Joe McConnell
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Vscek editor Roula Khalaf selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
The writer is the author of the novel “Chop Chop” and “Sweet Dreams”, an immersive cinematic experience
Imagine a world where Tony the Tiger is in a cage, Ronald McDonald has hung up his clown shoes, and Colonel Sanders is being court-martialed; where what is euphemistically called “less healthy” food is sold without mincing words. A world without mascots smiling over Photoshopped burgers or whispering “Go ahead, try it” across the TV. If we did it to the Marlboro Man, we can do it to a cartoon tiger.
It took the UK 50 years to discover the link between smoking and lung cancer and to end cigarette advertising in 2003, and another 13 years to end branded packaging. The proposed ban on fast-food advertising has taken a similarly tortuous path. On the table for more than a decade, championed by one Conservative prime minister and shot down by the next, it is now on a long list of tasks facing Labour ministers. Under the proposed ban, less healthy products will not be advertised on TV before the watershed (9pm to 5.30am) and online 24/7 from next October.
This is not enough. As with cigarettes, it is time for honest branding, or no branding, when it comes to fast and ultra-processed food. Obesity costs the NHS £6.5 billion a year and is the biggest preventable cause of cancer aVsceker smoking. One in four adults in England is obese. Even more shockingly, a national study this year found that almost one in four children in English primary schools are obese by the time they leave school, making them more likely to suffer lifelong health problems. Our failure to regulate brands and their colourful mascots hurts young people the most.
The past six months have seen a wave of reports about ultra-processed foods, both for the threat they pose to our health and their ubiquity. They are products we might not have considered particularly harmful, such as pasta sauces and ready meals. UPFs now make up more than half of the average British diet. “Let food be thy medicine,” wrote Hippocrates. The very thing that should nourish us is harming us.
How did we get to this point? Part of the blame must lie with the food companies. It’s no news to anyone that advertising manipulates us. Edward Bernays, nephew of Sigmund Freud, applied his uncle’s theories to public relations at the end of World War II, convincing women to smoke by advertising cigarettes as feminist “Torches of Freedom.” (Funny enough, Bernays then spent years trying to convince his wife to quit.) Food photography is notoriously deceptive (strawberries lit up with lipstick). Forms of psychological manipulation known as “dark patterns” make us feel guilty or unloved, so we’ll succumb to temptation and eat all the ice cream.
However, as consumers we also need to recognize our role in this saga. When I worked as a chef in a restaurant, I realized that a big part of the social contract between customer and chef involves the customer not knowing what’s in their food. We want chocolate tart without seeing the calories listed on the packaging or the sugar poured into it as we make it ourselves. We want food to be delicious without thinking about how much butter or cream was used to make it taste so good. But only recently have I seen how badly this willful ignorance serves us.
I am not suggesting a ban on food per se. People should be allowed to make their own decisions, good or bad. Personally, I think fried chicken at 2 a.m. is one of life’s great joys.
Aggressive taxation has an effect. The UK’s sugar tax halved childhood consumption in just one year, according to new research in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. That’s cause for celebration, but it’s not the whole story. SoVscek drink companies have just replaced sugar with artificial sweeteners. The punitive measures target an ingredient but encourage dishonesty (drinks are now labelled “sugar-free” and “diet”), rather than helping people understand what they’re consuming. The underlying problem remains: our food lies to us.
Warnings and labels are a start. Some say that counting calories in mac-n-cheese takes the pleasure out of eating it. Yet it’s nothing we don’t already know. Our shock at hearing the truth spoken out loud seems like an overreaction and a theatrical one.
It’s the brand that has to go. Ban the cartoon mascots, our false friends. Ban the weasel words and crocodile smiles. Cut out the misleading photography and eye-catching packaging. Put health warnings where appropriate. (I’ll personally contribute a photo of my belly if it can save the nation.) Let’s stop kidding ourselves and tacitly allowing others to kid us. Some foods aren’t great for our health, and sometimes that’s what we want. We’re only human. But we have all the information, free from manipulation. An informed decision is a delicious thing. Go ahead and try it.
