Ultra-processed foods are understood to be detrimental to human health across several parameters, including macronutrient and micronutrient composition, fibre, effects of food additives, toxins, heat exposure, and packaging.[1]
They are only cheap (as promoted by various MPs) when the costs of their negative metabolic effects are externalised to personal health care and public health budgets.
The cost of the metabolically related and rapidly increasing obesity crisis and just one of the consequences – that of the cost of type 2 diabetes – is being borne by every person in the country.
The failure to understand or wilfully ignore the relationship between big food manufacturing practices and the cost to productivity and human health is reflected in government inaction as set out in Henry Dimblebys’ recent book ‘Ravenous’. Plus it is covered in more detail in the 2023 Lancets; Commercial Determinants of Health series.[2]