But in the 70s these companies were still making the uneasy transition between denial and nihilistic acceptance. The idea that you could make cigarettes healthier, that you could acknowledge the warnings but claim they did not apply to your own product, became a central defence and marketing ploy. New “filter” cigarettes (themselves sometimes tainted with dangerous chemicals) flooded the market, falsely claiming to protect against the worst harms of smoking. Thousands switched to “low-tar” cigarettes in an effort to make a healthy choice.
“Considering all I’d heard, I decided to either quit or smoke True. I smoke True” ran one advert in 1976, featuring a sporty-looking girl at a tennis net – “The low-tar, low-nicotine cigarette”.
And this is where we are, I think, in 2024, with what used to be called junk food, and which is now beginning to be called ultra-processed food. UPF is food that has at some stage been ground into unrecognisable pulp and bathed in additives, a definition that is gaining acceptance among experts. But it is nothing too new. We are now, and have been for years, talking about the kind of food that encourages us to eat vast quantities of salt, sugar and fat in one barely chewed gulp. It is hamburgers, crisps, chocolate bars, ice-cream, fizzy drinks and pappy processed cereal.
As with cigarettes in the 70s, much of the evidence is in. Junk food is linked to cancer. Two landmark studies last year showed UPFs caused heart disease and strokes. It is also beyond question that these kinds of foods cause obesity, a condition linked to 30,000 deaths a year in England alone. One in five children are obese by the final year of primary school and levels of obesity are spiralling upwards. Unhealthy diets are, worldwide, now killing more people than tobacco.
The second two paragraphs are wholly, entirely, bollocks.
But they’re going to try to ban tasty food all the same.
That definition of junk food seems to fit ‘flour’ very well. Do they want us to go back to searching for witchetty grubs in rotten logs?
This would have the advantage that 99.9’% of Aussies would starve. One can imagine the applause, provided they had melanin deficient skins.
Beyond Meat burger ingredients:
Pea protein
Expeller-pressed canola oil
Refind coconut oil
Rice protein
Natural flavours
Dried yeast
Cocoa butter
Methylcellulose
Less than 1% potato starch.
Potassium Chloride
Beet juice colour
Apple extract
Pomegranate concentrate
Sunflower lecithin
Vinegar
Lemon juice concentrate
Zin Sulphate
Niacinamide
Pyridoxine hydrochloride
Cyanocobamin
Calcium Pantothenate.
Beef burger ingredients:
Beef.
Guess which one is classed as ‘Ultra Processed’?
I used to watch some cookery programmes by real chefs to see what the politicians and quango members (i.e. people on huge expense accounts) ate.
The chefs used bucketfuls of killer butter and heaps of stroke inducing salt and gallons of cirrhosis causing wine. My cooking at home improved no end because I started using good stuff instead of “healthy, longevity inducing” stuff…
As said above, vegan food has the highest proportion of UPF’s. Obviously time to ban it!
Proles Enjoy Sausage Rolls and Cheesy Burgers: How Can We Ruin That For Them? – The Guardian
There’s a massive difference in obesity rates between low income men and low income women.
Two points: if UPF being available as free and cheap as now, why aren’t low income men getting fat. And if we ban or restrict UPF, then is that a collective punishment of people who are not obese, and so a breach of international law.
Anyways Brits are mid table for eating schite, joint top of a recent OECD table of which countries eat fruit and veg, so the reason we’re so fat lies elsewhere – that outlier NHS system perhaps where you pay no price for being irresponsible.
ultra-processed foodis that has at some stage been ground into unrecognisable pulp and bathed in additives, a definition that is gaining acceptance among experts
Typical leftie language mutilation. That’s not a definition, that’s a non-matching *DESCRIPTION*, that also matches non-ultra-processed food. Ultra-processed food is food that has been ultra-processed, not food that has some other characateristic. If you want to classify by some other charateristic, then it’s food that has that other characteristic. Food that has had additives added is food that has additives added, not ultra-processed food. Ground food is ground food, not ultra-processed food.
“Ultraprocessed food” and “junk food” and “ground to a pulp” are seperate non-matching overlappign seperate characteristics. Baby food is ultraprocessed unrecognisable pulp, ban baby food!
“a definition that is gaining acceptance among experts.”
On matters of human diet there are no experts. There are only (i) people who don’t know, and (ii) people who invent any old cobblers that suits them.
Bongo
“There’s a massive difference in obesity rates between low income men and low income women.
Two points: if UPF being available as free and cheap as now, why aren’t low income men getting fat. ”
Exercise. Men are far more likely to ditch a car for a bike, or go to the gym, or do physical labour.
Women do a lot less exercise than they used to: walking the kids to school, walking to the shops, walking to church on Sunday. I reckon I could go into any neighbourhood in England and almost 100% pick out the women who have cars and don’t go to the gym.
It’s why women are more obese than men now until they get older and men stop exercising so much.
Women’s bodies want to be fat, they retain more fat and water than we do due to hormones.
That’s why you should never diet along with your wife – she will be discouraged by how easily you lose weight compared to her.
Exercise doesn’t really affect your weight much, it’s mostly about what you eat. Every Gutlord marching out there is on a high carb diet.
Thank you Western Bloke.
A related thought:
Is the diet of pet dogs 100% UPF? I’ve never seen them eating raw ingredients although a few have threatened to. Although they go to the start point of their walks by car it has to be getting outside and having a run around that means they’re not fatties
“One in five children are obese by the final year of primary school…”
I often have the misfortune to travel by bus when these supposedly obese children are going to or coming from school. Out of about 30 kids on the bus there is usually one or maybe two fatties (that’s not PC but that’s what we called them when I was at school). So where are they hiding? I mean, they’re big and fat, right? They should be easy to spot.
Try searching for “guardian” and “tartiflette” to see the number of times the Guardian has tempted us to eat a (delicious) high fat, high salt, cheese and processed meat dish.
None of the foods listed in the article excerpt is as ultra-processed as tofu. I wonder why that didn’t make the list?
As was mentioned in a recent comment, that´s the end of baby formula then. That is going to go down oh so well with the Moms.
So where are they hiding? I mean, they’re big and fat, right?
Live close to a school with a large black intake. Then you´ll see all the porkers you could possibly want. Like a herd of hippos.
The chefs used bucketfuls of killer butter and heaps of stroke inducing salt and gallons of cirrhosis causing wine. My cooking at home improved no end because I started using good stuff instead of “healthy, longevity inducing” stuff…
In (I think) the first chapter of his excellent Kitchen Confidential*, Anthony Bourdain explains why restaurant food (can) taste much better than what you cook at home. Chefs use shallots rather than onions and loads of butter (even where recipes call for olive oil). Joel Robuchon’s recipe for mash is two parts potato to one part butter – try it!
* and don’t have the blue plate special on a Monday 🙂
Steve,
“Exercise doesn’t really affect your weight much, it’s mostly about what you eat. Every Gutlord marching out there is on a high carb diet.”
It’s a simple equation about calories in and out. If you’re working in an Amazon Warehouse you’re going to burn a lot more calories than someone sitting at a desk. So, yeah, you can eat salad all day if you don’t exercise, or, you can have the steak if you do a lot of exercise.
Personally, I lost a lot of weight by upping the exercise. Because I like my food. And I think most people are like this. Most dieters fall off the wagon.
When I lost 15kg, about 12% of my weight before I started, I was asked 2 questions:
1. Which diet was I using / did I use? I didn’t. Dieting implies you’ll revert back to your previous lifestyle and the weight will pile back on until you’ve put all the weight you lost plus some.
2. How dod you do it? Lifestyle change. I cut out a lot of the crap and started exercising more.
People don’t want to hear that because they know that’s the only way, they’re just hoping you’ve found a magic formula.
As for exercise, as I’ve said before, it doesn’t work in practice because people over estimate how many calories they’ve burned and underestimate how many calories are in that piece of chocolate cake that is a reward for going to the gym or whatever they’ve done.
Steve @ 10.28, that cunt George Osbourne began that process with the ‘Pasty Tax’.
Along with Western Bloke, I keep my weight down by exercising, it used to be triathlons but now just the swimming. It may not work for everyone but it does work for me.