Britain is the ‘sick man of Europe’ because it eats more ultra-processed food than any of our continental neighbours, the House of Lords has heard.
Professor Tim Spector told Peers that Britons are consuming poor quality food, causing them to overeat and encouraging diabetes, obesity and high blood pressure.
He compared the unhealthy products to passive smoking as he demanded more be done to protect children from its harmful effects and called for mandatory warning labels on packaging.
Professor Spector, professor of genetic epidemiology at King’s College London and founder of the Zoe company, accused food companies of causing Britain’s obesity crisis by making their products ‘hyper-palatable’ to make profits.
When asked how poor diet contributes to poor health, he told the House of Lords Food, Diet and Obesity Committee: ‘I think there is something in the essence of the food we eat that gives us this problem and that’s why Britain really is the sick man of Europe, because we get the highest percentage of our calories in this poor quality food, which causes us to overeat.’
Professor Spector, professor of genetic epidemiology at King’s College London and founder of the Zoe company, accused food companies of causing Britain’s obesity crisis by making their products ‘hyper-palatable’ to make profits.
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There are a few simple tricks to cutting UPFs from your diet, from checking ingredients to preparing your own takeaways, experts say
His warning comes after a study in the BMJ found that eating ultra-processed foods can put you at increased risk of 32 different health problems.
Diets that include large amounts of convenience foods, sugary cereals, and mass-produced bread are often high in fat, salt, and sugar, and low in vitamins and fiber.
Britain ranks worst in Europe when it comes to eating ultra-processed foods, which make up an estimated 57 percent of the national diet.
They contain colorants, emulsifiers, flavorings and other additives and usually undergo multiple industrial processes. Research has shown that the physical structure of food is affected, making it easier to digest and faster assimilated.
This in turn increases blood sugar levels and damages the microbiome – the community of ‘friendly’ bacteria that live within us and depend on for good health.
Professor Spector said: ‘I’m old enough to live through the debates about passive smoking in epidemiology, where the early studies weren’t so clear and the tobacco industry kind of backed down and said ‘we don’t really understand the exact dose that’s being administered’ harmful to children”, and “don’t worry about it, it’s all very confusing”.
“And I think that’s exactly what we’re seeing here.”
Professor Spector said many studies show that people who eat the most UPFs have ‘more diabetes, more obesity, higher blood pressure, altered lipid levels’, adding: ‘I think it’s quite clear that you have a health problem – that comes partly because these foods push (people) to eat more because they are hyper-palatable.”
He accepted that the full picture was not yet in place, but argued that it was better to act as a precaution, adding: ‘Given the evidence we have, it is very similar to where we were with passive smoking at the time.’
Professor Spector said big food companies are ‘largely responsible’ for Britain’s ‘obesity crisis’, adding: ‘They have brilliant food chemists, they get the best people in the industry, they recruit them, and it’s their job to make food the best it can be. as tasty as possible by adjusting the amount of fat, sugar and salt in just the right proportions, so people eat too much and their only goal is to make a profit.
‘Their goal is to get us to eat more of these foods, because it’s much more profitable to make these types of foods than anything else.
The Nova system, developed by scientists in Brazil more than a decade ago, divides food into four groups based on the amount of processing it has undergone. Unprocessed foods include fruits, vegetables, nuts, eggs and meat. Processed culinary ingredients – which are not usually eaten alone – include oils, butter, sugar and salt
Food experts say some UPFs can be “part of a healthy diet.” Baked beans, fish fingers and wholemeal bread all do the trick, according to the British Nutrition Foundation (BNF). Tomato-based pasta sauces, wholegrain cereals and fruit yoghurts are also ‘healthier processed foods’, says the charity
‘I think in my view it is quite clear and there is a clear link between obesity levels across Europe and the amount of ultra-processed food that we eat.’
He said the industry is “ready for strict mandates” to prevent bad food from becoming hyper-palatable.
“Right now we have hyper-palatable foods that have all these chemicals, these emulsifiers, these other things that are bad for your gut microbes, that don’t have any health warnings on them and that actually have what we call ‘health halos’ – they have, say, ‘low in calories’, ‘low in fat’, ‘high in vitamins’.
‘And so parents who buy something from the dairy store for their children are totally misled into thinking they are buying healthy food.
‘People are actually being tricked into buying the wrong food. And I think that’s something that we absolutely need to address right away.”