Rachel Reeves just proved me right.
Last July I wrote in The Times that Labour will fail on the NHS. I made it clear that their failure wouldn’t come from a lack of ambition and this week’s £29bn announcement confirms that they do mean well, attempting to plug holes in a sinking ship. But they are failing nonetheless — because they refuse to acknowledge the NHS’s real problem: our addiction to ultra-processed foods (UPFs), and the obesity crisis that comes with it.
Reeves’ £29bn investment is actually pointless — in fact it is a repugnant waste of other people’s hard-earned money. She and her party are choosing to treat the symptoms and ignore the problem — inadvertently endorsing our sickly eating habits and the flawed morals of cynical businesses that create and monetise mass UPF addiction.
UPFs are deliberately engineered to be addictive — as well as causing depression and disease they create dependency. Yale’s Dr Ashley Gearhardt says UPFs “hijack the brain like cigarettes or cocaine”, while Harvard researchers agree, warning that these foods trigger the same neurological responses as drug addiction. UPFs are everywhere and they now make up 57% of our national diet, about the highest in the world.
The results of our UPF self-harming are completely clear. Obesity related hospital admissions have doubled in 6 years and now stand at 3,000 per day in England alone. This is three times the number admitted for smoking related illnesses — staggering — but still no action from politicians. But do I suspect that action may come soon because our skint government is desperate for new ways to raise taxes — a UPF tax of 1.5% would raise an easy £1bn. More importantly the tax would start the process of reducing consumption and NHS spending — a genuine win-win.
While the healthcare costs of obesity are horrendous, the impact it has on our productivity and national finances are chilling. Two years ago the IFS put the total cost of obesity at £98bn — and things are now even worse. Until we accept that the root cause of our moribund NHS, shortening life expectancy and stagnating economy is UPF addiction, things can only deteriorate. We urgently need government regulation of these products before things do get much worse.
Some people will cry “nanny state” at the idea of taxing or regulating ultra-processed foods. But that’s lazy, misguided nonsense.
Without state intervention, tobacco and alcohol would still be marketed to kids and sold without warning. We’ve rightly accepted limits on the sale and advertising of those substances — not because we’re weak, but because we’re wise enough to fight addiction where it arises.
Similarly, almost no one argues for the unregulated marketing and sale of heroin or cocaine. So why do we tolerate it for UPFs, when they are scientifically proven to be addictive, cut lives short, and fuel epidemics of obesity, depression and disease?
The government must act. Not just to protect the NHS, but to protect us — the people they serve. I fear they won’t act to save our health.
But sooner or later, they will take action for their own financial survival. A UPF tax would raise desperately needed tax revenues — and while Reeves, Starmer and Streeting will dress it up as public protection, their motives will be much more selfish.
Wes Streeting said eleven months ago that the NHS was broken — and he was partly right. But it wasn’t damaged by the Conservative policies he cited. It was, and is, being broken by the avoidable illnesses that UPFs cause.
Something will be done. It’s just a question of how long it takes them and how much more carnage our UPF addiction will cause.
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