Why I called for warning labels on ultra-processed food

A recent article quoted me at a nutrition conference as calling for extra tax and sticker warnings on ‘poisonous’ ultra-processed food.

Ultra-processed foods make up a staggering 60% of our daily calorie consumption in the UK and US. In contrast, Southern Europeans consume, on average, four times less, around 15% the rest being real food. 

To be clear, these are averages, meaning that some people eat less, but some, particularly children and those in deprived areas get much more than 70 or 90% of their daily energy intake from ultra-processed food. 

This is a shocking figure, particularly in light of the increasing body of research that consistently links these foods with poor health and early death and their hunger provoking properties that make us overeat by 25 percent compared to the equivalent real food, made from scratch. 

But many experts – particularly those in or linked to the food industry – like to spend their time squabbling over the definition of what exactly constitutes ultra-processed foods  (that I call  toxic edible food-like substances (EFS)) rather than doing anything about them.

Photo by Charles C. Collingwood on Unsplash

I recently took part in a panel discussion at a Nutrition conference at The Royal Society in London, where professors with decades of experience in food science proclaimed that even they didn’t really know what ultra-processed foods are.