00:00:01
Cakes, muffins, confectionary, chips or crisps,
pretzel, frozen pizza, frozen meals... - What if I said
00:00:11
that more than half the calories you consume are
from ultra-processed food? That's thought to be the
00:00:17
case in countries like the UK and the US.
- Most products sold in supermarkets are ultra-processed,
00:00:23
so it's very difficult to avoid them.
This is The Food Chain from the BBC World Service.
00:00:29
I'm Ruth Alexander, and this week we're asking: Is this ultra-processed? It's not always easy to know. There are
00:00:36
lots of different definitions and a fair amount
of confusion. Generally, we're talking about food
00:00:42
that's been industrially manufactured.
- Yeah, we try to avoid all that stuff, but sometimes
00:00:47
we fall into it because they have some
special taste that it's hard to say no
00:00:54
to it, sometimes.
00:00:56
We'll be finding out how to spot it.
Mayonnaise. I had this with my lunch.
00:01:02
It's ultra-processed! Oh, that surprises me!
How to cut down on it, if that's what you want to do.
00:01:09
I think the hardest part is the snack bits,
because I've got to pack two snacks a day for the
00:01:13
kids for school. - And what to eat instead. - That
means cooking. It's a huge shift in people's life.
00:01:23
It all started with an email to thefoodchain@bbc.co.uk
from a listener, Jen Sherman, an
00:01:30
Australian who lives in California in the United
States with her husband and two young children.
00:01:36
She's been on a drive to reduce the amount of ultra-
processed food her family eats, or UPF as she calls it,
00:01:42
and suggested we should make a programme about
people trying to do that. So we gave her a call.
00:01:48
- I like listening to programmes about ultra-processed
food, and what I thought was interesting was
00:01:53
all of these podcasts talk about it from the
science perspective, so they interview the researchers
00:02:00
and they talk about the science behind this, and
what I thought would be useful was, what does it
00:02:05
look like to actually follow their advice? How do
you actually follow their advice? Because it's very
00:02:11
easy to know the information and to think, right,
I shouldn't be eating this much UPF because it's
00:02:17
not good for me, it's not good for my kids. But when
you have a birthday party every second weekend and
00:02:24
there's class parties at school for Valentine's
Day and Halloween and Easter when UPF is
00:02:30
everywhere, how do you actually reduce it? Because
the other thing about UPF, it's not just the
00:02:37
crackers and the biscuits and the lollies,
it's also, you know, your pasta sauces and
00:02:42
your convenience meals and all the stuff that
you might not think of as UPF.
00:02:47
What exactly is ultra-processed food?
00:02:50
- Carbonated drinks, fruit
and vegetables juices, ready-to-drink tea
00:02:56
or coffee, sports and energy drinks, most of
the ice cream on the market, commercial cookies,
00:03:03
cakes, muffins, confectionary, most of the sweet and
savoury snacks, such as chips or crisps, pretzel...
00:03:12
It would probably have been easier to ask what isn't
ultra-processed.
00:03:16
- ...hot dogs, commercial soups, sauces, dressing...
00:03:20
- Jean-Claude Moubarac, assistant professor in public
and international nutrition at the University of
00:03:25
Montreal in Canada, has worked with the team
of scientists in Brazil who came up with the term.
00:03:30
They proposed the Nova food classification
system in 2010, a new way of categorising foods
00:03:36
according to their level of processing.
- Nova is a classification of foods that pays attention
00:03:43
to the degree and the purpose of processing. So,
how much processing is applied to food, and why
00:03:50
processing is applied. Nova classify food into
four main groups. The first one are foods that
00:03:57
are fresh or minimally processed. - Such as fruit
and vegetables, meat, milk, and eggs. - Group two are
00:04:03
ingredients that are refined from food and
are used to cook and season food.
00:04:09
- Salt, sugar, olive oil, butter, vinegar.
- Group three are made of foods that are preserved with salt, sugar, and fat,
00:04:17
such as canned food, traditional bread and cheese,
and the fourth group are ultra-processed, which are
00:04:25
a formulation of refined substances and additives.
Those are products that are not food any more, but
00:04:31
are a collection of substances that are selected
to create products of consumption. Irresistible, very
00:04:39
appealing, very convenient. - And this is where it
starts to get tricky, because some foods can appear
00:04:44
in any one of the groups. - For example, yoghurts. So
you can have a plain yoghurt that we will classify
00:04:51
as minimally processed. Then when you add sugar to it,
it becomes processed food, so yoghurt plus sugar.
00:04:59
And then you can create also an ultra-processed
yoghurt by adding flavours and colours, and
00:05:06
additives such as emulsifiers. You're changing the
texture, the colour, the taste of the food.
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- You don't recognise it as food, it's bad for us, you and
the group of scientists who came up with this
00:05:19
classification believe. - Ultra-processed products
are very different from normal food. They're
00:05:25
made to mimic food and to be more appealing. So for
any food on the market, there's an ultra-processed
00:05:33
version of it, and the ultra-processed version has
additives and substances that we don't use in kitchens.
00:05:41
- The positives of processing is that
it can make food cheaper, last longer, look and
00:05:46
taste appetising. But it may not be good for us.
A number of studies have shown an association
00:05:52
between ultra-processed food and increased risk
of health problems, such as obesity, high blood
00:05:58
pressure and cholesterol, cardiovascular disease,
and cancer. But it's hard to prove for sure that
00:06:03
it's the level of processing causing this, rather
than something else, such as lifestyle, or simply
00:06:09
the fact that ultra-processed foods can contain
high levels of salt and sugar. But scientists
00:06:15
continue to investigate, and eight countries, Brazil,
Peru, Ecuador, Uruguay, Israel, France, and Belgium, are
00:06:23
advising consumers to avoid ultra-processed food.
Easier said than done, as our listener Jen can attest.
00:06:30
I read ingredient lists. I assume until proven
otherwise that anything I find in the supermarket is UPF.
00:06:37
- Oh right, guilty till proven innocent, in your view?
- Pretty much! - And how challenging has it
00:06:43
been overall, like how big an impact has this had
on your day-to-day life? - It means I cook a lot, it
00:06:49
means I spend a lot of my time in the kitchen,
but some of it is because I want to, and some of
00:06:54
it is because I can. You can use the slow cooker
a lot, which is fantastic. There's a handful of
00:06:59
recipes that I do that's just you chuck the
stuff in the slow cooker in the morning and
00:07:02
then eight hours later, you've got dinner. I think the
hardest part is the snack bits. I've got to
00:07:08
pack two snacks a day for the kids for school, and
what I've done is just I use fruit and vegetables
00:07:16
as their snack a lot of the time, I do a lot of
carrot sticks, and capsicum, bell peppers, cucumbers,
00:07:23
we do berries, so blueberries and strawberries
tend to last pretty well. - Have you cut out all
00:07:29
ultra-processed foods? Has that been possible?
- No. I've got boxes of mac and cheese in the backup pantry.
00:07:35
- Macaroni cheese? - Yup. I'm going to have a bunch
of boxes in the pantry as backup. - So, in an ideal
00:07:42
world, would you cut all ultra-processed food out,
but in reality, you've discovered all you can
00:07:48
do really is reduce it you can't live without it, practically?
- Pretty much. - And what do friends
00:07:56
and families and other parents think of your
mission to radically cut down on ultra-processed
00:08:03
food? I mean, do you tell them about it? Do they know?
I don't tend to talk about this, because I don't...
00:08:10
I don't want to present myself as a crusader, just
by talking to you on the BBC Food Chain. I don't want
00:08:15
to present myself in real life as some kind
of crusader against food that is so common
00:08:21
in most households with small children, or even
without small children. Like, I don't want to make
00:08:25
people think I'm judging them for what they're
eating or what they're feeding their families,
00:08:29
because I'm not. Because money is also a factor, and
sometimes if you're feeding 30 or 40 people at a
00:08:36
four-year-old's birthday party, you go for the
cheaper pizza, because that's what is affordable.
00:08:42
And a lot of the time in the short term, UPF is cheaper.
- From your own experience, do you think
00:08:48
it's practical, like doable, for other people? Because
you don't go out to work, do you? So you do have
00:08:54
more time than many people listening to cook
and prepare food from scratch at home.
00:08:59
- I mean, it's impractical for me to entirely cut it out, so I
think it's impractical for anyone to entirely
00:09:03
cut it out, but I think it's definitely possible to
reduce it. Try and reduce a bit at a time, because
00:09:10
for any change, like drastic change is very hard
to do and very hard to sustain long-term. If you've
00:09:15
been eating UPF a lot, and suddenly trying to cut
it all out, like that's going to be hard. But if
00:09:20
you just change one meal a week, just you know cook
one of them, cook two of them. - When you're out there
00:09:26
in the supermarket, trying to figure out what is
ultra-processed and what isn't, would a UPF label be useful?
00:09:34
- Oh that'd be great, I'd love that.
- Listener Jen Sherman. Well, someone who tried the drastic
00:09:40
route is programme producer, Beatrice Pickup. Didn't you
Beatrice? You set yourself a challenge in January to
00:09:46
cut out all ultra-processed food. Was that fun?
- Well, like all good New Year resolutions, I failed
00:09:52
on day one. We went for a New Year's Day walk, ended
up in a pub, and I didn't want to have an alcoholic
00:09:57
drink, because I'd had a few the night before. And
in fact, alcohol usually is processed, whereas all
00:10:04
the soft drinks in the pub that day were ultra-
processed. So I found myself with a bit of a difficult
00:10:09
choice in terms of which was the healthier option,
and ultimately I went for an ultra-processed soft drink.
00:10:13
- Could have gone for water! So what did you
have to try and avoid then?
00:10:17
- Bread. Bread was quite a big one for us,
00:10:19
and we don't have a bakery locally
where we live. Stock cubes was a surprising one for me.
00:10:24
I hadn't realised that if I'm making a meal from
scratch but adding an ultra-processed stock cube to it,
00:10:30
obviously that's a fail for me. - I didn't realise
that either. Oh dear. - Did get me into good habits,
00:10:36
though. Making stock from scratch, and making a
big batch of it and putting it in the freezer so
00:10:40
that when I do want to make a meal using stock I
already had some. - Which food did you miss the most?
00:10:45
- Crisps! Crisps are my favourite snack, so that was
quite a big one for me for the month of January.
00:10:52
But I didn't realise until the making of this
programme that in fact I could have been having
00:10:55
crisps, as long as they were just the plain, salted
variety. So I did miss out there. - But that again,
00:11:02
there's the quandry, if you'd known that and you'd
had the plain ready salted crisps, that wouldn't
00:11:07
necessarily have been good for you. - I assume that they're
processed food, because I think of crisps as junk
00:11:11
food, but in fact it's the flavourings that are the
problem there. - And what would you say your biggest
00:11:17
take home was about the whole thing? Biggest learning?
- It did take a lot of thought and planning
00:11:21
and effort. It was entirely, mostly, doable, and it
did get me into some good habits, and there was
00:11:27
cooking more, and it's a reminder that it's quite
easy to make a lot of things. We made pizza one
00:11:31
weekend for example, which is great, although I did
get into a bad baking habit. I started baking cakes
00:11:36
every weekend, when I'm not someone who normally
buys a lot of cakes or biscuits. So in some ways my
00:11:42
sugar consumption might have gone up. - Interesting!
How good was it when February came around, finally?
00:11:48
- I bought a big bag of crisps!
- Oh good, then. Thanks, Beatrice.
00:11:54
It's been 14 years since Jean-Claude
00:11:56
Moubarac's colleagues came up with their definition
of ultra-processed food and, in his view, created
00:12:02
a new understanding of what it is we're eating.
- I think it has a huge impact in changing how people
00:12:08
think about food. The most important thing we've
done is to change the mind of the people, from
00:12:14
nutrients to practices. So before Nova, people were
talking about fibre, about sugar, about salt. With
00:12:23
Nova, we talk about why we process food and why we
use such additives versus natural substances. It's
00:12:32
a change in the way people think about food, and
we're getting also an impact on policies, but it's
00:12:38
something that's a little slower to
obtain, because there's a lot of resistance in the
00:12:44
market from companies that are producing those
ultra-processed foods. - You helped devise Brazil's
00:12:49
national food policy in 2014, which advised against
eating ultra-processed food. Do you think it's made
00:12:56
a difference to what people are buying and much
ultra-processed foods they're consuming?
00:13:01
- To my knowledge, no. In order to change the food system,
you need to have strong political will. What
00:13:07
happened in Brazil in the last 10 years was a lot
of change in terms of the government, so it's hard
00:13:12
to answer this question, but we don't see an impact
on the data in terms of sales or consumption, or
00:13:19
in terms of health. - Is there any country you've
seen that you're impressed by, and you think, yes,
00:13:23
this is the beginning of it? - For example in Chile
and Mexico, there is strong policies to control
00:13:30
ultra-processed food, such as taxation and labelling,
and also restriction of marketing to kids. In those
00:13:38
countries, they have shown some impact on reducing
sales and consumption of ultra-processed food.
00:13:46
- In many countries, you can find nutrition labels on
the front of food packaging. But Chile is one of
00:13:51
the few to make them mandatory. In 2016, it said
that foods with high levels of added salt, sugar,
00:13:57
and saturated fats, or with a high calorie content,
must carry prominent warning labels. In light of
00:14:04
these changes, our reporter Jane Chambers has been
talking to people about the decisions they're now
00:14:08
making about what food they buy.
00:14:12
- I'm in the local supermarket
on the outskirts of a seaside town
00:14:16
called Quintero, and it's full of produce. There's bread,
cereals, chocolate, crisps, coffee, all the usual
00:14:24
things you would normally see in a supermarket.
And I've found a shopper willing to talk to me. Your name is...?
00:14:31
- Hi. Elizabeth. - And we've got these black labels that
they put on food here in Chile that's been on it
00:14:39
for quite a few years now, that show if it's high
in salt, or sugar, or fat. When you're buying, are
00:14:45
you aware of the labels? Do they make a difference
to what you buy? - Uh, yeah. Now it does make a
00:14:52
difference for me, and uh we really try to avoid
that, but anyway when we are in a hurry I think
00:14:58
we just pick the things that we know already,
and the things that we like. - So do you sometimes
00:15:03
forget about the labels if you're in a hurry?
- Yeah, it really does. Yeah because it's um I think there's
00:15:10
also all the tasty food and um all the nice food
that normally the kids like is like full of
00:15:18
labels and sugar and all that things.
- So it's a kind of ultra-processed food that they like?
00:15:24
- Yeah. So even if you try to avoid it, it's easier to
buy, and most of the people, we buy that kind
00:15:31
of food because it's cheaper. - What about since the
labels have come in; have you been surprised that
00:15:37
some food you might have thought was healthy
hasn't been as healthy as you think?
00:15:42
- The cereal, cereal bars, and um the things for the lunch for my kid. I used to think that is it was healthy
00:15:50
but now I realise since the labels that they're
not really healthy.
00:15:56
- I'm off now just a couple of
00:15:57
miles down the road to the beach, to meet another
parent, who I know is interested in the labels and
00:16:03
what's going on with ultra-processed food and
what he feeds his children. You can probably
00:16:09
hear the sounds of cooking. That's because Diego
Arenas is busy making lunch for his two children,
00:16:15
Gaston and Emma. It's smelling good! You got fish
for lunch with garlic? - Yeah, garlic and ginger.
00:16:22
- When you're making things like lunch for your children,
feeding your children, what kind of things do you
00:16:27
like to cook for them? - They always want to have
something really sweet and the usual stuff that
00:16:33
they see everywhere, so it's not easy not to give
them an ice cream or lots of sweets and stuff. So
00:16:39
we try to make them nice and sweet and healthy
things, natural ice creams and things from fruits.
00:16:50
[Clanking saucepans and family talking]
00:16:57
- And what about the black labels that
show if it's high in salt, or sugar, or fat,
00:17:02
is that something you're aware of when you
go shopping, and what do you think about it?
00:17:06
- Yeah, we are aware. They know that they can
ask for some food, but if it's one full of
00:17:13
them with three or four of these black
labels, we try to avoid them. - And you've got
00:17:18
Gaston, your son, sitting beside you, and Emma
across eating your delicious fish with ginger
00:17:24
that you just made. What kind of treats
do they like to have, when they can have it?
00:17:29
- Oh, Emma likes a lot some like jelly and sweet
and sour stuff, like gums. And he likes hot stuff
00:17:40
like nachos. It's a special treat. Or when they
go to a birthday or something like that, or for
00:17:46
Halloween, or for some other special times.
- And if there was a label that said something was ultra-processed
00:17:54
food, would you like to see labels like
that, like the other black labels, would that help
00:17:59
when you're shopping? - Yeah, they should, they should
be like that. I don't know, but yeah, we try to avoid
00:18:04
all that stuff, but sometimes we fall into it
because they have some special taste that it's
00:18:12
hard to say no to it, sometimes.
00:18:15
- Parents in Chile talking to Jane Chambers.
So, nutrition warning
00:18:18
labels on foods may not be the silver bullet that
transform our shopping habits, but Jean-Claude Moubarac
00:18:25
believes they're worth having.
00:18:27
- There's a limit to those warning labels,
but it's a first step
00:18:32
to give a strong message to the population that
not everything at the supermarket is healthy, and
00:18:39
that's a major shift, because up till recently, our
guidelines never talked about what to avoid, you know?
00:18:47
Guidelines usually are about what to eat, so
you eat more fruits, more vegetables, more yoghurt.
00:18:54
But we rarely talk about what to avoid. So those
labels are a first step to show the consumers
00:19:01
not everything on the market is healthy. Try to
think and choose wisely. - How can someone spot
00:19:07
an ultra-processed food and avoid it? - The easiest
way would be just to flip it around. I would say
00:19:14
the best food in the market are food that have
no labels. So those are easy to identify: Fruits,
00:19:20
vegetables, legumes, meat, milk... everything that is
made of one ingredient is healthy by definition.
00:19:30
Now of course, it depends on how you cook it
and how you combine it, but when you choose a
00:19:35
product at the supermarket, if it's made of one
ingredient, it's healthy. Then when you go into
00:19:41
those products that have a list of ingredients, try
to choose the product that have the most simple
00:19:46
list of ingredients and avoid those that have
ingredients that you don't use in your kitchen.
00:19:53
When you don't understand the list of ingredients,
then leave it aside and go for a product that has
00:19:58
has a list of ingredients that you recognise.
- I noticed that there are some foods that would be
00:20:04
classified by your system as ultra-processed
foods, that actually there's an important
00:20:10
need for. Baby formula is one. Gluten-free products
are important for some people with coeliac disease,
00:20:17
for example. I mean, there is considerable debate
about all this, isn't there? - When we talk about
00:20:21
coeliac disease, or you know, this case of milk
formula, to me these are miracles that save lives,
00:20:29
but I see this as medicine. When you cannot give
breastfed milk to your kid then you need an
00:20:35
alternative, and what we have is milk formula, which
is the next best thing we have, but to me it's a medication.
00:20:43
- Do you manage to avoid ultra-processed
food entirely? - So what we try is not to bring them
00:20:48
at home. So it's not part of our regular pantry.
But do we sometimes consume them outside the
00:20:55
house? Yes. Because we do live in society, like
everyone else. - Jean-Claude Moubarac. In my house, we
00:21:04
cook most meals from scratch, so I have presumed
that I don't eat much ultra-processed food, but
00:21:10
let's see now. I've downloaded an app that says it
can tell me how good the nutritional content of
00:21:16
a product is and whether it's ultra-processed. So
here on the countertop is wholemeal sliced bread.
00:21:23
I'm scanning the barcode, and the app tells me
this is nutritionally very good quality, but... oh!
00:21:32
It's ultra-processed. [Klaxon] Confusing. Right, dark chocolate,
an occasional treat. OK, probably a too-frequent
00:21:40
treat. [Klaxon] Nutritionally bad. That's probably not a
surprise. But it gets a green dot, telling me that
00:21:48
it's not ultra-processed. Mixed messages again.
Let's have a rummage in my fridge. Mayonnaise.
00:21:59
I had this with my lunch. It's... ultra-processed! [Klaxon]
Oh, that surprises me! Mustard. Now, this I imagine is
00:22:09
just processed, not ultra-processed. [Klaxon] Wrong!
What's in mustard? Stabiliser, xanthan gum.
00:22:18
What's in my freezer?
00:22:22
[Ruth rummages in her kitchen]
00:22:26
Fish fingers. I think of this as making
a healthy meal... [Ting!] Yep, nutritionally good...
00:22:34
and ultra-processed. [Klaxon]
00:22:36
I wonder what's for dinner tonight, then?
The app is by Open Food Facts, a non-profit
00:22:43
organisation set up 10 years ago as an online
database of food products. There are more than three
00:22:49
million items listed, and anyone, anywhere, can add a
product, as co-founder Pierre Slamich explained to me.
00:22:55
- So, you will take the picture of the ingredients list,
artificial intelligence will extract it, and we will
00:23:01
recognise all the ingredients, and if we spot some
markers of ultra-processing, then the food will be
00:23:08
labelled as so. Most products sold in supermarkets
are ultra-processed, so it's very difficult to
00:23:14
avoid them. We explain in Open Food Facts, the
ingredients that actually causes the food to be ultra-processed.
00:23:21
- It's not so clear, even with your app,
to work out what is and isn't a good choice, though,
00:23:27
I found. I mean, for example, the sliced brown bread,
wholemeal bread, that I'd bought, when I zapped
00:23:35
it with the app, it came up as being very good
nutritional quality, and ultra-processed. So there's
00:23:43
conflicting information out there. - So yeah, it's a
big problem, because foods that are nutritionally
00:23:50
healthy, that don't have too much salt, too much fat,
too much sugar, still will have additives. The rule
00:23:56
of thumb is to try and get the food, if you can't
find anything that's not ultra-processed, try to
00:24:03
pick the one with the least amount of additives.
As a French person, I would say buy your bread
00:24:08
from the boulangerie, but if you go for the supermarket
bread, look for the one with fibres, and look for
00:24:14
the one that have the least amount of additives.
- I wonder, is there a risk that people get overly and
00:24:22
maybe needlessly anxious about what they're eating?
I mean, I could have probably happily spent a good
00:24:28
couple of hours scanning everything in my kitchen
cupboards yesterday. - So, there's no point in being too
00:24:35
anxious about it. Having a moment where when you
realise that a lot of it is ultra-processed, and
00:24:41
then trying to do your own cooking if possible,
trying to stick to the shortest ingredient list
00:24:48
possible, so anything above five to 10 ingredients
is probably um a bit complicated. And be careful
00:24:56
about false friends. Some food will be packaged
and marketed as healthy food, as authentic food, but
00:25:04
sometimes it can hide a UPF. If you don't recognise
most ingredients, put it back on the shelf.
00:25:11
Pierre Slamich.
00:25:12
We made a programme called 'Do we need to talk
about ultra-processed food?' in 2021. Then, we asked
00:25:18
Kate Halliwell, the chief scientific officer at the
UK's Food and Drink Federation, which represents
00:25:24
manufacturers, how aware their members were of the
term "ultra-processed foods". - We've of course heard
00:25:30
of it, so I'd say there is an awareness, but
it isn't a term that we would use, and it isn't
00:25:37
something that we're kind of actively working on.
- But plenty of other people have been working on it.
00:25:42
In 2022, the UK government's scientific advisory
committee on nutrition said that it was timely
00:25:49
to consider this issue, since there was increasing
discussion and debate regarding the implications
00:25:54
of food processing on health. It concluded that,
while concerning, there are uncertainties
00:26:00
around the quality of evidence available, and more
research was needed. We asked Kate Halliwell whether
00:26:05
the industry's position has changed. - Since 2021, we
have seen really an explosion of publications,
00:26:13
I would say, in this space. We have also had a lot
more media interest in this topic. So I think
00:26:20
that has led to generally people being more
interested in it, as well as some confusions over
00:26:26
what it actually means, and what's the appropriate
response for companies to it. So we have been
00:26:31
following the scientific publications that have
been ongoing, and I think what's been very helpful
00:26:38
to us in the UK is that the scientific advisory
committee on nutrition, their conclusion was that
00:26:46
the evidence-base, although there's a lot, it is
still very weak. So as it stands at the moment, they
00:26:53
have not recommended that here in the UK we change
our guidelines. - There are scientists out there who
00:26:58
I think would absolutely disagree that the
evidence is weak. I mean, the US National
00:27:02
Institutes of Health carried out a randomised
control trial, the gold standard of scientific
00:27:07
studies, and that showed a causal relationship
between ultra-processed food and weight gain. So
00:27:13
there is emerging scientific evidence that ultra-
processed food isn't good for you, but there's
00:27:19
debate about what might be going on, why that might
be the case. - You know, there's still papers to be
00:27:25
published and actually what SACN, the
body I just referred to, also said, was that what
00:27:30
was needed was more randomised control trials, or
also cohort studies they call them, so they don't
00:27:37
think that evidence is there yet. Of course, in the
future it might emerge, and if there was something
00:27:43
specific that was needed to be overlaid on top of
the nutrition guidelines, then, you know, industry
00:27:49
would look to understand that, and implement it.
- Are you not out of step with consumers who are
00:27:55
increasingly aware of the concept of ultra-
processed food and concerned about it?
00:28:00
- So I think consumers are increasingly aware, you're absolutely right.
I think they're both concerned and confused,
00:28:07
actually, as to what it means, because actually some
foods which would be classed as ultra-processed
00:28:13
under Nova would actually fall within those healthy
eating guidelines that government recommends.
00:28:21
So I think it is confusing, absolutely, and that's why
I think for our companies it's right that we do
00:28:29
look to the scientific evidence, but we also follow
what our government and our expert committees are
00:28:34
recommending that we do. - If scientific research
in the future showed a clear causal link between
00:28:40
ultra-processed food and ill health, if there
was more evidence that clearly pointed in that
00:28:45
direction, would the industry and the Federation
respond by applying labels that identified the
00:28:52
food as ultra-processed so consumers could
make an informed decision when they're in
00:28:57
the shopping aisle? - If evidence emerged, which
it hasn't yet, but you know, science evolves all
00:29:04
the time, so if evidence emerged that showed
there was something specific that needed to
00:29:10
go into our dietary guidelines, then yes of course
industry would respond to that.
00:29:15
Kate Halliwell.
00:29:16
So it's unlikely that food and drink manufacturers
will be flagging up ultra-processed products
00:29:21
anytime soon, and the onus will remain on the
individual to spot it. Pierre Slamich is optimistic,
00:29:28
though, that people's buying habits could bring
about change.
00:29:32
- In a perfect world, basically, food
00:29:35
would be clearly labelled front of pack so you
would have clear warnings about ultra-processed food.
00:29:41
And that's the final, the eventual point of those
apps. It's not basically keeping people captive
00:29:48
to scanning products, it's basically changing
the formulas of the food offer, so that everyone
00:29:54
benefits and that there's systemic change in what
we buy in the supermarket, that the default choice
00:30:01
in the supermarket become the right choices. We
believe that if we mobilise, if we team up together,
00:30:07
we can force the industry to actually listen to
the public, listen to the government, and it changes
00:30:14
the balance of power between the food industry and
and the general public.
00:30:18
- Pierre Slamich.
Jean-Claude Moubarac
00:30:21
has been advising the Canadian government on its
food policies. Has he suggested a label that says ultra-processed?
00:30:29
- We haven't suggested that. - Why not?
- I think it will be hard, because industry changes
00:30:36
its practice very quickly, so a label that
we be implemented today might not cover some
00:30:43
of the ingredients that industry will come up
in a year or two. - So you think food companies
00:30:49
would just reformulate a product so that it was
just as ultra-processed, but um using perhaps new
00:30:55
ingredients that weren't captured in your original system?
- Exactly. To me, it will be more meaningful
00:31:02
to raise awareness, and then people can make their
decision to prefer food that are less processed.
00:31:08
That means cooking, and it's a huge shift
in people's life, but I think it needs to start
00:31:15
by the understanding how food is made today, and
to me a label will not be enough to cover that.
00:31:22
- Jean-Claude Moubarac. It's not always easy to know
what is and isn't ultra-processed, and whether in
00:31:29
fact all ultra-processed food is bad for you. But
our listener Jen knows one thing for sure: that
00:31:35
cutting down on convenience foods and taking the
time to cook whole foods has been a net positive
00:31:41
for her family. - I'm not sure if this is something
I'm going to keep doing forever, but I think what
00:31:47
I feed myself and what I feed my family, I don't
see that changing, because part of it is just
00:31:53
this has become normalised in our family, that
we cook and we make things from scratch, and we
00:31:59
like food that tastes yummy. - Thanks to Jen for
getting us thinking about ultra-processed food,
00:32:05
and thanks to everyone in today's programme. If
there's something you'd like us to look into,
00:32:09
do what Jen did: email thefoodchain@bbc.co.uk -
We read every message we get. From me and the
00:32:17
rest of the team, Beatrice Pickup and Hannah Bewley,
thanks for listening, and join us again next week.
