Golden Nuggets....the 'fake meat' revolution is on its way....

AIMS

Member
Trade
Location
UK
You can call it what you want, your mates at Tesco will drop you like a hot potato the minute it makes business sense for them to do so.
One supplier, straight from the factory to the store, no pesky middlemen, no whingeing farmers. Fake meat is the wet dream of supermarkets.

https://www.tescoplc.com/news/2020/tesco-commits-to-300-sales-increase-in-meat-alternatives/
The attached shows why retailers like plant based foods. Of course, if they don't sell from the shelves the retailer will have 'hedged' with the suppliers and in many cases it is the latter who'll pick up the non-sales costs. Tesco have a director of plant based innovation who is called Derek Sarno. He also owns a plant based brand called 'wicked' which is also sold within Tesco.
Over at Waitrose Giles Fisher is their Head of Category Trading. Interestingly he is also a vegan and is a trustee of the 'charity' Veganuary.
 

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delilah

Member
Tesco have a director of plant based innovation who is called Derek Sarno. He also owns a plant based brand called 'wicked' which is also sold within Tesco.
Over at Waitrose Giles Fisher is their Head of Category Trading. Interestingly he is also a vegan and is a trustee of the 'charity' Veganuary.

What would be the vegan version of 'snouts in the trough' ?
 

neilo

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Montgomeryshire
I know you wasn't being literal but it doesn't come in a bottle, it looks like mince or a patte, most lab grown meats tumours will be used in processed foods and Mcdonalds.

Please use the correct term. ;)

I very much doubt that McDonalds would want to be associated with Frankenfoods. Some of the back street, late night takeaway joints maybe...
 

Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
It's fantastic news, not only will it (feeding idiots tumours) likely have the effect of global depopulation, but will also force a revolution in interest about food, and where it comes from

These spoilt, pasty, fat f#cks couldn't give a hoot, so let them eat it. More power to them.

This is obviously the decade of the human-guinea-pig, so roll up your sleeves, slurp your ivomec and eat lab-slops if you like.
 

N.Yorks.

Member
I've posted this before but it is all there in plain sight but you don't want to see.; particularly pages 6 and 7. Note particularly 2030 to 2049 Beef and lamb phased out.

https://www.ukfires.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Absolute-Zero-online.pdf

View attachment 966146
Just looked at the summary of the report yopu posted:

"In addition, obeying the law of our Climate Change Act requires that we stop doing anything that causes emissions regardless of its energy source. This requires that we stop eating beef and lamb - ruminants who release methane as they digest grass - and already many people have started to switch to more vegetarian diets."


What about the rising human population and the methane and CO2 that comes from them? It's just hit me as a semi serious question....!

Seems the solution is to have a reducing population and support that population from less land and use the non food producing land to capture more C. It seems that if we don't reduce human populations then the choices as to how we live are less and probably more controlled; maybe ultimately leading to our eventual downfall as diversity of everything means stability, but when life is mainly centred around humans then thats not diverse.......
 

Ffermer Bach

Member
Livestock Farmer
Sadly you're right. And that's why utter bollox is being repeated ad nauseam in the media and is becoming accepted fact.
The alarming truth about ultra-processed foods – and why you should stop eating them
A fifth of Britons consume a diet that includes only a fifth of ‘natural’ foods, but there’s more at risk than just weight gain

ByXanthe Clay7 June 2021 • 5:00am

Ultra-processed foods

It's not just burgers and hot dogs that count as 'ultra-processed' food CREDIT: Science Photo Library
What on earth is UPF? Ultra-processed foods, that’s what, and this latest entry to our modern abbreviated lexicon is likely to be sticking around for a while – much like that bag of salted caramel pretzels (just one example of a UPF) on my hips.
The reason is that health professionals now want us to differentiate between simply “processed” food and UPFs – foods that have been industrially altered to a high degree. Some are obvious, like a cheesy Wotsit, miraculously transformed from a grain of corn into a thumb-sized puff. But UPFs also include industrially produced bread, soy milk and other milk substitutes, breakfast cereals and baked beans.
That last inclusion in particular has got food manufacturers up in arms, as they point out that baked beans are a good source of protein and fibre and are relatively low in sugar and fat – although ingredients such as “modified cornflour” and the hefty dose of artificial sweetener in the low-sugar versions are less edifying.
Processing is not necessarily a bad thing. Technically, processed foods are simply foods that have undergone a change – been processed, in fact – which may be simply to make them more digestible, or safer, or to preserve them. It can also, as Kate Halliwell, the chief scientific officer of the Food and Drink Federation recently pointed out in a letter to The Telegraph, be “used to improve the nutritional value of food”.
So when wheat is ground and sifted to make white flour, that is a process. When it is fortified with calcium, iron, B vitamins (mandatory in the UK) and made into pasta, that is another two processes. And when it is dried, that is another process. When you boil it at home, that is yet another process. Some definitions include chewing – when you eat the pasta – and the harvesting of the grain as additional processes bookending the journey from field to stomach.
Nonetheless, health experts are firm that UPFs generally are problematic, and certainly not something we should be eating every day. The definition of a UPF dates back to 2009 when the NOVA classification system (see below) was first developed by the University of São Paulo in Brazil. Foods are divided into four categories – unprocessed or minimally processed, culinary ingredients, processed, and ultra-processed – according to the way the food is used and how much it has been tinkered with during production.
It is not without controversy, however. Nutrition experts point out that some foods rated as highly nutritious, garnering an “A” grade in the French Nutri-Score system (which is similar to the traffic light system seen on UK food packaging and current frontrunner to be adopted EU-wide) are labelled as ultra-processed (bad) by the NOVA classification. Others insist that Nutri-Score is over-simplistic, with no allowance for additives or industrial processing.
This is more than a storm in a Pot Noodle. While the anti-NOVA brigade have a point that no allowance is made in the classification for protein levels, for example, the evidence is mounting up that UPFs are behind the crisis that has seen obesity tripling worldwide since 1975. Here in the UK more than one in four adults are clinically obese, and in Europe only Turkey and Malta sit above us in the ranking.
Some readers will roll their eyes and say it is a matter of personal responsibility. And, yes, we probably do eat too much and don’t exercise enough. No one is saying that eating a whole tube of Pringles (oh yes, I could) is healthier than a roast dinner, but seeing as both equate to about 1,000 calories, surely they will have the same effect on our waistline. A calorie is a calorie, right?
The BBC programmes What Are We Feeding Our Kids saw Dr Chris van Tulleken delving into the effects of an ultra-processed diet

The BBC programme What Are We Feeding Our Kids saw Dr Chris van Tulleken trialling a diet of 80 per cent ultra processed foods CREDIT: Adam Hobbs
Increasingly, it seems not. In recent BBC programme What Are We Feeding Our Kids? Dr Chris Van Tulleken committed to a month of eating a diet of 80 per cent ultra-processed food, the same proportion of UPFs eaten by one in five Brits. The initial results were predictably depressing: he put on a stone and developed constipation, headaches and heartburn. He found his libido was reduced, he was eating more often, and was less satisfied by the processed food. But more significantly, scans showed that the activity in Van Tulleken’s brain had changed in ways that mirror its response to substances like tobacco and alcohol, suggesting junk food is addictive.
As any scientist will tell you, one person eating a pile of junk food does not constitute proof that it is habit forming. But it is suggestive, and studies in America, including the Yale Food Addiction Scale, showed foods high in fat, salt, sugar and refined carbohydrates such as burgers, pizza, doughnuts, crisps and white bread can trigger dependence symptoms. There is also evidence that UPFs trigger an increase of the hunger hormone and decrease in the satiety hormone, making you want to eat more.
And think how easy junk food is. To eat, of course – that soft burger bun or the coating on chicken that crumbles and melts in the mouth. Chewing – unless it’s gum – doesn’t come into ultra processed food. The powerful flavours and pleasing textures have been tweaked by industry to get the exact levels of sugar, fat and salt to hit what they call “the bliss point”, making the product so irresistible we can’t stop eating it. Sounds like courting addiction.
Read more: Is your child overweight or obese? Here's how you can help
Unlike drugs, junk food is disarmingly easy to buy, handily packaged, and prominently displayed in the supermarket. It is simple to prepare, so convenient it seems churlish to pass it up. It is also cheap. According to What Are We Feeding Our Kids?, healthy foods such as vegetables, fruit and fresh fish cost more than double per hundred calories than less healthy convenience foods. The deal clincher for many of us is that they are part of our culture and childhood. If you, like me, were brought up on Angel Delight and fish fingers, then this is friendly, comforting home food.
So don’t tell me this is about personal responsibility. As Prof Chris Millet points out to Van Tulleken, people “haven’t suddenly lost moral fibre over the last 20 or 30 years” as obesity has rocketed. What has changed in that time is the availability of junk food and the insidious way it has become the norm, weaselled its way into our fridges and food cupboards so that we no longer question what an “olive oil spread” is actually made from or why pasta sauce has a shelf life of months.
There is no single solution to the obesity problem. But limiting the amount of ultra-processed food we eat is a good start. And if one thing delights me about the NOVA system, it is that it rewards real cooking. Sugar and fat are OK, if you are using them to cook something rather than buying a bag of chips or a packet of biscuits. So we can still have treats provided they are homemade – which makes sense as then the majority of us will only get round to putting one on the table once a week, if that. Enough with the salted caramel pretzels, the Great British Pudding is back.
The NOVA food categories
Flour, sugar and oils fall into 'culinary processed ingredients'

Flour, sugar and oils fall into 'culinary processed ingredients' CREDIT: ArcOnt
Group 1: Unprocessed or minimally processed foods
Unprocessed foods are edible parts of plants (seeds, fruits, leaves, stems, roots) or of animals (including meat, fish, eggs and milk). Minimally processed foods include pasteurised milk, as well as food that has been simply dried, frozen or ground.
Group 2: Processed culinary ingredients
Includes oils, flour, butter, sugar and salt: foods not meant to be eaten alone.
Group 3: Processed foods
Most have two or three ingredients, and are made essentially by adding salt, oil, sugar or other substances from Group 2 to Group 1 foods. Includes canned fish, fruits in syrup, cheeses and freshly made breads. Ingredients may include preservatives and antioxidants.
Group 4: Ultra-processed foods
Includes many soft drinks, sweet or savoury packaged snacks, reconstituted meat and pre-prepared frozen dishes. Contains ingredients you wouldn’t find in your kitchen, like casein and invert sugar. Additives may include colouring, flavour enhancers or emulsifiers. Manufacturing methods include processes you could not do at home, like hydrogenation and hydrolysation.
How to spot ultra-processed foods
  • Download the Open Food Facts app, which has extensive listings so you can scan a barcode and check the NOVA group, Nutri-Score and Eco-Score (a French assessment of environmental impact) of over 1.8 million products worldwide.
  • Check the list of ingredients. Does it include ones you can’t visualise, like hydrolysed protein?
  • Be wary of claims like “made with wholegrains” “high in iron” or “no added sugar”: while true in themselves, they may be giving a healthy whitewash to an essentially unhealthy, ultra processed food.
  • Added “natural flavourings” and “natural colours” aren’t naturally present in the food you are buying. Ask yourself why they are there: is it to cover up poor quality ingredients?
  • Glitzy packaging and TV advertising don’t necessarily mean a product is ultra processed, but be suspicious: UPFs have high profit margins which means heavy marketing makes good sense.
Do you avoid ultra-processed foods? Let us know in the comments section below.
Related Topics
382
The Telegraph values your comments but kindly requests all posts are on topic, constructive and respectful. Please review our commenting policy.
Show comments
 

holwellcourtfarm

Member
Livestock Farmer
Had a quick look at that and it's really quite comical. It's a wish list. They don't understand the basics of methane from ruminants, hey ho, most of these "clever" people who get funding don't either even though it's not difficult to grasp. Banning cattle and sheep and reducing fert usage at the same time, that's quite some trick to pull off. Bravo. Mankind gets thicker by the day.
That's what happens when policy is driven by academics rather than practitioners.

It's summed up nicely by Allan Savory when he talks about the difference between science and academia.

Published papers don't make 'science', practical research studies do.

So many published 'studies' these days are really just 'meta analyses' of other published works, often with poor understanding of the constraints and limitations of those works.
 

holwellcourtfarm

Member
Livestock Farmer
The alarming truth about ultra-processed foods – and why you should stop eating them
A fifth of Britons consume a diet that includes only a fifth of ‘natural’ foods, but there’s more at risk than just weight gain

ByXanthe Clay7 June 2021 • 5:00am

Ultra-processed foods

It's not just burgers and hot dogs that count as 'ultra-processed' food CREDIT: Science Photo Library
What on earth is UPF? Ultra-processed foods, that’s what, and this latest entry to our modern abbreviated lexicon is likely to be sticking around for a while – much like that bag of salted caramel pretzels (just one example of a UPF) on my hips.
The reason is that health professionals now want us to differentiate between simply “processed” food and UPFs – foods that have been industrially altered to a high degree. Some are obvious, like a cheesy Wotsit, miraculously transformed from a grain of corn into a thumb-sized puff. But UPFs also include industrially produced bread, soy milk and other milk substitutes, breakfast cereals and baked beans.
That last inclusion in particular has got food manufacturers up in arms, as they point out that baked beans are a good source of protein and fibre and are relatively low in sugar and fat – although ingredients such as “modified cornflour” and the hefty dose of artificial sweetener in the low-sugar versions are less edifying.
Processing is not necessarily a bad thing. Technically, processed foods are simply foods that have undergone a change – been processed, in fact – which may be simply to make them more digestible, or safer, or to preserve them. It can also, as Kate Halliwell, the chief scientific officer of the Food and Drink Federation recently pointed out in a letter to The Telegraph, be “used to improve the nutritional value of food”.
So when wheat is ground and sifted to make white flour, that is a process. When it is fortified with calcium, iron, B vitamins (mandatory in the UK) and made into pasta, that is another two processes. And when it is dried, that is another process. When you boil it at home, that is yet another process. Some definitions include chewing – when you eat the pasta – and the harvesting of the grain as additional processes bookending the journey from field to stomach.
Nonetheless, health experts are firm that UPFs generally are problematic, and certainly not something we should be eating every day. The definition of a UPF dates back to 2009 when the NOVA classification system (see below) was first developed by the University of São Paulo in Brazil. Foods are divided into four categories – unprocessed or minimally processed, culinary ingredients, processed, and ultra-processed – according to the way the food is used and how much it has been tinkered with during production.
It is not without controversy, however. Nutrition experts point out that some foods rated as highly nutritious, garnering an “A” grade in the French Nutri-Score system (which is similar to the traffic light system seen on UK food packaging and current frontrunner to be adopted EU-wide) are labelled as ultra-processed (bad) by the NOVA classification. Others insist that Nutri-Score is over-simplistic, with no allowance for additives or industrial processing.
This is more than a storm in a Pot Noodle. While the anti-NOVA brigade have a point that no allowance is made in the classification for protein levels, for example, the evidence is mounting up that UPFs are behind the crisis that has seen obesity tripling worldwide since 1975. Here in the UK more than one in four adults are clinically obese, and in Europe only Turkey and Malta sit above us in the ranking.
Some readers will roll their eyes and say it is a matter of personal responsibility. And, yes, we probably do eat too much and don’t exercise enough. No one is saying that eating a whole tube of Pringles (oh yes, I could) is healthier than a roast dinner, but seeing as both equate to about 1,000 calories, surely they will have the same effect on our waistline. A calorie is a calorie, right?
The BBC programmes What Are We Feeding Our Kids saw Dr Chris van Tulleken delving into the effects of an ultra-processed diet

The BBC programme What Are We Feeding Our Kids saw Dr Chris van Tulleken trialling a diet of 80 per cent ultra processed foods CREDIT: Adam Hobbs
Increasingly, it seems not. In recent BBC programme What Are We Feeding Our Kids? Dr Chris Van Tulleken committed to a month of eating a diet of 80 per cent ultra-processed food, the same proportion of UPFs eaten by one in five Brits. The initial results were predictably depressing: he put on a stone and developed constipation, headaches and heartburn. He found his libido was reduced, he was eating more often, and was less satisfied by the processed food. But more significantly, scans showed that the activity in Van Tulleken’s brain had changed in ways that mirror its response to substances like tobacco and alcohol, suggesting junk food is addictive.
As any scientist will tell you, one person eating a pile of junk food does not constitute proof that it is habit forming. But it is suggestive, and studies in America, including the Yale Food Addiction Scale, showed foods high in fat, salt, sugar and refined carbohydrates such as burgers, pizza, doughnuts, crisps and white bread can trigger dependence symptoms. There is also evidence that UPFs trigger an increase of the hunger hormone and decrease in the satiety hormone, making you want to eat more.
And think how easy junk food is. To eat, of course – that soft burger bun or the coating on chicken that crumbles and melts in the mouth. Chewing – unless it’s gum – doesn’t come into ultra processed food. The powerful flavours and pleasing textures have been tweaked by industry to get the exact levels of sugar, fat and salt to hit what they call “the bliss point”, making the product so irresistible we can’t stop eating it. Sounds like courting addiction.
Read more: Is your child overweight or obese? Here's how you can help
Unlike drugs, junk food is disarmingly easy to buy, handily packaged, and prominently displayed in the supermarket. It is simple to prepare, so convenient it seems churlish to pass it up. It is also cheap. According to What Are We Feeding Our Kids?, healthy foods such as vegetables, fruit and fresh fish cost more than double per hundred calories than less healthy convenience foods. The deal clincher for many of us is that they are part of our culture and childhood. If you, like me, were brought up on Angel Delight and fish fingers, then this is friendly, comforting home food.
So don’t tell me this is about personal responsibility. As Prof Chris Millet points out to Van Tulleken, people “haven’t suddenly lost moral fibre over the last 20 or 30 years” as obesity has rocketed. What has changed in that time is the availability of junk food and the insidious way it has become the norm, weaselled its way into our fridges and food cupboards so that we no longer question what an “olive oil spread” is actually made from or why pasta sauce has a shelf life of months.
There is no single solution to the obesity problem. But limiting the amount of ultra-processed food we eat is a good start. And if one thing delights me about the NOVA system, it is that it rewards real cooking. Sugar and fat are OK, if you are using them to cook something rather than buying a bag of chips or a packet of biscuits. So we can still have treats provided they are homemade – which makes sense as then the majority of us will only get round to putting one on the table once a week, if that. Enough with the salted caramel pretzels, the Great British Pudding is back.
The NOVA food categories
Flour, sugar and oils fall into 'culinary processed ingredients''culinary processed ingredients'

Flour, sugar and oils fall into 'culinary processed ingredients' CREDIT: ArcOnt
Group 1: Unprocessed or minimally processed foods
Unprocessed foods are edible parts of plants (seeds, fruits, leaves, stems, roots) or of animals (including meat, fish, eggs and milk). Minimally processed foods include pasteurised milk, as well as food that has been simply dried, frozen or ground.
Group 2: Processed culinary ingredients
Includes oils, flour, butter, sugar and salt: foods not meant to be eaten alone.
Group 3: Processed foods
Most have two or three ingredients, and are made essentially by adding salt, oil, sugar or other substances from Group 2 to Group 1 foods. Includes canned fish, fruits in syrup, cheeses and freshly made breads. Ingredients may include preservatives and antioxidants.
Group 4: Ultra-processed foods
Includes many soft drinks, sweet or savoury packaged snacks, reconstituted meat and pre-prepared frozen dishes. Contains ingredients you wouldn’t find in your kitchen, like casein and invert sugar. Additives may include colouring, flavour enhancers or emulsifiers. Manufacturing methods include processes you could not do at home, like hydrogenation and hydrolysation.
How to spot ultra-processed foods
  • Download the Open Food Facts app, which has extensive listings so you can scan a barcode and check the NOVA group, Nutri-Score and Eco-Score (a French assessment of environmental impact) of over 1.8 million products worldwide.
  • Check the list of ingredients. Does it include ones you can’t visualise, like hydrolysed protein?
  • Be wary of claims like “made with wholegrains” “high in iron” or “no added sugar”: while true in themselves, they may be giving a healthy whitewash to an essentially unhealthy, ultra processed food.
  • Added “natural flavourings” and “natural colours” aren’t naturally present in the food you are buying. Ask yourself why they are there: is it to cover up poor quality ingredients?
  • Glitzy packaging and TV advertising don’t necessarily mean a product is ultra processed, but be suspicious: UPFs have high profit margins which means heavy marketing makes good sense.
Do you avoid ultra-processed foods? Let us know in the comments section below.
Related Topics
382
The Telegraph values your comments but kindly requests all posts are on topic, constructive and respectful. Please review our commenting policy.
Show comments
It also, coincidentally? happens that ultra-processed foods have by far the highest profit margins and greatest advertising budgets.
 

GeorgeC1

Member
Please use the correct term. ;)

I very much doubt that McDonalds would want to be associated with Frankenfoods. Some of the back street, late night takeaway joints maybe...

They defo would get involved with Lab meats if it's on an industrial scale.
 

Ffermer Bach

Member
Livestock Farmer
It also, coincidentally? happens that ultra-processed foods have by far the highest profit margins and greatest advertising budgets.
my comment on Telegraph media

Richard 8 Jun 2021 8:59AM



@gary Byrne our obesity epidemic is not due to lack of exercise, but wrong type of food, too much complex carbs and UPF are the food type most likely to contain complex carbs/sugar & high fructose corn syrup. All these give an insulin response which encourages diabetes. I know fructose doesn't cause an insulin response, however it does lead to insulin resistance.

We must remember that I have read, UPF gives a 4x higher profit margin to the food companies (I have read 10x, but lets stick with 4), so no wonder there is so much advertising/lobbying/pressure for UPF (and for that matter Vegan ultra processed foods), rather than meat and three vegies followed by home made pudding.

It is a fallacy of the food industry that a calorie is a calorie, and obesity is due to sloth (lack of will power and victim shaming), it is the type of calorie that is important. And UPF's are addictive too!
 

Swarfmonkey

Member
Location
Hampshire
That's what happens when policy is driven by academics rather than practitioners.

Academics with serious vested interests, it must be said. The UK FIRES lot aren't climatologists, they're not atmospheric physicists. The overwhelming majority of them are engineers with backgrounds in industry, and what they've done is jump on the climate change grant money gravy train.

Take their senior bod for example. His specialist area of knowledge is...





Wait for it...






Aluminium production.
 

DaveGrohl

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Cumbria
The alarming truth about ultra-processed foods – and why you should stop eating them
A fifth of Britons consume a diet that includes only a fifth of ‘natural’ foods, but there’s more at risk than just weight gain

ByXanthe Clay7 June 2021 • 5:00am

Ultra-processed foods

It's not just burgers and hot dogs that count as 'ultra-processed' food CREDIT: Science Photo Library
What on earth is UPF? Ultra-processed foods, that’s what, and this latest entry to our modern abbreviated lexicon is likely to be sticking around for a while – much like that bag of salted caramel pretzels (just one example of a UPF) on my hips.
The reason is that health professionals now want us to differentiate between simply “processed” food and UPFs – foods that have been industrially altered to a high degree. Some are obvious, like a cheesy Wotsit, miraculously transformed from a grain of corn into a thumb-sized puff. But UPFs also include industrially produced bread, soy milk and other milk substitutes, breakfast cereals and baked beans.
That last inclusion in particular has got food manufacturers up in arms, as they point out that baked beans are a good source of protein and fibre and are relatively low in sugar and fat – although ingredients such as “modified cornflour” and the hefty dose of artificial sweetener in the low-sugar versions are less edifying.
Processing is not necessarily a bad thing. Technically, processed foods are simply foods that have undergone a change – been processed, in fact – which may be simply to make them more digestible, or safer, or to preserve them. It can also, as Kate Halliwell, the chief scientific officer of the Food and Drink Federation recently pointed out in a letter to The Telegraph, be “used to improve the nutritional value of food”.
So when wheat is ground and sifted to make white flour, that is a process. When it is fortified with calcium, iron, B vitamins (mandatory in the UK) and made into pasta, that is another two processes. And when it is dried, that is another process. When you boil it at home, that is yet another process. Some definitions include chewing – when you eat the pasta – and the harvesting of the grain as additional processes bookending the journey from field to stomach.
Nonetheless, health experts are firm that UPFs generally are problematic, and certainly not something we should be eating every day. The definition of a UPF dates back to 2009 when the NOVA classification system (see below) was first developed by the University of São Paulo in Brazil. Foods are divided into four categories – unprocessed or minimally processed, culinary ingredients, processed, and ultra-processed – according to the way the food is used and how much it has been tinkered with during production.
It is not without controversy, however. Nutrition experts point out that some foods rated as highly nutritious, garnering an “A” grade in the French Nutri-Score system (which is similar to the traffic light system seen on UK food packaging and current frontrunner to be adopted EU-wide) are labelled as ultra-processed (bad) by the NOVA classification. Others insist that Nutri-Score is over-simplistic, with no allowance for additives or industrial processing.
This is more than a storm in a Pot Noodle. While the anti-NOVA brigade have a point that no allowance is made in the classification for protein levels, for example, the evidence is mounting up that UPFs are behind the crisis that has seen obesity tripling worldwide since 1975. Here in the UK more than one in four adults are clinically obese, and in Europe only Turkey and Malta sit above us in the ranking.
Some readers will roll their eyes and say it is a matter of personal responsibility. And, yes, we probably do eat too much and don’t exercise enough. No one is saying that eating a whole tube of Pringles (oh yes, I could) is healthier than a roast dinner, but seeing as both equate to about 1,000 calories, surely they will have the same effect on our waistline. A calorie is a calorie, right?
The BBC programmes What Are We Feeding Our Kids saw Dr Chris van Tulleken delving into the effects of an ultra-processed diet

The BBC programme What Are We Feeding Our Kids saw Dr Chris van Tulleken trialling a diet of 80 per cent ultra processed foods CREDIT: Adam Hobbs
Increasingly, it seems not. In recent BBC programme What Are We Feeding Our Kids? Dr Chris Van Tulleken committed to a month of eating a diet of 80 per cent ultra-processed food, the same proportion of UPFs eaten by one in five Brits. The initial results were predictably depressing: he put on a stone and developed constipation, headaches and heartburn. He found his libido was reduced, he was eating more often, and was less satisfied by the processed food. But more significantly, scans showed that the activity in Van Tulleken’s brain had changed in ways that mirror its response to substances like tobacco and alcohol, suggesting junk food is addictive.
As any scientist will tell you, one person eating a pile of junk food does not constitute proof that it is habit forming. But it is suggestive, and studies in America, including the Yale Food Addiction Scale, showed foods high in fat, salt, sugar and refined carbohydrates such as burgers, pizza, doughnuts, crisps and white bread can trigger dependence symptoms. There is also evidence that UPFs trigger an increase of the hunger hormone and decrease in the satiety hormone, making you want to eat more.
And think how easy junk food is. To eat, of course – that soft burger bun or the coating on chicken that crumbles and melts in the mouth. Chewing – unless it’s gum – doesn’t come into ultra processed food. The powerful flavours and pleasing textures have been tweaked by industry to get the exact levels of sugar, fat and salt to hit what they call “the bliss point”, making the product so irresistible we can’t stop eating it. Sounds like courting addiction.
Read more: Is your child overweight or obese? Here's how you can help
Unlike drugs, junk food is disarmingly easy to buy, handily packaged, and prominently displayed in the supermarket. It is simple to prepare, so convenient it seems churlish to pass it up. It is also cheap. According to What Are We Feeding Our Kids?, healthy foods such as vegetables, fruit and fresh fish cost more than double per hundred calories than less healthy convenience foods. The deal clincher for many of us is that they are part of our culture and childhood. If you, like me, were brought up on Angel Delight and fish fingers, then this is friendly, comforting home food.
So don’t tell me this is about personal responsibility. As Prof Chris Millet points out to Van Tulleken, people “haven’t suddenly lost moral fibre over the last 20 or 30 years” as obesity has rocketed. What has changed in that time is the availability of junk food and the insidious way it has become the norm, weaselled its way into our fridges and food cupboards so that we no longer question what an “olive oil spread” is actually made from or why pasta sauce has a shelf life of months.
There is no single solution to the obesity problem. But limiting the amount of ultra-processed food we eat is a good start. And if one thing delights me about the NOVA system, it is that it rewards real cooking. Sugar and fat are OK, if you are using them to cook something rather than buying a bag of chips or a packet of biscuits. So we can still have treats provided they are homemade – which makes sense as then the majority of us will only get round to putting one on the table once a week, if that. Enough with the salted caramel pretzels, the Great British Pudding is back.
The NOVA food categories
Flour, sugar and oils fall into 'culinary processed ingredients''culinary processed ingredients'

Flour, sugar and oils fall into 'culinary processed ingredients' CREDIT: ArcOnt
Group 1: Unprocessed or minimally processed foods
Unprocessed foods are edible parts of plants (seeds, fruits, leaves, stems, roots) or of animals (including meat, fish, eggs and milk). Minimally processed foods include pasteurised milk, as well as food that has been simply dried, frozen or ground.
Group 2: Processed culinary ingredients
Includes oils, flour, butter, sugar and salt: foods not meant to be eaten alone.
Group 3: Processed foods
Most have two or three ingredients, and are made essentially by adding salt, oil, sugar or other substances from Group 2 to Group 1 foods. Includes canned fish, fruits in syrup, cheeses and freshly made breads. Ingredients may include preservatives and antioxidants.
Group 4: Ultra-processed foods
Includes many soft drinks, sweet or savoury packaged snacks, reconstituted meat and pre-prepared frozen dishes. Contains ingredients you wouldn’t find in your kitchen, like casein and invert sugar. Additives may include colouring, flavour enhancers or emulsifiers. Manufacturing methods include processes you could not do at home, like hydrogenation and hydrolysation.
How to spot ultra-processed foods
  • Download the Open Food Facts app, which has extensive listings so you can scan a barcode and check the NOVA group, Nutri-Score and Eco-Score (a French assessment of environmental impact) of over 1.8 million products worldwide.
  • Check the list of ingredients. Does it include ones you can’t visualise, like hydrolysed protein?
  • Be wary of claims like “made with wholegrains” “high in iron” or “no added sugar”: while true in themselves, they may be giving a healthy whitewash to an essentially unhealthy, ultra processed food.
  • Added “natural flavourings” and “natural colours” aren’t naturally present in the food you are buying. Ask yourself why they are there: is it to cover up poor quality ingredients?
  • Glitzy packaging and TV advertising don’t necessarily mean a product is ultra processed, but be suspicious: UPFs have high profit margins which means heavy marketing makes good sense.
Do you avoid ultra-processed foods? Let us know in the comments section below.
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Although the main thrust of that article is bang on the money, it gets some things a little wrong. The lumping of fat and salt into the "bad things" category is not correct unless it's mixed in with other things, but they don't make this clear. And I've posted before about the NOVA system being a bit odd. Industrially processed vegetable oils being in category 2 being the obvious example. We now know that most of them are extremely bad for us but placing them in category 2 seems daft on several levels.
 

DaveGrohl

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Cumbria
Academics with serious vested interests, it must be said. The UK FIRES lot aren't climatologists, they're not atmospheric physicists. The overwhelming majority of them are engineers with backgrounds in industry, and what they've done is jump on the climate change grant money gravy train.

Take their senior bod for example. His specialist area of knowledge is...





Wait for it...






Aluminium production.
And yet the govt is paying them to come up with this cr@@p.
 

Swarfmonkey

Member
Location
Hampshire
Government pays for a lot of cr@p research. The amount of cash that UKRI hands out to even the most hairbrained of projects/academic circle-jerks would have many taxpayers spitting bullets.
 

ski

Member
If you're an optimist you will believe that there will be a correction as people become aware of this agenda (and it is an agenda when you look at all the NGO's, goverment funding, pressure groups etc who are pushing it), but I am rather more inclined that there will be some sort of serious systemic food shortage before the error of this type of thinking stops.
 

Ffermer Bach

Member
Livestock Farmer
If you're an optimist you will believe that there will be a correction as people become aware of this agenda (and it is an agenda when you look at all the NGO's, goverment funding, pressure groups etc who are pushing it), but I am rather more inclined that there will be some sort of serious systemic food shortage before the error of this type of thinking stops.
unfortunately, I think you are right
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

  • 0 %

    Votes: 80 42.3%
  • Up to 25%

    Votes: 66 34.9%
  • 25-50%

    Votes: 30 15.9%
  • 50-75%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 75-100%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 100% I’ve had enough of farming!

    Votes: 7 3.7%

Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

  • 1,292
  • 1
As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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