More media lies about sugar and processed food...

Some healthily presented sugar and fat

Writing in Spectator Health, Janna Lawrence continues the war on cheap, accessible and nutritious mass-produced food by claiming - entirely without evidence - that it is this stuff that is responsible for a range of health problems (you know the list - cancers, diabetes, obesity and so forth):

Regardless of whether you buy into the concept of food addiction, the results of eating unhealthy, high-energy foods are self-evident. A quarter of adults in England are obese. Admissions to hospital with a primary diagnosis of obesity increased nine-fold between 2003 and 2013. That’s an astonishing statistic. Obesity is reckoned to cost our economy £47 billion a year. But while selling cocaine is illegal, selling sugar and fat is fine, apparently.

Janna Lawrence has simply absorbed the latest example of egregious pseudo-science and wrapped it up in some scary statistics to suggest that somehow we are eating loads more sugar and fat but don't know it because it's secretly loaded into 'processed food'.

Let's deal with some of the facts. Firstly total calorie consumption per capita has fallen in the UK. And, alongside this, consumption of fats and especially saturated fats has fallen significantly. Plus, of course, our consumption of sugars - that's all sugars not just the white stuff in bags - has fallen too. This includes all Ms Lawrence's evil processed foods.

The DEFRA survey (conducted annually since the 1970s) also contains data on per capita consumption of different sources of calories...(and) shows a decline in the consumption of ‘total sugars’ of sixteen per cent since 1992 (and) a decline in saturated fat consumption of 41 per cent since 1974. Consumption of protein, cholesterol, sodium and carbohydrates (of which sugar is one) have all declined since 1974. 

So while we've been piling on the pounds and making new notches in our belts, our consumption of the things Janna thinks are responsible has been falling. It is quite simply a lie to say that the obesity problem and its associated health consequences is a result of increased consumption of sugars and fats.

Yet people persist in promoting the idea that our obesity problem is a consequence solely of diet when the evidence says strongly that it isn't - our ever more sedantary lifestyle is the real culprit. Moreover rates of obesity stopped rising sometime around 2004 - they've not fallen much but this is not, as some suggest, an accelerating problem but rather a stable one. Because so much has been invested by the public health industry in problematising overweight there's a reluctance to admit to this stabilising of obesity rates.  It's also true that the increase in obesity is overstated:

Overall, the research shows gradual increases in the average BMI over time, from 25.6kg/m² to 27.5kg/m² in men; and from 24.5kg/m² to 26.5kg/m² for women. Most of this increase occurred before 2001, after this there has been a much slower rate of increase.

This - over a thirty year period - represents a seven per cent increase in average male BMI and an eight per cent increase in average female BMI. As ever the problem isn't really a 'whole population' issue but rather that we have a segment of that total population who, for whatever reason, are unhealthily obese. This means that the ghastly health fascist solution proposed by Janna Lawrence is not only illiberal (she admits to that) but also completely unnecessary. Rather than introducing sugar taxes, banning advertising and paying benefits in food stamps only redeemable against produce approved by the likes of Ms Lawrence, we should instead target our resources towards the million or so people with a real weight-related health problem.

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"Your children will die!" More obesity scaremongering.

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There is a problem with obesity but dealing with it is not helped by either conflating obesity with overweight or with nonsensical speculations about longevity:

Parents could soon begin to outlive their children because of an epidemic of obesity afflicting the younger generation. Many youngsters are now so grossly overweight they face premature death caused by a heart attack or stroke.

Apparently all this comes from Professor Andrew Prentice, a leading nutritionist, who suggests that:

'Fast foods are likely to be implicated because they contain a lot of fat. The response to the abundance of high-energy, aggressively marketed foods and the sedentariness induced by TV is a pandemic of obesity.'

The classic New Puritan mix - blame something popular with lower socio-economic classes, blame advertising and blame TV (or the Internet). And all just hokum.

There is no 'pandemic of obesity', this generation of children are not fatter than the last generation of children (although they are fatter than the generation before) :

As this graph (from ONS) shows the peak for teenage obesity was back in 2004. It also shows that obesity is much more of a problem for girls than for boys.

Since there is no demonstrated link between overweight and shortened mortality, we should concern ourselves with the actual obesity rather than ridiculous (and unscientific) estimates of life expectancy. Here's the evidence that shows this 'nutritionist' to be wrong:

This systematic review provides high-quality evidence that obesity grades 2 and 3 are associated with higher death rates from any cause compared to normal weight individuals (around 30% increased risk). However, it also shows that lower grades of obesity (grade 1) do not increase the risk of death relative to normal-weight individuals and, in fact, overweight people had a small but significant reduction in their risk of death in the region of 6%.

In English that means that only the very obese are seriously risking their lives by being fat - the rest of us would probably be happier is we could stay a little thinner but we're not going to live any less long than thin folk.

There is no 'pandemic' of obesity, it isn't caused by fizzy drinks and TV. Nor is our increase in weight anything to do with "aggressively marketed fat-laden fast food'. Our daily energy intake has fallen every year since 1958 (with the exception of a small blip in the 1990s), yet we are taller and fatter than our forebears.

We're fatter because we sit about more (or maybe because we eat too much fruit).

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Obesity - the 'official line' is fundamentally flawed

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I was on the telly talking about Bradford Council and West Yorkshire Trading Standards spending £200,000 on a campaign to persuade fast food restaurants to offer smaller portions and low fat options. My point was that this is the wrong target - it isn't the fast food that's making us fat.

A day later I received an email from Verner Wheelock - that's Professor Vermer Wheelock who used to run the Food Policy Research Unit at Bradford University. Here's what he said:

I have just been watching the item on the initiative by Bradford Met about obesity. Unfortunately this appears to be following the official line which is fundamentally flawed.

And how is it flawed? Several things including:

...the dangers associated with obesity/overweight have been grossly exaggerated. The real problem is not excess weight per se but lack of fitness which affects everyone irrespective of weight

...saturated fats are important nutrients and that the campaign to reduce them is actually damaging to health. In fact there has been a very substantial reduction in the amount of saturated fat consumed over exactly the same period that the so-called “obesity crisis” has been developing.

Verner goes on to say that fat and salt are the wrong target. Instead we should reduce carbohydrate consumption and exercise more (he suggests walking for an hour a day). If you want a little more detail Verner's blog is a very interesting source.  Here's a sample:

With respect to implementation, the emphasis has been on the advice to reduce the total fat and especially the saturated fat (SFA). Here in the UK between 1969 and 2000 the National Food Survey (NFS) shows that total fat consumption had fallen from 120 to 74 g/day. Over the same period the consumption of saturated fat (SFA) decreased from 56.7 to 29.2 g/day. (The NFS was discontinued in 2000). My own interest in exploring the scientific basis of these dietary guidelines has been stimulated by the fact the expected benefits in public health have certainly not materialised. While it is true that life expectancy has been extended, there is no convincing evidence that health generally has improved. We have the “obesity crisis” which has probably been over-hyped (See Blog 10) as far as most people are concerned

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On those fat taxes Andy Burnham likes....

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Denmark - under their decidedly New Labour leadership - decided to introduce them. And now:

The measure, introduced a little over a year ago, was believed to be the world's first so-called "fat tax".

Foods containing more than 2.3% saturated fat - including dairy produce, meat and processed foods - were subject to the surcharge.

But authorities said the tax had inflated food prices and put Danish jobs at risk. 

So the Danes are scrapping the tax and have also decided not to lump a tax on sugar either.

See, I told you, nannying fussbucketry doesn't work. Can we stop doing it now?

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Ban restaurants!

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They're killing our children with obesity:

In their report, the authors argue that restaurants are clearly responsible for making children less healthy and that government intervention will be required to improve the health effect of restaurants on children: “Public policies that aim to reduce restaurant consumption — such as increasing the relative costs of these purchases; limiting access through zoning, particularly around schools; limiting portion sizes; and limiting exposure to marketing — deserve serious consideration.”

We're not just talking about McDonalds and KFC here folks but all those wonderful little places that you've discovered that are so child-friendly.

These people need stopping. Not the restaurants but the hideous prohibitionists who want to regulate pleasure out of existence. And the funny thing about this is that the sort of people - Shadow Health Spokesman, Andy Burnham springs to mind here - who want to introduce legal limits on salt and fat content don't realise that they'll kill off artisan ice-cream and will force restaurants out of business. They're looking at the easy target of the wicked "food industry" and missing the self-evident fact that lots of those celebrated foodie wonders are every bit and fat and sugar loaded (it is of course the best butter and prized sea salt but it's still salt and fat).

And people have spotting the problem with Burnham's search for a headline:

"Such an approach could paradoxically undermine public health by, in effect, the banning of products that actually contribute to a healthy diet. Whilst a product such as raisins can contribute to one of five-a-day portions of fruit and vegetables, it could be classed as high sugar."

But, of course, the nannying fussbuckets don't care about whether it works or whether their science is accurate. They just want to ban stuff - for the children or worse still:

...to save the NHS money

These people need stopping. There isn't an 'obesity crisis' and children are not being made fat by advertising. These are lies that cover up simple truths - people are fat mostly because they eat too much and exercise too little. But most people aren't obese and most children aren't fat. So let's concentrate on informing, persuading and helping the ones who are fat rather than blaming it on society or corporate greed.

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Heart attacks - and why there are fewer of them...

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A great deal of this represents a triumph for awareness and medical intervention - in the UK, the NHS done good! But there are some interesting side issues that should matter a lot to public health folk:

For the last 70 years we have been in the grip of a heart disease epidemic that began in the 1940s, rose to a peak in the 1970s and then began to fall. All Western countries were affected and all followed broadly the same pattern.

And two things public health people liked to finger for this epidemic - fat and smoking - seem to be less to blame than we thought. On fat:

Total fat consumption in the UK has changed little – down from 40 per cent of average calories in the 1980s to 38 per cent today (though there has been a bigger reduction in the most harmful type, saturated fat).

In 2000, a pan-European study by the World Health Organisation was unable to show a convincing link between heart disease levels and fat consumption in the 21 countries studied.

And smoking:

Smoking, meanwhile, makes blood more likely to clot and is a known cause of heart attacks. But smoking peaked in the 1940s and then began to decline, just as the heart disease epidemic was taking off.

The truth seems to be that those endless nannying public health campaigns are, at best, a very minor part of this change:

The Oxford researchers conclude that just under half the decline in heart attack death rates in England over the last decade is due to better hospital treatment; the rest is due to changes in lifestyle and the widespread use of pills to lower cholesterol and blood pressure.

Do you think BHF and the like will admit they were wrong about smoking and fat? Somehow I doubt it!

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Food snobs, nannies and the attack on food choice

Fat and getting fatter. That’s the message our media proclaim today and at the front is the ever-so-slightly chubby and terribly righteous celebrity and master of ‘slam some food in a dish and call it cooking’, Jamie Oliver:

The country's bill of health is shocking, and it's not going to get any better over the next 30 years if a clearly-defined plan isn't put into place soon. We simply can't afford the financial or health costs of doing nothing.

To be fair to Jamie, when given the chance he proposes precisely nothing by way of alternative strategy which is rather a good thing. But others are at the head of the charge screaming loudly that it’s the food industry that’s at fault not us for eating too much and exercising too little:

But Professor Philip James, of the International Association for the Study of Obesity, said it was a "stupid" and "pathetic" response to the problem.

"It is not simply a question of personal responsibility. There is an environmental problem in terms of the food system we have."

He went on to say that the junk food industry "manipulated" individuals into consuming their products and that was why legislation was needed.

Sorry Professor James but you are wrong – not just because you really haven’t the first idea about how the food industry works - or advertising for that matter -  but because you deny the facility of free will to the poor.

They’re all out there explaining how it isn’t the poor consumers’ fault they’re getting fat but the fault of the “food industry” – here’s Billy:

One half of the obesity crisis is calorie dense food. Calorie dense food is food that contains high levels of fat and sugar. Fat and sugar have been commoditised by the food industry, and are now sourced from wherever is cheapest on the day. So what was already cheap is getting relatively cheaper all the time.

That’s right folks, the solution is to make food more expensive. In the heart of the deepest and most painful recession since the 1930s, people are proposing that we make food more pricey. And who would suffer from that? The poorest and most needy. It makes me so angry to see the self-righteous know-it-all left showing yet again their utter contempt for the lifestyle choices that ordinary people make. That’s right – choices, you know freedom, liberty and the right to live our own lives uninterfered with by the acolytes of the Church of Public Health.

However, dear reader, there is one last killer fact that underlines why Jamie, Billy and the Prof are wrong. Obesity rates are falling. That’s right – we aren’t getting any fatter any more.

It looks like all the warnings about kids being overweight might be paying off, as a group of experts reckons the rate of child obesity is slowing.

The National Heart Forum found evidence that far fewer of you will be badly overweight by 2020 than people previously thought.

Or maybe you’d prefer a source that isn’t CBeebies;

Despite the government ignoring the anti-obesity lobby's urgent suggestions for traffic light labelling on food and suchlike, the latest figures show that obesity amongst men has fallen to 22% and the female obesity rate has fallen to 24%.

Just as the alcohol pandemic is a myth, so is the obesity crisis. And the solution isn’t to condemn the food choices of the poor, to make food more expensive, to ban transfats, to limit advertising or any of the other clobbering nudges preferred by those who wish to denormalise some foods (the ones they disapprove of for aesthetic reasons, in the main).

The solution is precisely what the government has done. Encourage people to eat less and to exercise more.

But then the Church of Public Health doesn’t like the bleedin’ obvious, do they!

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Denormalising butter...

There is sits in your fridge. A glistening slab of evil intent. Saturated fats. Sinful fats. Waiting just to do its wicked job, the raise your cholesterol levels, to fur up your arteries and to drag you inexorably towards that devastating coronary heart attack or that debilitating stroke.

And there are children’s poems featuring this dread substance, this cause of obesity. Can this be allowed?

The King asked
The Queen, and
The Queen asked
The Dairymaid:
"Could we have some butter for
The Royal slice of bread?"

It’s mad, I know. Mad and stupid. But the ‘denormalisation’ of foods mankind has eaten since before we invented writing continues apace. And butter has moved – with the decision of the Danish government to slap on a ‘fat tax’ – to the head of the denormalisation queue:

Mr Cameron told the Conservative conference that a similar move should not be ruled out in the UK.

“I think it is something that we should look at,” he said in an interview with Five Live. “The problem in the past when people have looked at using the tax system in this way is the impact it can have on people on low incomes. But frankly, do we have a problem with the growing level of obesity? Yes.

“I am worried about the costs to the health service, the fact that some people are going to have shorter lives than their parents.”

Understand that this proposal isn’t a tax on those foods Guardian readers disapprove of, those greasy burgers beloved of the lower orders. It’s at tax on cheese, on butter on Aberdeen Angus beef steaks – on some of Britain’s finest artisan foods. And the purpose – well that is clear. The intention is to gradually eliminate saturated fats from most people’s diets – the aim is the denormalisation of butter.

I could at this point argue that this whole effort is misplaced – saturated fats simply aren’t the primary cause of obesity:

Processed carbohydrates, which many Americans eat today in place of fat, may increase the risk of obesity, diabetes and heart disease more than fat does—a finding that has serious implications for new dietary guidelines expected this year.

It’s filling up on cheap pizza, ramming down vast bowls of “healthy” pasta and foot long subs that are the problem rather than the butter and the cheese.  But this isn’t the main point.

I could also remark that rates of obesity – especially among men – are no longer rising:

Despite the government ignoring the anti-obesity lobby's urgent suggestions for traffic light labelling on food and suchlike, the latest figures show that obesity amongst men has fallen to 22% and the female obesity rate has fallen to 24%.

So we’re stepping up a campaign in a battle we’re already winning. But again, that isn’t the point.

The point is that the tax would seal an abominable relationship between the nannying fussbuckets in our health system and the rapacious maw of the treasury. The men with calculators will see billions in revenue from ratcheting up the ‘fat tax’ by above inflation each year egged on by the Church of Public Health who will – without the need for any evidential support – propagandise that such actions are making us healthier and happier.

If some people wish for a dull, flavourless existence then they can give up butter, cheese and beef dripping. But there is no place for these to be ‘denormalised’ by those who cannot see that obesity is self-inflicted, brought on by cramming our faces with stodge and sugar while our only exercise is to stretch out a hand to grasp the TV remote control. It really is that simple – so why tax my little pleasures because somebody else has got too fat by eating too much?

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