Nutritionism – still the “Bollocks du jour”?

​It’s now almost 10 years ago since Ben Goldacre coined the phrase Nutritionism and referred to it as the "bollocks du jour" in a famous article for the New Statesman. He was, notably, referring primarily to self-styled media nutritionists, those who often find themselves quoted in the tabloids, but two quite separate events in this past week sum up the damage that nutritionism has already done and continues to exacerbate in our own Western food culture.

These two events were namely the American launch announcement of a specially packaged cow’s milk marketed at kids by Coca Cola, and the far-away decision by a remote group of Pacific Islands to turn their back on junk food.
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Putting aside the difficulties of reaching agreement on a definition for junk food, what the Vanuatu Islanders have effectively done is rejected a part of Western culture that inevitably seems to lead to chronic diseases such as obesity and diabetes wherever it is introduced. This is namely, the packaged and processed food so typical of our culture and driven by the need for extended shelf life and increasingly competitive supply chains.

The 'Superkids' version of Fairlife's new lactose-free, low-fat milk product.

Sadly, Pacific Islanders in general have become some of the fattest folks on Earth as well as leading in the race to become the most diabetic (Type-2) people on the planet. Most of them already dropped their native diets and adopted Western eating habits some 30 or 40 years ago, so a return to eating more of their traditional food is to be applauded.
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​Coca Cola on the other hand are continuing to follow the route pioneered in the world of ‘nutritionism’ and have set out to ‘improve’ one of nature’s gifts, fresh milk.  They have lowered the fat content, increased the protein content by 50%, added 30% more calcium, decreased the amount of lactose while adding lactase so they can make it lactose-free and in so doing, have also doubled the price.

Oh – and this tinkering with Mother Nature has also helped extend the Fairlife milk product’s shelf life to 90 days! 

It is ironic that because we now believe that the constituent parts, those micro and macro-nutrients found in what we eat, are more important than whether it is fresh or natural, we will probably buy this new 'improved' milk in droves. Many of us will be convinced that our children’s health will be all the better for it so it's no wonder that Fairlife's CEO Steve Jones said  to Time magazine; "I hope it's Coke's next billion-dollar brand." 

This is the true impact of 'nutritionism'; an approach which has led to a focus on  criteria that make it easier for industrial concerns to develop packaged food that appears to be healthy, to the detriment of fresh and minimally processed foods.

The remote Vanuatu Islands of the South Pacific

​Now consider how, at roughly the same time as Coca Cola announced their new packaging, the Torba province of Vanuatu, representing a group of Pacific Islanders having just 10,000 inhabitants made the decision to impose restrictions on the import of Western foodstuffs.

“It is easy to boil noodles or rice, but they have almost no nutritional value and there is no need to eat imported food when we have so much local food grown organically on our islands.” Said Father Luc Dini, head of the local tourism council.

​With the backing of local chiefs Dini has ordered tourism bungalows to serve guests only locally grown, organic food and inhabitants will set aside rice, sweets and biscuits, aiming to become Vanatu’s first organic province by 2020.

One thing is for sure. It is unlikely that Coca Colas’s new range of Kid’s ‘healthier’ milk will be found any time soon in that remote part of the South Pacific. 

For reference: the 10 most obese places in the world

Traditional Samoan meals used many fresh ingredients including different types of fish, pork kidneys, liver and heart, eel, mutton fat, root vegetables and fruit.
​Now, fast-food chains dominate in the townships and sadly,  over 75% of the inhabitants are considered obese (CIA World Factbook 2015).

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​1/ American Samoa
2/ Nauru
3/ Cook Islands
4/ Tokelau
5/ Tonga

​6/ Samoa
7/ Palau
8/ Kiribati
9/ Marshall Islands
10/ Kuwait

References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutritionism
http://time.com/3694924/coca-cola-protein-lactose-minute-maid-fairlife-milk/
​https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/03/south-pacific-islands-vanuatu-torba-ban-western-junk-food-health-organic