Most Replayed Moment: The Truth Behind "Healthy" Food Labels - Dr. Chris Van Tulleken

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Dr. Chris van Tulleken (0:12)

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Dr. Chris van Tulleken (0:30)

Rich people don't eat bad food because they don't want to eat bad food. And people without money eat bad food because they're forced to eat bad food. And the cognitive dissonance that you and I were talking about, quite often we will find people with low incomes making quite cogent arguments about the food that they eat, appearing to side with the companies that are predating on them, because otherwise how could you live with this dissonance in your life? Otherwise you're just a powerless victim of transnational food corporations. So I have almost no interest in personal responsibility. I think if you give people technical knowledge and you give people income and opportunity, most people want to be healthy and live good lives.

Steven Bartlett (1:11)

1970, the food environment changes. Can you tell me exactly how the food environment changed that caused multiple demographics to gain weight?

Dr. Chris van Tulleken (1:22)

There are two answers to that. One, the sort of proximate reason is the invention of ultra-processed food. So the industrialization of food supply. You can talk about why that happened in a lot of different ways. Part of it was to a booming population post-war.

These products were extremely convenient. They allowed women to continue to be in the workplace. Of course, women had entered the workplace in the war. So there were a lot of things that were immediately appealing about these products. TV dinners, Swanson TV dinners, appeared in the 50s, and by the time of the 70s, these products had become very widespread. So in the same thing, we were a decade behind in the UK, but this stuff is now our national diet. Why exactly it took over is the subject of a lot of the research I'm doing at the moment. So now I work much more with economists than nutritionists, and what we see is the financialization of the food industry. So the primary determinants of almost every action that happens in almost every food company that supplies, say, 90 percent of our calories, all the indicators are financial. And so part of it is the takeover of the food system from being a system where people would grow a lot of their own food, make food at home, they buy ingredients from local shops to a small number of companies supplying food. So now 75 percent of the calories that are consumed globally come from six companies.

Steven Bartlett (2:48)

It kind of like sounds like a mafia of sorts, like a food mafia.

Dr. Chris van Tulleken (2:54)

I'm going to let you say that.

Steven Bartlett (2:55)

Yeah, no, don't let me say it. I don't want them coming for me. I brought some food along with me today.

Dr. Chris van Tulleken (3:02)

I'm looking at it.

Steven Bartlett (3:03)

Because I wanted to get your opinion on it. So I brought a group of food products on the left here. Now, these are things that I think growing up, I thought were good.

Dr. Chris van Tulleken (3:17)

Yeah. So you're very bold with these brands. I mean, you're really limiting sponsorship opportunities.

Steven Bartlett (3:24)

Well, you know, I do think about that sometimes, but I also don't really care.

I think I'm in the pursuit of truth here. So much of why I do this is to educate myself. And I think if I educate myself, then I'll help educate other people. That's why I'm also okay being a total idiot on this subject matter, because that is the truth. So here, I've got four products that are typically seen as being quite healthy. Breakfast cereal, Cheerios, I grew up thinking, good for me. Actimol, good for me. Diet Coke, great, because there's no sugar in there. And then this is whole grain bread. 50% of your daily whole grain in just two slices. Perfect.

Dr. Chris van Tulleken (4:11)

So for a start, I have a slight unease. I'm going to talk about these products. I have a slight unease talking about any one product, because the evidence applies to the category of food. And this kind of stuff, in a sense, I think these are such brilliant choices, because this is the foundation of our diet. And one of the things that's happening at the moment is the food industry exploring painting me as a snob, because I'm critiquing these sort of core things, tins of beans with flavoring or supermarket bread, fish fingers. I think this stuff is at the shallow end of the pool, in a way. It's not by any means the worst stuff, but in a way it presents the biggest moral hazard because we think it's so healthy. I'll have the diet coke. So diet coke is my favorite example, because this is the ultimate health food, according to the way we label food at the moment. It has four, where's the camera?