The myth of 'eat less/move more'

Those tasked with slimming down the nation have got it wrong again. The latest nonsense is PHE’s fixation on portion control, the erroneous idea that reducing pack sizes will lead to consequent reductions in Britain’s waistline.

This strategy draws on a public health paradigm that has already blatantly failed. Population-wide laziness and greed have been blamed for the tidal wave of obesity and type 2 diabetes sweeping the world. As the WHO puts it: ‘The fundamental cause of obesity and overweight is an energy imbalance between calories consumed and calories expended.’ Custodians of public health have doled out this ‘eat less/move more’ doctrine for decades. Look where it has got us.

This ‘energy balance’ guidance is rooted in a myth perpetuated by the processed food industry: ‘There’s no bad food, only bad diets.’ It suits companies that have got rich on flogging products laden with sugar - yoghurt, breakfast cereals, soft drinks, confectionery, biscuits - to suppress the notion that sugar is intrinsically bad for health in any amount.

But a radically different analysis is emerging, which holds that sugar has unique hormonal effects that create “insulin resistance”, triggering obesity, diabetes and other diseases from gout and varicose veins to IBS and asthma. Civil servants and government ‘experts’ thrusting a portion-controlled, ‘everything in moderation’ Eatwell plate at us urgently need to wake up to this new thinking.

The rapid rise of the clean eating movement is just the latest spike in a slow-burn citizen revolt against government eating advice. This momentum for change is already changing the market. Think of the yoghurt category. The impressive growth of unsweetened, protein-rich offerings (real Greek yoghurt, Skyr), shows what’s on-trend here.

For decades, our shelves have been stacked with yoghurts that might more honestly be classed as desserts. Now that the sugar spotlight has outed them as culprits, to sell them in shrunken portions that can be portrayed as a reasonable part of a balanced diet is dishonest. Public health gurus abdicate their responsibility to us all when they aid and abet this masquerade.

Joanna Blythman is a journalist and author of Swallow This