There’s a number we should all know about and be acting on, but we’re not: £268bn. What does it represent, in case you missed the announcement in the busy pre-festive period? It’s a conservative estimate by Professor Tim Jackson for the cost of food-related chronic disease that is caused by the current food system in the UK.
It combines government spending on healthcare, social care and welfare with indirect costs, like losses of productivity and human costs. It is a huge number.
Unlike a picture that paints a thousand words, a large number can paint a confusing picture. The problem with big numbers is exactly that – they’re just big numbers. Once a number has nine zeros in it, it’s very hard to comprehend how big that really is. We’ve heard big numbers about the ‘cost of obesity’ before. They make a headline one day, and are forgotten the next.
How about we compare the big number to something we have a sense of: Jackson noted that £268bn is almost equal to the total annual UK healthcare spend. That’s starting to be more tangible. Scarily big, but more tangible.
How about something the food industry can get their head around? The gross value of the UK’s agri-food chain was just below £150bn in 2022. The cogs in the brain are starting to turn now.
The estimate is mind-boggling, absurd and worrying. The announcement should have catapulted our prime minister into immediate action. He’s missed the boat for that, but there is still a chance to put it right.
Let’s think carefully about how we communicate numbers, getting away from thinking of £268bn as 85,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools’ worth of £1 coins, or something similarly hard to understand.
Why not break it down into more relatable, bite-sized chunks? £268bn is the equivalent of £10.60 per person per day. Imagine every person in the UK throwing a £10 note in the bin at the end of every day. Now I’m starting to get a grasp of how outrageously large this number is.
However you make sense of that large number, please remember it. Then let’s work together to radically reduce it. Collectively we can push for preventative healthcare, a right to good food and a regulatory environment that’s fit for purpose. All in a good food strategy, right?
Dan Crossley is the executive director at the Food Ethics Council
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