Andreas Whittam Smith
The Independent
September 23, 2011
The tobacco manufacturers have long been vilified. More recently, brewers and shops that sell cheap booze have found themselves in the dock. Now steps forward a third party for condemnation, the manufacturers of food. Between them the three groups are held responsible for a set of illnesses that cause more deaths than all other causes combined.
These ailments have an inelegant name: non-communicable diseases – the ones you don’t catch from someone else. You don’t usually see them; these are the problems, often hidden, that people carry with them through their apparently normal lives until their conditions become death-threatening rather than merely life-shortening.
The main non-communicable diseases are heart disease, diabetes, cancers and chronic respiratory conditions. It seems obvious also to include obesity in this category, now officially a worldwide epidemic. But its consequences in terms of heart problems and diabetes are in the primary list. And it is obesity more than anything else that brings food manufacturers into the court of public opinion.
In a recent study, The Lancet, probably the world’s leading general medical journal, stated that the obvious possible drivers of the obesity epidemic are to be found in the food system: the increased supply of cheap, palatable, energy-dense foods; improved distribution systems to make food much more accessible and convenient; and more persuasive and pervasive food marketing. These qualities are exactly what many people all over the world want. For whatever else they do, readily accessible food, alcohol and tobacco cheer you up. We feel better. That is one of the reasons why non-communicable diseases are such an intractable problem.
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