Ultra-processed food on the Today programme

What kind of masochist listens to this stuff?

I don’t know how people listen to the Today programme. I have never been a regular listener to the show and every time I force myself to listen to a few minutes of it, I feel nauseous. I suppose it serves a purpose as a barometer of what the establishment is thinking, but why would you listen to it out of choice?

A case in point was an item about food yesterday which was inspired by Jamie Oliver’s front group Biteback 2030 publishing a document titled ‘Fuel Us Don’t Fool Us’ which The Times described as “a study by Oxford University”. It wasn’t, it was just a rehash of a study published last December which had some researchers from Oxford University as co-authors. Its headline claim is that seven of the ten big food companies studied made more than two-thirds of their sales from food deemed to be high in fat, sugar or salt (HFSS). This was accompanied by some hilariously unconvincing testimonials from Biteback’s “youth activists”. Whatever Jamie Oliver is paying them isn’t enough to compensate for this cringe…

The fawning item on Radio 4’s Today programme (from 1 hour 50 minutes) did not pause to consider whether the sale of certain food products might simply reflect public demand for them. The message seems to be that food companies should somehow force people to buy raw fruit and vegetables.

The presenter, Amol Rajan, noted that “many of the companies have questioned their methodology”, but no further details were forthcoming on that because no one from the food industry was interviewed, nor was anybody else who might offer an opposing viewpoint. Instead, one of Biteback’s ‘youth activists’ - 18 year old Luke Hall (presumably pictured above) - was asked back on the show having previously appeared on it when Jamie Oliver was its guest editor in 2022 (yes, that really happened). The first question was…

“What do you make of this new research then?”

Hold on to your hats, but the activist from Biteback 2030 thought the Biteback 2030 research was good! Quite obviously reading from a crib sheet, he described all the ways in which he is bombarded with food advertising and how this makes it difficult for people like him who are nearly-but-not-quite-children to avoid ‘living with obesity’, although he seems to have managed it judging from his photograph. At the end of a long spiel, Rajan felt the need to prompt him further by saying…

“And you’re even getting text messages before you go to sleep, right?”

This gave Luke a chance to cover a few more bullet points and make some quite extraordinary claims, including this:

“It doesn’t really seem fair, when these children are at risk of having their lives cut short, that my generation - for the first time in the history of humanity - is on a trajectory to die younger than any other generation, that we are having these really unhealthy products shoved in their faces. I might walk down the cereal aisle, for example, and there will be Tony the Tiger staring me in the face…”

The idea that Luke’s generation has a shorter life expectancy than any generation in history seems the kind of thing a presenter of the Today programme might push back on, but it went without comment, and when he had finally finished, Rajan said that Luke was…

“…18 years old and sounds immensely wise. I see you’re nodding away there, Chris, good to see you.”

Chris van Tulleken - for it was he - was the second and last person the BBC had found to comment on this story. The Biteback study, such as it was, wasn’t about ultra-processed food (it was about HFSS food) but that is what van Tulleken’s book Ultra-Processed People (AKA Me and My Eating Disorder) is about so that is what he rabbited on about. He was not challenged on his claim that ultra-processed foods “are the leading cause of early deaths - they’ve overtaken tobacco.” Instead, the mention of tobacco prompted Rajan to spur him on.

“It’s interesting that you mention tobacco because the temper of the times seems to be moving towards greater state intervention on matters of public health. We’ve got a Prime Minister in this country - it’s a very, very big social change that he wants - he wants gradually to make smoking illegal in this country, including for adults. Do you think food regulation is too far behind?”

One might ask whether the ‘temper of the times’ has been in any way shaped by allowing wowsers and prohibitionists to spout their nonsense on the airwaves without challenge for so long? One might also ask whether we are seeing the very slippery slope of regulation that liberals have been warning about for years? These are not questions you will hear on the BBC, however. Instead, whatever the issue, we get variations of “why hasn’t the government gone further?” To which, van Tulleken responded:

“We need to use the tobacco control approach. That’s what I’m going to be saying in the Lords today.”

Oh yes. I forgot to mention that he ‘gave evidence’ to the House of Lords inquiry on Food, Diet and Obesity yesterday alongside the philosopher king Henry Dimbleby. What a happy coincidence that Jamie Oliver’s pressure group put out a report on the same day.

Of the eight people who have appeared - or are booked to appear - in front of this committee, seven are activists whose views are indistinguishable from Dimbleby’s and van Tulleken’s. What is the point of this charade other than to present a fake consensus for illiberal, unscientific and ineffective nanny state policies?

At the end of the interview, perhaps feeling the BBC Charter breathing down his neck, Rajan limply challenged van Tulleken’s position in the spirit of the devil’s advocate. He mentioned two New Scientist articles that have criticised the scientific basis of the ultra-processed scare, to which van Tulleken responded by portraying thousands of scientists as being corrupt stooges of Big Food and claimed that every ‘independent’ scientist agreed with him.

“There is absolute unanimity among independent scientists that, as a category of food, ultra-processed food drives negative health outcomes, a euphemism for early death. There is no debate.”

This is patently untrue, as the New Scientist articles prove, but Rajan let it go. Instead he asked about the ‘liberal defence’ that people should be allowed to eat whatever they want. Weirdly, van Tulleken said he agreed with that “100 per cent” and claimed that he doesn’t want any taxes or bans. So not ‘the tobacco control approach’ at all, then?

Should anyone complain to the BBC about a report from Jamie Oliver being discussed by two activists who fervently agree with Jamie Oliver, Radio 4 will doubtless say that Rajan challenged van Tulleken at the end of the interview and that the item was therefore balanced. But it wasn’t, was it? It was a cosy little echo chamber that resembled Russian state media. I assume that this is what the Today programme is always like, but I’m damned if I’m going to listen to any more of it to make sure.