Mr US health secretary designate, I’m impressed. You actually went there.
During your Senate confirmation hearing, you labelled ultra-processed foods “a primary driver of America’s chronic health crisis”. Even with a boss whose embrace of the all-American junk food banquet is the stuff of legend, you pulled no punches.
You even specifically called out Froot Loops’ synthetic dyes and chemicals, thereby alluding to the US’s role in sowing the seed of what’s become a global phenomenon: the increasing colonisation of food systems by UPF.
While some found your bluntness a breath of fresh air, to others it was a hurricane of overstatement. So, with a Bob Dylan biopic riding high in the Best Picture nominations, will your fresh breeze end up blowin’ in the wind, or are the times really a-changin’? As ever, it depends on perspective, position and motive.
Right and wrong
My position is that you are both absolutely right and fundamentally wrong.
You’re right that, as per your ‘make America healthy again’ slogan, “something is poisoning the American people… intensive processed foods”. But you’re wrong to believe that the problem is the processing and the chemical additives.
Instead, it’s the motive behind the processing, and the fact that all but a handful of UPFs are nutritionally deficient. Removing synthetic additives from Froot Loops is a small step in the right direction, but without improving nutrient density they remain unhealthy. Reformulating UPFs with the motive of fixing this is the key to meaningful change.
Don’t try to turn the tide. The answer is upstream
UPF is not going anywhere. Nor should it. The mass-production of processed foodstuffs is brilliant at keeping populations fed with food they love to consume, can afford and can serve with minimal effort, confident that it will be welcomed by the whole family.
In the first quarter of any other century, this would be hailed as the game-changing miracle it is. But as with so many other waypoints in our evolution, from the blade to the wheel and the splitting of the atom, we’ve managed to turn it into a disaster. It doesn’t have to be that way.
The obvious absentee from the above list of the UPF’s virtues is what should be its primary function: efficient nutrition. Imagine if we could keep the affordability and the appeal intact, but make that one critical change. Newsflash: we can.
At Modern Baker, we’ve rethought the entire production process to create a scalable, ‘clean-label’ bread that boosts gut health, regulates blood sugar naturally and decreases calorie load. The same technology can be applied to almost any processed staple food you want to improve.
Reformulation, not prohibition
The same factories churning out the UPFs in your line of fire can instead choose to produce nutrient-dense, health-supporting foods that people still choose to buy. This transformation requires engaged collaboration between policymakers and innovators. Your push for stricter ingredient standards and transparency is part of the puzzle, but leaves out the key pieces.
Governments – yours and ours – need to incentivise this reformulation by redefining what we mean by health, and making healthier UPFs the norm, not the exception. Let’s all stop trying to turn a tide that’s not for turning. Once we fix what’s in the water, the tide is our ally.
And if your blunt approach ruffles feathers, great. That’s what we need right now. Your impassioned rhetoric could be the spark that ignites meaningful change, provided it channels its energy into constructive action – hence this letter to you.
We have a recently elected government with a food strategy in train. So do you. We should collaborate.
Leo Campbell is the co-founder of Modern Baker
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