ALMOST every month, a new piece of research emerges linking diets high in processed 鈥渏unk鈥� foods with obesity and poor health. It isn鈥檛 yet clear if the relationship is causal, and if so, what the mechanisms behind it may be. But insights are starting to emerge from trials that compare diets that are based on either ultra-processed foods or wholefoods, yet are carefully matched for nutrients in all other ways.
The links need investigating as a matter of urgency. If these processed foods really do carry intrinsic health risks, it could mean that official advice about healthy eating has been aiming at the wrong target for decades. In almost all high-income countries, nutrition guidelines say the key to healthy eating is avoiding too much fat, salt and sugar.
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While many types of processed food contain significant amounts of these frowned-on ingredients, not all do, and there are wholefoods that are also high in some of them. Red meat and some dairy products come with their share of fat, for instance. It is still unclear if it is better to switch to 鈥渉ealthier鈥� low-fat versions of processed foods, or to cook from scratch, whatever the ingredients.
Equally murky is what actions governments should be taking. Some campaigners are now calling for higher taxes on factory-made foods. That would be controversial, however, because these foods constitute up to 60 per cent of people鈥檚 diets in countries such as the UK and US. Additionally, any price hikes are likely to hit lower-income households hardest, many of which consume more of such products because processed foods can be cheaper than making meals from their original ingredients, and the cost difference is even greater if you take into account the time taken to cook from scratch.
Rather than taxation, a non-punitive approach may be for schools to give higher priority to teaching pupils how to make quick and simple home-cooked meals. This approach would take many years to bear fruit, but the encroachment of processed food into Western cuisine took place over decades. It isn鈥檛 going to be reversed overnight.
