Biting back at Bite Back

No, not Dale’s publishing company, but Jamie Oliver’s attempt to mislead the body politic. Big report out:

Are food giants rigging the system against children’s health?

The answer is obviously no but we do need to identify some specific reason that it is that no. Fortunately, Sir Patrick Vallance provides an introduction:

But the epidemic of food related ill health, which grips our nation and starts in childhood, cannot be solved by science alone, it needs policy action. Medical advances to treat type-2 diabetes, heart disease and cancer are progressing fast and save thousands of lives every day, but how much better would it be if these diseases could be prevented? This is the challenge that society faces, and prevention of disease is essential if the NHS is to be affordable and sustainable.

Obesity, in common with smoking and booze, saves the NHS money. This is not just an assertion by us, it’s a known scientific fact.

It is entirely true that it costs money to treat people so rotund they cannot fall over - like Weebles. It is also true that people dying early as they pop their skins like overheated sausages do not then need further decades of treatment on the National Health Service - the costs end when the CoOp picks up the puddle for burial.

Now that is, obviously, a fairly brutal way of putting it. But it’s also true. We do indeed all die of something (well, with the exception of Elijah possibly). We will all get treated - or not perhaps given the queues - by the NHS on that path to the grave. The NHS is also a lifetime healthcare system. Thus the total costs, over the lifetime, depend upon what diseases we get and also the length of the lifetime. An aggressive and untreatable cancer - or a killing stroke or heart attack - at 65 is very cheap indeed. Physical health plus a few joint replacements and 10 years of Alzheimer’s before death at 90 is very expensive.

Again, fairly brutal but also true. And as it turns out on average, across the population, obesity - like tabs and booze - save the healthcare system money, not cost it.

As the entire justification being presented for this intrusion into our diets is wrong therefore the entire intrusion into our diets is wrong. We should - whether we can is another matter given the headwinds this very silly idea has - therefore tell these people to go boil their heads. Job’s a good ‘un at that point.

There are - obviously - other insanities here.

products that are classed as high in fat, sugar or salt (HFSS) and therefore unhealthy.

That’s not even remotely true. What portion of the total diet is those evil substances might cross a line between healthy and unhealthy. All of those substances are absolutely essential in a diet - we die without them - so the presence of them cannot be, in itself, unhealthy.

We’d remind of - possibly reveal - Mrs Worstall’s Dictum: “If the larder’s* full of a balanced diet at the beginning of the week, empty at the end of it, then we’ve all had a balanced diet that week.” Quantities of whichever at a particular meal or component of one do not matter that is.

This is a larger point too - relevant to emissions. Sure, we desire that CO2 emissions go down. This does not mean that each and every component of emissions must reduce, only that total emissions do so. So, say we need to reduce emissions by 98% and flying is 2% of total emissions. It is not true that flying emissions need to fall - only that all others do. Not that we insist that is the correct answer (even as we might think it is) but the logic is correct.

If it is, for health reasons - and not NHS fiscal ones - true that salt, sugar and fat consumption should fall then it’s the consumption of those as a part of the overall diet that does. Not in any one specific piece of food. Therefore it is not true that foods that contain those things which are unhealthy, it is overall diets which contain too much of them which are.

Given that the report fails on these two very basic logical points the rest of it is of no matter. Into the under the desk round filing cabinet with it. Plus, obviously, making sure that the political world also rejects it for the obvious nonsense that it is.

One final little observation in the report that really did amuse us. Apparently Ferrero and Mondelez have business models which are based - respectively, 100% and 98% - upon these unhealthy foods as defined. They’re, umm, chocolate makers.

Sweetie makers make sweeties. We need a 20 page report to tell us this? Apparently some people do but given the factual content in that assertion perhaps we should ignore the opinions of those requiring such information prompts?

*Yes, larder, not cupboards, posh background. So, bite me