Making it possible.
I read a very disturbing article recently, which I will come to later. Meanwhile, not wishing to put people into boxes, but…
Thinking about food and health, one wonders how it became so complicated. I watched a humorous but clever short video recently where a guy went to eat an apple and a voice-over warned him not to because it had been sprayed with chemicals, so he went to wash it under the tap, the voice-over told him there were chemicals in the tap water, so he got his filter jug to pour water over the apple but he was warned that the jug was plastic and chemicals would have seeped into his filtered water, he goes to wipe with a paper towel, he is warned that it has been made using bleach, he takes a clean cloth from the drawer, and is warned that it has been washed with toxic laundry detergent. Eventually, he takes an apple seed to grow his own apples, and as he plants it in his garden, he is warned that the soil is devoid of all nutrients and therefore his organic apples will have no nutritional value.
In desperation he flings the seed away and the film cuts to him on his sofa opening a bag of crisps. The caption is ‘I just wanted a snack’. [Cheesyandthebears.com].
In connection with food, I suggest four boxes;
- Eat what you like as it has been made safely in factories
- Mild concern over factory produced food and chemicals sprayed on vegetables, but it has all got too complicated to stress over
- Concerned enough to make efforts to change what we buy, try making our own laundry soap, thinking about home-grown veg but it is so overwhelming and time-consuming we feel like the guy in the video
- We change our whole lifestyle to avoid toxic chemicals and go and live off-grid
The disturbing article I read recently was this:
Intimidation against advocates and researchers in the tobacco, alcohol and ultra-processed food spaces: a review. (2024) K Evans-Reeve et al. Health Promotion International, Volume 39, Issue 6, December 2024, daae153.https://doi.org/10.1093/heapro/daae153
In Colombia, a consumer advocacy group was legally prohibited from publicly discussing the detrimental health impacts of sugar and was subsequently sued for allegedly breaking this rule. Similarly, researchers focusing on *SSBs in Brazil were also threatened with legal action after they produced a large inflatable can of a well-known SSB brand with the word Diabetes on the side. In India, the SSB industry took an advocacy group to court for a report stating that the beverages contained pesticides but later dropped the case as it ‘won’t improve our brand image’. Others working on food-related research were threatened with legal action unless they withdrew their research press release ‘at the eleventh hour’.
*Sugar-sweetened beverage
Note: I have removed the in-text references for sources of this info for easier reading. If you follow the link to the original article they will be there in the text.
What box we fit in in connection with buying and cooking food, is a result of our ‘worldview’ on food which is mostly shaped by what we hear and see and read from experts. The article above claims that, ‘Unhealthy commodity industries (UCIs) engage in corporate political activity, using diverse practices, including intimidatory tactics, to thwart, delay and dilute regulations that threaten their businesses.’
This intimidation includes:
- Public discreditation. Researchers have been labelled as ‘extremists’, and ‘food faddists’ and more on social media, in traditional media and even in public consultation responses. There is a whole list more…
- Legal threats and action. ‘…a consumer advocacy group was legally prohibited from publicly discussing the detrimental health impacts of sugar and was subsequently sued for allegedly breaking this rule.’ There is a whole list more…
- Complaints to authorities. Complaints are made to government agencies about advocates and researchers, and in even the WHO were threatened with a cut in funding if they did not change their recommendations. [I know this is true over sugar]. There is a whole list more…
- Complaints to individuals or organisations. This is where there is documented evidence of the industry blocking the researcher publishing, or even trying to get their tax returns investigated…
- Surveillance. They found evidence of phone bugging and even anonymous intimidating phone calls where the callers said they were following their children home from school…
- Physical violence. Apparently, some advocated to increases in tax for SSB were given death threats.
- Also covered were bribery, cyber-attacks and burglaries.
The more that health food advocates can be labelled as extremist, or publicly discredited [think John Yudkin v Ancel Keys] the more likely we get confused as to who is right, or we can be lulled into a false sense of security about food.
But if we are not, we have a problem.
Ask any busy parent who works inside and/or outside the home/has fussy kids/on a low income how they approach avoiding ultra-processed food. It can take over all your spare time, and if it doesn’t it can then make you feel guilty about what your kids are eating.
Even for me, who just caters for myself and my husband, it can be a constant drain on time and resources. If we read books like UltraProcessed People it could leave us thinking – what can I eat then? We start reading ingredients of everything and realise that emulsifiers are in such a lot of products, and these are not good for the gut. And preservatives. And flavour enhancers. And colours. And modified starches.
So, what do we do?
I heard someone say this once;
Don’t buy any product which contains more than three ingredients. But if we buy any food ‘product’ that a hard rule to follow.
If we just buy ingredients, that is easy.
The difficulty then is finding the time to cook from scratch and getting members of your household [young kids and teenagers] to eat it and not demand turkey twizzlers and fast food.
This can be a real problem, and I wish much strength to parents everywhere caught up in this battle. When I was in this situation it was easier for me as I didn’t go out to work, and I know that is a rare luxury these days.
All I can suggest is that you follow people like the Batch Lady or Taming Twins on YouTube or Instagram where they suggest many ways to batch cook from scratch and avoid ready meals.
How do you get round all the additives in food today? Or have you just given up?
If you would like to delve into the world of how culinary and medicinal herbs can make your family healthier join my HerbWorks Membership for £9.99 a month and we can have a live group chat each month and where you will fins tips and videos with more to come.
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