The food reformulation delusion

Philosopher kings are in the grip of a ruse

Of all the delusions of Britain’s ruling class, none is more absurd than the idea of tackling obesity by forcing the food industry to take the calories out of its products. It rests on a fundamental misunderstanding of how the market works (they think that companies dictate what people eat) and in many cases is physically impossible (Josie Appleton’s Cooking For Bureaucrats has some amusing examples). It has already been tried with sugar and was an epic failure because people simply refused to buy the reformulated products and bought more confectionery instead. Last month, OHID (formerly known as Public Health England) quietly published the results of its scheme to reduce the number of calories in processed food by 20%. That, too, has been a shambles.

Neither real world experience nor randomised controlled trials are enough to deter philosopher kings when they are in the grip of a ruse, and so they have doubled down and now demand that reformulation targets becoming mandatory. In January, Nesta - which is essentially a vast, state-funded, blob-adjacent think tank - called for supermarkets to be fined up to 1% of their turnover if they fail to sell 10% fewer calories to their customers (to put that in context, Lidl’s profit margin is just 2%).

On Thursday, Legal & General Investment Management’s senior global environmental, social and governance (ESG) manager told Nestlé to sell less sugar. It’s not for want of trying. In 2018, Nestlé launched Milkybar Wowsomes with 30% less sugar than a Milkybar. The company described it as a “great tasting product” that was the result of “a scientific breakthrough” but when it was discontinued in 2020, Nestlé lamented that demand for it had been “underwhelming”. In 2021, it launched a non-HFSS version of Shreddies called Shreddies The Simple One which contained just four ingredients. The company said:

“We know that consumers are looking to eat more healthily, especially following the pandemic. Shreddies The Simple One is an exciting new addition to the breakfast table that caters to growing demand, with a delicious taste consumers will love.”

Consumers did not, in fact, love it and it was withdrawn from sale the following year.

Today, the King’s Fund has added its voice to the call for mandatory reformulation targets enforced with heavy fines. The King’s Fund’s job has traditionally been to get more money for the NHS but it is under new management with Sarah Woolnough, a former trustee of Action on Smoking and Health and former CEO of Cancer Research UK, so it is now involved in lifestyle regulation.

Compelling food manufacturers to strip out large amounts of fat, salt and sugar would help “denormalise” the routine consumption of unhealthy food, Sarah Woolnough, the chief executive of the King’s Fund, told the Guardian.

The word ‘denormalise’ is taken straight from the anti-tobacco playbook. See how it works yet?

As the Guardian points out, the King’s Fund has done some polling which finds that reformulation is hugely popular in the abstract.

Overall, 67.3% of Britons agree that the government should require companies to reduce the amount of fat, salt and sugar they put in their products, a survey for the influential health thinktank undertaken by Ipsos Mori found. Only 5% disagreed.

This is a beautiful example of the difference between stated preferences and revealed preferences. People love the idea of fat, salt and sugar being removed from food. Who wouldn’t, so long as the food tasted the same? But it doesn’t taste the same. It tastes considerably worse. And when reformulation isn’t physically possible - for example, with nearly all confectionery, biscuits and cakes - the only way to meet the target is by shrinking the product. Some chocolate bars are now so small that a dual pack is the default (and so, as with the sugar tax, big business is doing rather well out of it). And, yes, that is because of the government’s reformulation scheme.

If pollsters asked people if they are in favour of shrinkflation, I doubt many would say yes. As for reformulation, the only way to get an informed opinion would be to do a taste test using the ‘before’ and ‘after’ versions of popular food products and ask people whether the government should mandate the reformulated version and ban the original version. Again, I doubt many people would give unqualified support for reformulation.

Fortunately, we don’t need to carry out such experiments because the public have been offered reformulated products many times in the real world. Sometimes they become popular - in which case there is no need for government coercion - but very often they are a flop, and in many cases they cannot even be attempted.

The British public have put up with a lot from meddlesome puritans in the last 20 years, but I strongly suspect that if the government tried to force us to eat the likes of Milkybar Wowsomes and Shreddies The Simple One, the thin blue line would finally snap.

We may soon find out, because shadow health secretary Wes Streeting is fully on board with the reformulation delusion. In addition to his promise to “come down like a ton of bricks” on the vaping industry, he has pledged to take a “steamroller” to the food industry.

Last month Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, warned food manufacturers that a Labour government would compel firms reluctant to reformulate their products to do so.

“My approach will be and is currently to build that coalition of the willing within the [food and drink] industry and to make it clear to the rest, it’s not a question of leaders versus laggards any more. You either get on board the steamroller or you’re going under it,” he said.

Things can only get worse.