September 20, 2023 — Apparently big food is not scary enough. The Washington Post wants you to know that it’s really big tobacco that is selling you those noxious and addictive Teddy Grahams to destroy the health of your children. For this report, they rely on a paper by Tera Fazzino and colleagues. This continues a tradition of using […]
July 13, 2023 — A new study in the Journal of Nutrition reports that people can eat 91 per cent of their calories from ultra-processed foods and still be eating a pretty healthy diet. Hold Onto Your Socks This is not opposites day. Rather, it might be that the we are living in a time of peak demonization of […]
May 16, 2022 — ConscienHealth enjoys the good fortune of attracting readers who might disagree with some of the words we share here. So yesterday, when we suggested that food policy wonks might be “giving ‘big food’ a free pass,” it was not entirely surprising to hear from a notable persona in food policy – Marion Nestle. Ever so […]
May 15, 2022 — Ten years ago, PLOS Medicine published an examination of the role of “Big Food” in global health with a collection of articles. It was an indictment, to be sure, and this theme continues to resonate today. PLOS Medicine editors summed it up: “Big multinational food companies control what people everywhere eat, resulting in a stark […]
September 5, 2021 — The global food industry is huge – so big that people have a hard time putting firm numbers on it. But roughly, it’s worth about ten trillion dollars. It’s also very diverse. The top ten multinational food and beverage companies add up to only half a trillion dollars of those sales. Nonetheless in public health […]
June 21, 2020 — We’ve seen quite a range of responses to the observation that obesity leads to worse outcomes with COVID-19. But most of them are unhelpful. First, of course, was denial. Now we have the anger phase. Over in the U.K., folks are murmuring that we should blame the food industry. Writing in the BMJ, Monique Tan, […]
July 21, 2019 — What if we could snap our fingers and have everyone start eating all the fruits and veggies that the World Health Organization recommends? We would simply run out. Demand would outstrip supply by anywhere from 90 to 128 percent. Production capacity is too low. Food waste is too high. So there’s a big gap between […]
February 12, 2019 — Will ultra-processed food kill you? Probably not, but two new studies provide some real evidence for caution about this dietary boogeyman. First, a large observational study in France finds a 14 percent higher risk of death in a people who eat more of the stuff. And then, an RCT from NIH shows that ultra-processed foods […]
