sugar (and its 50 different names)
Recommended reading:
The Big Fat Surprise: why butter, meat, and cheese belong in a healthy diet by Nina Teicholz
https://amzn.eu/d/eHxQ4BX
Metabolical: The truth about processed food and how it poisons people and the planet by Robert H. Lustig
https://amzn.eu/d/8xUavpu
Much to agree with
Try Feeding Britain: Our Food Problems and How to Fix Them/ Tim Lang. Pub 2020. Not only does it have the same diagnosis, it ges into detail of previous attempts to improve the system and how they have all been ignored.
Tim is an old colleague, and a great guy.
Sorry but your recommended reading is by quacks and grifters. If anything it’s the meat and dairy industries (which are multi billion dollar industries) which are muddying the waters just as much as sugar industry or whatever. Funding bad science. Plenty of research to show saturated fat is not good for you.
Saturated fat is good for you, and essential. You are wrong. The argument to the contrary is wrong. I am now living on a high fat diet, and feel very much better for it.
I don’t think “I feel better” is sufficient evidence – especially when the diet you are coming from might have been worse. It doesn’t mean the current diet is optimal. No one says processed grains and added sugars are good for you. Those are foods to avoid. The research paints an opposite image to what you are saying on saturated fat: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32723506/
Yes, industry is influencing nutritional and health science. That’s why it’s best to ignore papers funded by or with authors with links to these industries, be it pharma, sugar, or meat and dairy. I don’t understand why the latter is never mentioned, when they are just as much of a industry as the others.
The same could have been said for climate change research and smoking. But the truth won out in the end. The solution there was the same as the solution here: ignore those with vested interests.
I suggest you do some reading and stop using government sponsored studies linked to big food.
We need saturated fats.
We need a lot of natural light
And we get sugar and blue light.
Vegans and followers of plant based diets are among the most long lived and healthiest people on the planet, so the facts don’t bear out your claims.
The fact that diets high in meat and dairy are also massive accelerators of climate change and cruel to animals in the most obscene ways should give everyone pause for thought too.
Saturated fats can be acquired in ways that don’t destroy the environment and immiserate the lives of countless sentient beings.
It’s also somewhat ironic that you can clearly see the food industry pushing the UPF crap on all of us, but seem to be blind to the meat and dairy industries manipulation of the public consciousness. Their lobbies are huge and just as dangerous to human health.
This is not true
The evidence is stacked heavily against then health merits of nbeing a vegan. I wish it were otherwise, but your claims cannot be justified.
It seems we eat meat for a reason.
You say “the evidence”, but I have to ask what evidence you are referring to? You dismiss out of hand anything I provide for spurious reasons, but allude to evidence that supports your points. And what is wrong with “Government funded” research? That’s most research, at least most reliable research. There isn’t a link with food companies… hence the lack of conflicting interests. Any study showing the virtues of eating meat is far more likely to be linked with the meat and dairy industry which I reiterate is just as large as pharma.
I don’t want books written by journalists like Nina Teicholz either. These are not serious sources and people in the field criticise them to put it mildly.
I have to say your approach to this is identical to climate change deniers. Attack any “Government funded” research because it is somehow supporting some conspiracy theory, believe in claims of industry (meat and dairy the analogue of fossil fuel industry), and link to books written by non-experts that somehow see something that the entire scientific community does not see. I have to ask what is the motivation for scientists in nutrition to obfuscate the facts if they aren’t financially invested in whatever product, which most aren’t.
Ok
I base my view on the research of my wife who is MRCP, MRCGP and six other medical qualifications
A summary: there is substantial peer-reviewed literature showing:
• Nutrient deficiencies (B12, iron, iodine, calcium, omega-3)
• Higher fracture risk
• Lower bone density
• Risks in pregnancy and childhood if not carefully supervised
• Potential for inadequate protein quality if poorly planned
Supplements can address sine of these issues, but most do nit as they cannot be absorbed in most cases.
And if you want to be rude, don’t call again. She has spent years on this after having cancer. And I have no come who you are.
“I don’t want books written by journalists like Nina Teicholz either. These are not serious sources and people in the field criticise them to put it mildly.”
Teicholz received her PhD in nutrition from the University of Reading. She is more than just a journalist.
She is not the source. Her notes and bibliography include hundreds of reputable sources.
Thanks
James Rebanks talks about this exact issue and the broken farming system that underpins it in his interview with Amol Rahman on the Radical podcast today.
He highlights the same economic failings you’ve previously identified.
Would love to hear James and you discussing a redesign of the food system on one of your future podcasts.
Thanks
I should read In Place of Tides
We have it…
Its very good, I wasnt entirely convinced but I went to see him in Bath and was very glad I bought it.
He was being interviewed by Noreen Masud whose book ‘A Flat Place’ starts with a walk from…………
Ely to Welney
Again not a book I would have bought had I not heard the author.
I would recommend all James Rebanks books and I really enjoyed meeting both of them
Thanks
‘UPFs are simply the edible version of neoliberalism.’ Brilliant – a one liner that says it all, read this and I laughed in my cuppa this morning!
Many of the vulnerable children I see are under nourished over weight children – force fed neoliberal junk.
Finland has been feeding its children since 1948 and in the international top class for educational outcomes.
We are just neoliberal lab rats in one big horrible social experiment aided by flying monkeys – Westminster and MSM.
🙂
Thanks for the timely seasonal warning! Take care, everyone, with those tempting (and profitable) UPF treats – chocs and selection boxes, mince pies, Christmas pudding, rich desserts, trifles, fancy biscuits , cookies and savoury snacks, and of course that oddly flavoured seasonal falling-down water.
I think that most of the products you mentioned are the least of problems. Not that many people are going to have a mince pie or a chocolate biscuit and think they are actually eating something healthy and nutritious. They will understand why indulging in things like that isn’t good for them.
But they are going to have and give their children ‘fruit’ yoghurts or cereals or different ready-made meals thinking they are healthy and nutritious – when they are everything but that.
Agreed
Agreed that the issue is much bigger than seasonal binges. But there have been studies showing how people tend to gain weight over the festive season, so I’d still say take care.
Did you know that ground coffee has a “maxiumum cockroach” content. I could imagine that this also applies to UPFs. I did wonder about hacking the printing systems for the packaging and inserting a line “Max cockroach content 0.01%”. Wait for the hack to take effect and then leak to the press. (oh & obviously short the stocks on the companies affected – every cloud has a silver lining).
🙂
I once bought a sandwich that appeared to say on the label “May contain traces of Cats”. Luckily it was just badly printed “Oats”.
Michael Pollan has been writing about this for a couple of decades. In ‘In Defense (sic) of Food’ he notes that research into typical diets of people around the world, some almost entirely fat, some almost entirely protein, shows that the only diet humans cannot thrive on is the Western Processed Diet. His advice is. ‘Food Rules’ was Don’t eat food with ingredients you can’t pronounce, and don’t keep in the pantry; don’t eat food with more than five ingredients where sugar is in the first three; don’t eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t have recognised as food (which for me would mean oilve oil and garlic, to be honest. But his mantra: eat food, in moderation, mostly plants, I find helpful and not puritan. He’s a very entertaining writer.
I would suggest a very low carb diet with high fat is best. My choice, it works for me.
I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that UPFs are the 21st century equivalent of tobacco.
I managed to get myself off that 20 years ago.
It’s very difficult to completely avoid UPFs. I feel particularly for younger people who are encouraged into the habit of having food delivered from fast food outlets all the time.
I wonder if the Green Party could be encouraged to do something about this, as Labour is now so in hock to the corporate world that they may be beyond redemption.
“I wonder if the Green Party could be encouraged to do something about this.”
Good for you Graham. You don’t need to wait for a personal invitation to ‘encourage’ us
You are welcome to join the Party, get involved and/or donate. You will find eager partners. Me for one.
Most of our discussions here in Dorset are fascinating and our actions – even door knocking – worthwhile.
Thank you.
I already vote and deliver leaflets for our three Green Party councillors where I live. One of them is great and another is quite good.
I have decided not to join another political party after my experience with the one I used to be a member of!
I understand that
In the 1950’s tobacco industry invented the disinformation playbook to protect revenues in the face of mounting evidence of links between tobacco health and serious illness. It was not until the 1990’s tobacco companies were held to account by private and state litigation in the US. The eventual settlement compelled the tobacco companies to pay billions of dollars to the states to compensate them for Medicaid costs incurred by smokers, placed limits on tobacco advertising, and funded public information.
Insurance companies are now recognise the risk posed by ‘big food’.
https://petrieflom.law.harvard.edu/2025/04/04/the-food-wars-and-the-courts/
Thanks
This is becoming a hot subject. Let’s hope it gets hotter and something is actually done. Even piecemeal reform would help.
https://www.sciencealert.com/experts-call-for-urgent-action-as-ultra-processed-foods-replace-global-diets
Interesting article here
https://www.theguardian.com/food/2025/nov/20/how-fuchsia-dunlop-became-a-sichuan-food-hero
Well worth a read with a lot of relevance to UPF’s
I enjyed that.
What a lovely link and story about Chinese food and a remarkable woman reminding the Chinese how rooted in the land and health their food is, now getting rolled over by UPF’s. Thanks.
‘UPFs are simply the edible version of neoliberalism’ – a cracking line. All put very clearly and the Lancet is telling it like it is too.
Thanks
The revolutionary diet I follow is called HPLC – High Protein Low Crap 🙂 It works for me.
🙂
Interestingly in Japan I believe that it is mandated every school employ a nutritionist to oversee daily food intake….maybe helps explain their longevity.
It does.
Difficult not to underestimate what we are up against. Big Food no doubt directly or indirectly funding political parties and politicians. Probably infiltrated and captured regulators, media etc – tobacco all over again. The tiny slap on the wrist Labour is doing about advertising to children makes it obvious.
Think I also briefly brushed with Tim Laing decades ago – cant quite remember what about.
It has often struck me as odd that modern science for all its wondrous power can still not tell us definitively what we should and should not eat. Now it occurs to me that this is deliberate obfuscation in a manner comparable to that of the tobacco companies in past decades, except it comes from a class of people supposedly impartial truth seekers
There’s a brilliant podcast by the Van Tulleken brothers on UPFs. It’s available on the Beeb Sounds app and it’s called “A Thorough Examination: Addicted to Food”.
It’s in several parts and I strongly recommend. It dives into what UPFs are, how they trick the brain and why it isn’t your fault you can’t stop eating them.
Agreed
I wish I had read this yesterday, but I was down in London at the RSM. However, I caught a TV news segment showing Starmer next to a group of children receiving their free ‘food’ at one of the new ‘Breakfast Clubs’. I was horrified to see the donut shaped cereals poured into bowls, this didn’t look at all healthy to me. What’s the point of breakfast clubs if they are used to feed children more cheap junk ‘food’?
Growing up my brother enjoyed corn flakes. but I didn’t want to eat these cereals. As a teenager my biology teacher relayed the results of a test where one lot of rats were fed on corn flakes and the control group were fed only the box. He claimed the rats fed cereals died of malnutrition while the ones fed on the box survived! He sought to persuade us that the only nutritional component in such a breakfast was the added milk. I have no idea how true this anecdote was, but I felt vindicated in my rejection of packaged breakfast cereals.
I do know that my brother suffered numerous cavities due to his sweet food choices, while I still have most of my teeth. I was seriously shocked when a presenter at the RSM showed us a jar filled with teeth from just one child taken to surgery for tooth extraction. Tooth extraction is now the most common surgical procedure for pediatric patients in the UK. Why is this Labour Government sponsoring feeding junk food to kids at breakfast clubs? Surely these breakfast clubs offer an opportunity to feed children healthy food and encourage better choices in future.
I can tell you Mr Kellogg did a massive disservice to society.
Thanks Richard.
I gradually eased into a low carb high fat diet 5-6 years ago, after researching what caused my extremely painful joints. Even then NHS was telling people to reduce grains and seed oils which are high in Omega 6, a highly inflammatory ‘food’.
Last Christmas I had two pieces of fruit cake, the first time in 5 years. I suffered for 10 days, went to my GP, who took blood tests. The results were, all markers were excellent, EXCEPT inflammation, which was extremely high. Cholesterol was good, which refuted previous reports of high numbers.
All this after stopping statins after 2 years. 5 years of high fat, losing 22 pounds in weight.
Also, not buying the UPF saves a fortune. I didn’t buy much processed food previously, so didn’t miss it.
Agreed re joint pain.
I suffered from a painful knee for some time. I now have no hint of it at all.
And I have a lot more energy. People here might have noticed.
I could have written nine posts this morning: I thought six was enough, but am not sure as yet.