Tim Jackson’s latest valueless report on food costs
We agree that it is possible that the diet of the country leads to some of what ails the country. We’ll even agree that a decent study of the issue might lead to suggestions for sensible policy on the matter. Tim Jackson’s latest report isn’t that decent study.
The UK’s growing addiction to unhealthy food costs £268bn a year, far outstripping the budget for the whole NHS, the first research into the subject has found.
The increased consumption of foods high in fat, salt and sugar or which have been highly processed is having a “devastating” impact on human health and Britain’s finances.
“Far from keeping us well, our current food system, with its undue deference to what is known colloquially as ‘big food’, is making us sick. The costs of trying to manage that sickness are rapidly becoming unpayable,” the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission (FFCC) report says.
The full report is here.
It’s nonsense. We can show this very simply too. Yes, yes, there’s all the fashionable stuff in there, how pesticides and herbicides are poisoning us. Lots about UPF and they’ve even a Van Tulleken on board. But it fails at the first hurdle simply because the people who wrote it don’t have the first clue about economics. This point we’ve made before:
Fatties and smokers save the NHS money
This is one of those things which simply is true. For the NHS is a lifetime healthcare system. The full cost of a lifetime of healthcare depends, in part, upon the length of that lifetime. Those who die younger save the system some number of costs.
Yes, yes, of course it’s true that the treatment of those who die younger has costs. But also those years of not treatment have not costs.
Now, we have actually read enough of the literature to be able to say that younger deaths save money overall. But that’s not a necessary part of why we can reject this Tim Jackson report. For Jackson has noted the costs of treatment of those diseases which cause people to die young. He’s also noted the costs to the individuals who die young - loss of years of life and so on. Entirely and wholly appropriate and yes, he has agreed that the treatment costs are direct taxpayer costs, loss of life is an indirect one (or, in another phrasing, a private, not public, cost). But he’s not including - he’s not even mentioned it as a possibility, let alone included it in his numbers - the saving in healthcare costs from those who die younger.
We’ve not got a nett number here at all. Therefore it’s valueless as an attempted calculation of the nett number.
Again, note, whether our reading of the literature is correct or not - the nett effect is a saving in healthcare costs - doesn’t affect the insistence that the report can be rejected. Doing a cost benefit analysis without including the benefits - however macabre those benefits might be - is just bad science. Even, Bad Science. At which point the Professor needs to be told to do it again, properly this time. Or even, smacked and sent to bed without any supper (UPF containing or not).
Only after that can we start to consider anything else. Like this little gem: “ costs of providing every citizen in the UK with affordable, healthy and nutritious food.” This just before they announce that they’ll make food more affordable by increasing the costs of food by 55%. Umm, yeah…..
Tim Worstall