Transcript

Most Replayed Moment: The Truth Behind "Healthy" Food Labels - Dr. Chris Van Tulleken

0:00 Rich people don't eat bad food because they don't want to eat bad food. And people without money. eat bad food because they're forced to eat bad food. And the the cognitive dissonance that you and I were talking about, quite often we will find people with low incomes making quite cogent arguments about the food

0:17 That they eat. appearing to side with the companies that are predating on them. Because otherwise how could you live with this dissonance in your life? Otherwise you're just a powerless victim of of transnational food corporation. So I I have almost no interest in personal responsibility. I think you

0:33 If you give people technical knowledge And you give people income and opportunity. Most people want to be healthy and live good life. Nineteen seventy the food environment changes. Can you tell me exactly how the food environment changed that caused

0:48 multiple demographics to To to gain weight. There are two answers to that. One The the sort of proximate reason is is the invention of ultra processed food. So the industrialization of of food supply. And you can you can talk about why that happened in a lot of different ways. Part of it was to, you know, a a booming population post war.

1:09 Uh And these products were extremely convenient. They allowed women to continue to be in the workplace. Of course, women had entered the war, entered the workplace in the war. So There were a lot of things that were immediately appealing about these products. T V dinners, Swanson TV dinners appear in the And by the time of the seventies, these products had become very widespread.

1:29 So in the same thing we were a decade behind in the UK, but this This stuff is now our national diet. Why exactly it took over is the subject of a lot of the research I'm doing at the moment. So now w I work much more with economists The nutritionists? And what we see is the financialization.

1:46 of the food industry. So the primary Uh Determinants. of almost every action that happens in almost every food company that supplies, say

1:56 ninety percent of our calories. All the indicators are financial. And so part of it is the takeover of the food system. From being A system where people would grow a lot of their own food, make food at home, they'd buy ingredients from local shops.

2:11 So now Uh seventy five percent of the calories that are consumed globally come from six companies. Kinda like sounds like a mafia. Of sorts. Like a food mafia.

2:24 I'm gonna let you say that. Yeah, no, don't say let me say it. I brought some food along with me today. I'm looking at it. I wanted to get your opinion on it. So I brought

2:39 Um A group of food products on the left here. Now these are things that I I think growing up I thought were good. Yeah. So

2:51 You're very bold with these brands, I mean you're really limiting sponsorship opportunities. You know, I do think about that sometimes, but I also don't really care. I I think for like I'm in the pursuit of truth here. So much of why I do this is to educate myself. And I I think if I educate myself, then I'll help educate other people. That's why I'm also okay being a total idiot on this subject matter.'Cause That is the truth. So

3:15 Here I've got four products that are Typically seen as being quite healthy. Breakfast cereal, Cheerios, I grew up thinking Good for me. Um Actimal, good for me. Diet Coke.

3:28 Great,'cause there's no sugar in there. And then this is Whole grain. Spread fifty percent of your daily whole grain in just two slices. Perfect.

3:41 So For a start, I I have a slight unease. I'm gonna talk about these products. I've a slight unease to talk about any one product. Sure. The evidence applies to the category of food. Mm-hmm. And this kind of stuff, in a sense, I think you're abs these are such brilliant choices. Because this is the foundation of our diet. And one of the things that's happening at the moment is is the food industry exploring painting me as a snob.

4:05 Because I'm I'm critiquing these sort of core things, you know, tins of Beans with flavouring or supermarket bread, fish fingers. I think this stuff is at the shallow end of the pool, in a way. It's not by any means the worst stuff. But in a way it presents the biggest moral hazard because we think it's

4:23 So healthy. I have to diet Coke. Yeah. Dye Coke is my It's my favorite example because this is the ultimate health food according to the way we label food.

4:34 At the moment. Yes. Four Where's the camera? It's all green on the um four green traffic lights, right? What what is the what do they call that that traffic light system on the other thing I think it's a little bit.

4:45 healthy whether food is healthy or not in this country at the moment. And this system is quite influenced by the food industry and it breaks f all foods down into fat. Sat saturated fat, sugars, and salt. And says that, you know, if a those are the bad things and if a food is high in them. It'll it'll have

5:01 oranges and greens. So if you look at the Cheerios, they're most they're mostly on the front. It's on the front. It's optional, by the way. So it's not always on every packet, but the Cheerios are Oranges and green. Yeah. Now

5:14 Pause there is a baked in confusion this,'cause what do you do at a traffic light that's orange and green? Or red, orange and green. Did you go? Do you stop? Is it on the ITML? It's not on there, no, I couldn't see it on there. It's optional. So who knows if Yeah, we we don't

5:35 We don't have any way. in this country of describing Yeah. Healthy food or unhealthy food other than these traffic lines. Anyway, this is a healthy food. Now if we look at the ingredients on the diet coke.

5:47 Carbonated water fine. Now there's a colour called caramel E one fifty D. Caramel. makes you think of your traditional it's it's a French nineteenth century invention, burned sugar, creme brulee. It's like it's a bit naughty, but it's fine. Caramel E one fifty D has nothing to do with caramel. It is um carbohydrate treated with a mixture of acids and and uh and heat to produce Uh things that contain ammonium and

6:10 S sulfide. So it's It's it's a food additive colour. Um, with no no benefits, nothing to do with caramel. Um Artificial sweetness, aspartame, and acid sulfame K.

6:19 No. Sweetness Uh. Tricky Because we know sugar is harmful'cause it rots teeth.

6:25 And it promotes weight gain'cause it makes you eat more. The weird thing about sweetness Is they don't seem To help with weight loss at all. They may some of them seem to be more metabolically harmful.

6:37 than sugar itself. Humans are quite good at eating sugar. When we lollipop's con continuous continuously as kids or have sugary drinks. It's not good for us. But human societies have four Millennia. existed with a huge amount of honey and refined carbs. So sugar we can handle, although we should reduce our intake.

6:56 Sweetness are quite weird. Because they're a nutritional lie. You put sweet taste on the tongue. Which says to your body Sugar coming.

7:04 So maybe put up some insulin. Maybe Um start preparing in other ways physiologically to receive refined carbohydrates. And when that refined carbohydrate, when the sugar never arrives, it seems to be physiologically confusing. So the World Health Organization now says Sweeteners aren't better than sugar when it comes to weight loss.

7:22 And there is there is an anxiety about aspartame and cancer that I'm I'm passing not. Not in a big sweat about there's some there's some evidence, but not at not at normal dosage. Then we've got natural flavourings, we've got caffeine flavouring, an addictive drug, and phosphoric acid and citric acid. Natural, it's said. Natural flavourings. I mean you know. Well

7:41 Flavorings are flavorings. Flavorings should signal nutritional content. When you eat a tomato, it has flavor. not for fun, it has maybe because it signals the nutritional content of the tomato. when you put flavourings out of context, easen even if you extract them from the tomato or the strawberry or the peach. It's very confusing for you physiologically. You've You have a very sophisticated internal system.

8:03 Flavor molecules, which are broadly smell, and taste molecules are Salt, sweet. Better. Sour.

8:11 And Some savory ones. you you your body has a way of linking all that information with nutritional information that you get from your gut subconsciously. When you muddle it all up in a product like this It's very confusing.

8:24 The phosphoric acid will dissolve the minerals out of your bones as well as dissolving your teeth. So what we have here is a solution of flavorings, an addictive drug, an acid that will leach stuff out of your bones, and sweeteners that seem to be metabolically confusing and certainly aren't better than sugar. And yet we think of this as a health product. So that for me is the archetypal confused way of thinking about food. I Um and what we also know is that When it comes to kids the age of my youngest, so the age

8:51 Three. They're drinking on average one can of artificially sweetened. Drinks every single day. So we've we've taxed sugar. Sugar has come out of our diet.

9:01 We've seen no weight loss. No indication that it's helping. Health. And what we are doing is consuming huge numbers now of these artificial sweetness, which we also know affect our microbiome.

9:12 What is a a better alternative that popular on on the market than 'Cause it appears to me that all of the drinks in the bloody supermarket have Artificial sweetness and flavourings and the sugar tax. So it's almost impossible now to buy fizzy tax without sweetness. Drink without sweetness, yeah.

9:31 Um I bet so for kids, I try and not give any advice To anyone ever. But my kids Um

9:40 My kids eat a lot of UPF. But they don't have fizzy drinks. I think I think fizzy drinks are really quite harmful across the board. So so kids should just drink milk and water, milk if they can have it. Grown ups.

9:54 Um Milk and water. You drink milk. What?

10:00 Breakfast cereals and Cheerios and things like that. So breakfast deals are really convenient. I mean let me see the Cheerios. So I think these So these these probably do meet the Definitely The definition Oh they are yeah. So we've got things like um

10:17 uh palm oil caramelized sugar syrup, uh colours, the Natonorbixin and an antioxidant and so this is Ultra processed. It'll have some fibre. You'll have it with ho whole milk.

10:30 I don't wanna demonise breakfast cereals. My kids eat Yeah. Uh Breakfast ears for breakfast. But It's not like eating porridge which is just whole grains.

10:39 Or Real bread. This is this is And what you will find is if you give This

10:45 To a kid. um compared to porridge is they will be able to eat much, much more of this. And there is a there's a lot of marketing that this is a really, really healthy product. And I would say the evidence says that this falls into a category of foods that we actually know are associated with negative health outcomes. It says on the slide there, doesn't it, a list of all the health benefits.

11:07 A really good way of telling if a food is ultra processed is if there is any health claim on the packet. It's almost certainly ultra process. And part of that is to do with this intellectual property thing, that the only food you can make Lots of money out of it. It's a branded product. So there's no money in broccoli milk.

11:23 Steak, eggs. Um Supermarkets quite often make losses on all those things. There's no health claim on broccoli. Or on plums.

11:32 Or on milk. There's no health claim on st Steak. It's only the ultra process things that you get marketed to you in this way because there's enough money to do it.

11:42 Yeah, actomel's interesting as well, the immune support. Well it says immune support and it says vitamin D and B six. So that rich in vitamin D immune support that is definitely healthy. I mean this is this is uh

12:00 This is where we need we we we should have done the maths and shown how much sugar there was in each pot. These are very high calorie Shots of sugary liquid that will Arm teeth and

12:11 I don't know why you'd have this if you could just have Real yogurt. And U Milk. Mm.

12:19 And the reason they back the vitamins is to be able to make health claims. So Generally foods with added vitamins. Um, real food doesn't need added vitamins. And we're Again, we're pretty sure that And I'm c I'm conscious to I'm talking to you here. I've got a I I'm I'm uh uh

12:36 Uh I probably have to tread a bit carefully. Supplementing vitamins into food. doesn't seem to have many health benefits for healthy people.

12:48 So We've got quite a lot of very big data on this. Um And There are lots of studies that show benefits that are funded by people who make vitamins, but broadly the independent evidence shows that

13:00 Um when you get vitamins and minerals in the context of food, they're really good for you. And when you take them in pill or supplement form, they Don't seem to have many benefits if you are healthy.

13:11 And this food here, this bottle of Coke I've got. Can of Pringles and uh Cocoa Pop's Kellogg cereal. This is the stuff that I typically think of as like bad Processed ultra pro Process stay away from.

13:24 You would, but give me the cocoa pop. So the cocoa pop? We look at these traffic lights. Okay. Green, green, orange, orange. Pretty healthy. I mean there is a there is a monkey On the pack. Selling it.

13:36 To my to my kids. Yeah, and it says high in vitamin D fiber, vitamin D, iron supporting your family's health, rice, added goodness. I mean Everything about this tells you that this is a product that Not just Safe kids, but intended for kids. And we all know you like you can't sell things if they're not healthy, there must be some regulator dealing with that.

13:59 And this is the thing that my six year olds will eat five adult portions of. So when you eat five adult portions, the the the traffic lights only apply to a thirty gram serving. For you. Now a thirty gram serving. Is is a handful like that.

14:15 It's it's one. Big spoonful. Okay. So This is the product that I

14:22 I recognize addictive behaviour in my kids and frankly myself. I mean I could eat You know, three hundred grams of it. And the other thing that I I went and got from the supermarket because Thinking about what I typically think as Ultra processed and good for me.

14:36 I went and got this frozen Pizza here. Mm. And then I went and got a Tesco's finest, so this is high end.

14:46 You know. Much more expensive, not frozen. Pizza. And I thought surely This pizza here.

14:53 Is Better for a lot better for me. The next one here. So again, the there's a complexity talking about is one better than the other because we've we've never done a trial testing them against each other.

15:07 They're both ultra processed, I know'cause I've looked at the ingredients. They both contain ingredients that you don't have in a domestic kitchen, like um palm fat or dextrose. Um And they're both made really in a sense by the same company. So

15:21 Both Oh They're both made by PLCs who will be owned by institutional investors with requirements for growth. So they come from the same Food.

15:31 system with the same incentives. About production. And my bet is that you or I would be able to eat the entire pizza at a single sitting Um and we'd be still licking the pack of both of them.

15:43 So this is food that in a sense is is engineered. To be consumed to excess. You know, the the pizzas, I've got the cocoa pops, I've got the The Coca-Cola here.

15:57 Is this food? I don't think it meets So food is very poorly defined. We don't have a working definition of food sort of in law. But I think food Is substance.

16:10 That you eat for nourishment. And it should be about nourishment culturally. socially, personally, psychologically, as well as physically. And these products are uh developed to generate financialised growth.

16:22 for institutional investors. They know made by people who love you who want nourish you. So I don't think it meets.

16:30 what I think is a useful cultural definition of food. I think it's very useful to not think of them as food. And I don't think a mixture of Um Colouring.

16:39 addictive drugs and phosphoric acid. Could be Called food. In any sense of the word, it it doesn't have nutrition, it only has things that will W

16:48 We're pretty sure that almost every ingredient does you harm in some way. So it I don't see how that could be called food. It's a way of commodify your ill health. For the benefit.

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