Letters
Target ultra-processed food to reduce obesity in Britain
James Caponresponds to an editorial on the health select committee’s call for radical action to regulate food markets
The MPs’ report mentioned in your editorial is welcome and overdue (The Guardian view on obesity: put public health before food industry pressure, 15 July). The health select committee is right to clarify that obesity is an engineered outcome, not a failure of willpower. But there’s a flaw running through decades of British food policy that risks being repeated: the “high in fat, salt or sugar” framework itself
“High in fat, salt or sugar” combines three nutrients as though they carry equivalent blame. However, the evidence on weight gain and type 2 diabetes points to sugar and refined carbohydrates as the primary drivers, not fat. Salt matters, chiefly when combined with sugar, but the body needs salt to function. Fat matters because without it many fat-soluble vitamins will just pass through our bodies. We need no sugar at all
The low-fat, calorie-controlled orthodoxy inherited from flawed nutritional science still shapes labelling, reformulation targets and public understanding, encouraging manufacturers to strip out fat and replace it with sweet-tasting substitutes, while ticking the “healthier” box
To hold supermarkets and manufacturers to account, the target must be sharpened. The culprit is the ultra-processed food model itself: products engineered for shelf life, craveability and margin, using cheap sugar and refined starch as primary ingredients. Ice-cream or potato crisps sold on rare occasions are fine, but the food system that has made them the cheapest, most heavily advertised, most convenient choice is the problem
We shouldn’t need to romanticise the Greggs sausage roll as some kind of national treasure. Consider it a treat, not a staple. That’s the shift in our relationship with ultra-processed food that this report should be pushing for – one built on carbohydrate and sugar reduction, not a blunt fat-and-salt panic that has already failed us.James CaponWaterloo, Belgium
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