We call it - UPF is student politics not science

It’s long been difficult to pin anyone down as to what this ultraprocessed food actually is. As soon as a definition is given and a fun example of proferred - tofu is one we recall - then suddenly the definition is changed to no, no, we don’t mean tofu, don’t be ridiculous. And so on - an actual, hard, definition of all the foods we must abjure just isn’t something we get offered. Which also means that we’re quite possibly not talking about science of course, the absence of rigorous definitions is one of those little signifiers.

So, the latest declaration:

Professor Chris van Tulleken, from University College London, one of the authors, told a press briefing there had been a “three-decade history of reformulation by the food industry”.

He said: “We took the fat out first, then we took the sugar out. We replaced the sugar with the sweeteners, the fats with gums. These products have been extensively reformulated and we have seen obesity, particularly obesity in childhood and other rates of diet-related disease persistently go up in line with reformulation.

A reasonable answer at that point is put all the sugars, the fats, back in, reverse the reformulations and we’ll all get healthier. That this isn’t suggested is another little signifier that this might not be science. But more:

“This is not a product-level discussion. The entire diet is being ultraprocessed. And remember that built into the definition of ultraprocessed food is its purpose. Its purpose is for profit. And so as long as you’re reformulating, if your purpose is still profit, you’re unlikely to cause positive health outcomes.”

Which is teenage economist - and from before the joys of GCSE economics too - levels of understanding. Profit is the value added in a process, the amount by which the output is worth more than the inputs. A good thing, not a bad. But here we have it, profit bad and that’s that, that’s our actual definition of this UPF which must be abjured. It’s not science at all, it’s just politics.

It does occur to us that it all might actually be one stage worse than this. That the haute bourgeoisie, the salariat, are returning to the ancestral English abjuration and even hatred of anyone and anything to do with trade. There really was a time when “He’s in trade, d’ye see?” was enough to ban anyone from a dinner invitation. They’d have to come in by the servants’ entrance, see? The idea that English society has regressed that couple of centuries is, currently at least, only an idea. But it does seem to fit the available evidence. They’re against UPF because it’s something done by provincials in big buildings in the provinces. How very English it would be if that was their motivation for changing everyone’s diet.

Tim Worstall