Ultra-processed Food

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Wednesday 21st June 2023 Westminster Hall

[Suzanne Webb]

I thank the hon. Member for her intervention. Again, we are having the same conversation and I hope to answer her question later in the debate.

Ultra-processed food makes up half of the total purchased dietary energy in the UK. In fact, when it comes to UK children, more than 60% of the calories consumed comes from ultra-processed foods such as frozen pizza or fizzy drinks. All that food is linked to obesity, which causes me great concern. In England, 64% of adults and 40% of 10 to 11-year-olds are either obese or overweight. Those figures are taken from the Dimbleby report. They are staggering.

Figures from 2019-20 show that 1.5 million years of healthy life are lost to diet-related illnesses every year. Tackling obesity costs the NHS about £6.5 billion a year and is the second biggest cause of cancer. To put it starkly, it is a ticking timebomb. Some might say that the ticking has stopped and the bomb has already exploded.

Some 100,000 people have a stroke each year. There are 1.3 million stroke survivors in the UK, thanks to the advances of medicine and medical interventions such as blood pressure tablets, statins and so forth. Children who have high levels of ultra-processed food consumption have been shown to have high levels of cholesterol, increased weight and tooth decay. Obesity has been brought to the fore due to covid. Living with excess weight puts people at greater risk of serious illness or death, with risks growing substantially as body mass index increases.

The cost of all that to the NHS is significant, from prescription drugs and GP and out-patient appointments to the orthopaedic impacts on limbs of weight bearing. Of course, the greatest impact is on NHS hospital admissions. Tackling obesity is one of the greatest long-term health challenges that this country faces. Ultra-processed food is one of the main routes to all obesity issues, because the food is mainly high in fat, salt and sugar. It is marketed aggressively, to the detriment of our health, feeding a growing obesity crisis and feeding our arteries full of fat.

The food supply chain endorses and promotes products that are linked to serious health outcomes, marketing products for which the motivation is profit over health. Certainly at the cheaper end of the market, ultra-processed food does not provide a fully nutritious meal. The marketing and branding of ultra-processed food is relentless. Have we ever seen a high-profile marketing campaign for anything that falls off a tree or comes out of the ground? The answer is no. Instead, we see highly aggressive campaigns selling us the dream of so-called delicious meals. In reality they are highly addictive foods and, without moderating consumption, contribute significantly to poor health outcomes.

I am slightly disappointed that the Government are not proceeding with the plan to ban two-for-one junk food deals. That plan, which has been delayed, would have prevented shops from selling food and drink high in fat, salt and sugar through multi-buy deals. However, at a time when household budgets are under continuing pressure from the global rise in food prices, it would not be right to restrict those options. The principal issue for health outcomes is not so much two-for-one deals anyway; it is the food itself, and we should not lose sight of that. Buying multi-deals does not matter; it is the product itself that matters. That is what we should focus on: trying to eliminate addictive products that are creating poor outcomes for our children.

A good step forward would be an advertising watershed—a 9 pm watershed has been mooted—that would restrict the TV advertising of foods that are high in fat, sugar and salt, not forgetting those online. Current advertising regulations do not go far enough in protecting children from a significant number of unhealthy food adverts. I think that we have all seen the continual adverts for pizzas when we watch family programmes, certainly at the weekend. Those should not be allowed. Half the time, I am moments away from going online to order a couple of those pizzas, but I don’t do that any more.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Don’t order a couple—just order one.

[Suzanne Webb]

Jim, it would be two.

Children and young people are not sufficiently protected from exposure to adverts for unhealthy products. It has been pointed out to me that Government research shows that TV and online advertising restrictions on food that is high in sugar and salt could reduce the number of children with obesity by more than 20,000. I therefore urge the Minister to look at that and bring the timeline forward. I think at the moment it is going to be 2025, but we could and must move faster. There should be a watershed for adverts for both ultra-processed food and products high in fat, sugar and salt, sooner rather than later.

A bigger light must be shone on the manipulative marketing tactics that companies use to lead us into consuming and over-consuming foods that are bad for our health. My office manager and my comms guy are advocates of disgusting microwave burgers, which further strengthens my resolve on the matter. When I first looked at the product that they are addicted to and that they shove in that microwave, I thought, “What is not to love?” It says that it is 100% beef—it tells me three times that it is 100% beef—and with that look, I was hooked. I thought, “I want one of those,” but then I read the side of the packet. It is in fact a composition of beef fat, soya protein, salt, wheat flour, stabiliser E451, dextrose, sugar, egg white powder, yeast extract, something called hydrolysed soya protein, barley malt extract and flavourings. It is 44% beef, so not quite the 100% beef that was advertised. In fact, it is a concoction of emulsifiers, preservatives, colourings and other things, which made it look like the tastiest 100% beef burger in the world. The beef was 100% beef, but it was actually only 44% of the burger itself. That is incredibly misleading. I nearly went out and bought it myself.

The obesity crisis is not helped by the overly aggressive marketing of highly addictive food. Let’s face it: if advertising did not work, companies would not do it. That is what encourages us to go out and buy such products. We saw it in the cigarette market. Changes were needed to advertising, starting way back in 1965, when the poor health outcomes from smoking were being understood. It was many years before one of the biggest health interventions, which was the ban on smoking in public places in 2007. I was one of those smokers many, many years ago. I think I gave up before it was banned in public places, but I can tell hon. Members that smoking is highly addictive, and it was sold to be highly addictive.

When I worked in logistics, the company pushed out the cigarettes into big lorries, which took them to the centres to sell. Even there, packs of 200 cigarettes were handed out to employees as an incentive at the end of the week: “Well done—they have done a great job.” People were allowed to smoke in their offices, although I believe that at the time they were not supposed to. Unhealthy food is now being peddled and pushed in a similar way. We really have to think about that. Something very akin to what happened with cigarettes is happening with ultra-processed food.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It is indeed a pleasure to speak in this debate. I thank the hon. Member for Stourbridge (Suzanne Webb) for raising the issue. She comprehensively set the scene and, with the interventions, added to the understanding of why the debate is so important. My research for today mimicked some of the research carried out for the debate on fatty livers a number of weeks ago, and the links are clear. I noted during that debate that my good friend the Minister of State, the hon. Member for Colchester (Will Quince), noted that there is no definition of “ultra-processed”. That is an important starting point so that we can begin to address the problems of a highly ultra-processed diet.

The hon. Member for Stourbridge referred to diabetes, and others have as well. I am a diabetic today because for a long period of time—probably a number of years, I suspect—I was the person who bought a Chinese five nights a week with two bottles of coke. That was the way I was; that was the way I lived. It saved me going home to get something to eat, and I ate in the office. Added to that was probably a fair level of stress, and all of a sudden I was almost 17½ stone. I never realised just how the weight had crept up, and I went to see my doctor. My doctor always says “I’ve got good news and bad news for you.” I said, “Well, tell me the good news first.” “The good news,” he said, “is that you’ve got a heart like an ox. But the bad news is that you’re a diabetic.” That is a fact of life.

That was my lifestyle. I was to blame; I will not blame anybody else for that. I am not blaming the Chinese people who sold me the Chinese, nor the shop that gave me two bottles of coke, because it was something I did and I realised what was happening. I am now on medication, so that has helped to administer and control my diabetes. The point that I am making is that we have to be careful what we eat. What we eat is what we are, and, indeed, what we become.

As has been noted, the UK is at the top for ultra-processed foods in Europe. When I say that, I include packaged baked goods, snacks, fizzy drinks, sugary cereals, ready meals containing food additives, dehydrated vegetable soups and reconstituted meat and fish products. They often contain high levels of sugar, fat and/or salt, but lack vitamins and the fibre that I, as a diabetic, need. Those were all noted in the BMJ report on ultra-processed foods in 2019.

Such foods are thought to account for around 25% to 60% of the daily energy intake in many countries. Previous studies have linked ultra-processed foods to higher risks of obesity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and some cancers, but firm evidence is still scarce. There is some evidential base to be arrived at.

Results in the BMJ report showed that a 10% increase in the proportion of ultra-processed food in a diet was associated with significantly higher levels of overall cardiovascular disease, coronary heart disease and cerebrovascular disease, with increases of 12%, 13% and 11% respectively. I am my party’s health spokesperson, so I am very conscious of health issues. In contrast, the researchers found a significant association between unprocessed—or minimally processed—foods and lower risks of all reported diseases.

Results from another test showed that higher consumption of ultra-processed foods—more than four servings per day—was associated with a 62% increased risk of all causes of mortality, compared with a lower consumption of fewer than two servings per day. In her introduction, the hon. Member for Stourbridge referred to ordering a couple of pizzas. I was not responding to her facetiously, but the point I am making is that, yes, it is easy, and, as the hon. Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan) said, when people start, they want to keep on eating, and that is a problem.

For each additional daily serving of ultra-processed food, mortality risk increases by 18%. It is clear that more research should be done, and I join colleagues who have spoken—including the hon. Member for Stourbridge—and of all those who will speak afterwards to ask the Minister, who always responds very positively and helpfully, and our Government, to get the information and begin the public awareness campaign that must follow those results.

The health of our nation is the wealth of this nation—this great United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland—and we must take the necessary steps to make people aware of the dangers of their diet choice, because it is a choice. Hopefully today is the next step, perhaps maybe the first step, in that journey to better health.