Opinion | The Wild West of Ultraprocessed Food

Oh my God, it’s so slimy. A little bladder of sauce. I would eat this cheese. I had no idea that for many years, some big tobacco companies —— “Philip Morris.” Also owned packaged food companies. “Hey, how about a nice Hawaiian Punch?” “Sure!” They used a lot of the same marketing techniques [coughing] and even some of the same chemicals to create food that would be hyperpalatable and really appealing to children. There’s 510 milligrams of sodium. There is added sugar. Why does there need to be added sugar in this? I don’t mean to demonize any kind of food because a fed child is a happy child. Lunchables were obviously marketed to kids. “Lunch, lunch, lunch, it’s Lunchables.” They came out in the ’80s. I still remember vividly begging my parents for it. And in the ’90s, Lunchables still wanted to be able to appeal to parents who were concerned about childhood obesity. What they did was just change the packaging, change the marketing. But they didn’t actually change the ingredients or the formulation really that much. “Get Lunchables with 100 percent juice.” So these corporations are aware that their foods are not healthy for people and they don’t care. What they care about is their bottom line. “They knew their products make people very sick, but hid the truth from the public, profited from untold billions and left Americans to deal with the consequences.” We’re not talking about ultraprocessed foods because we hate fun or we hate food that tastes good; it’s because there is a growing body of evidence that shows how bad eating a lot of these foods is for your long-term health. Higher incidences of diabetes, obesity. Around 70 percent of the foods available to buy are ultraprocessed. So it’s really hard to tell which of those foods are actually nutritious and beneficial for our children to eat. “These foods are deliberately designed to be addictive, similar to cigarettes and alcohol.” What I would ask our government to do is, No. 1, subsidize healthy food for people who can’t afford it. Another step would be adequate labeling of food in grocery stores. “We’re going to do front of packaged food labelings.” We know that these solutions actually work. A lot of countries use a red, yellow, green light labeling system. Red means this isn’t very nutritious. Have it sparingly. “This Nutri-Score was actually a possible template for the whole of Europe.” Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said that he is going to institute a red, yellow, green light system. “We need to get a handle on this because if we don’t, it’s an existential threat.” In the past, he’s made a lot of promises and when push comes to shove has often capitulated to big corporate interests instead of actually following through on his promises. Earlier this year, President Trump signed an executive order to increase production of the pesticide glyphosate. – You tried to talk the president out of it. – I did! And now — and now you’re just fully supportive of a huge corporation having no liability. Thank you. I want to be clear: Not all processed foods are bad. The problem is right now, we don’t have any rules. And so the rules are being made by corporations. And all they want to do is make money. They don’t care if we’re healthy or not.