What is Junk Food and does it matter?

​SYNOPSIS

The public debate about junk food usually comes down to a damning indictment of all foods high in calories and rich in ‘high fat, salt and sugar’, whatever type of food you find them in. The informed debate is more nuanced and often singles out the role played by sugar, whilst adding in other refined carbohydrates, cheap vegetable seed oils and food additives.

     Often an emotional topic, the quality of the debate has been recently enhanced thanks to a changed stance from the UN at the start of their Decade of Nutrition, when a food grouping known as ‘ultra-processed’ foods came sharply into focus. So are all ultra-processed foods by definition the same as junk food? And would it help if that were the case?

Click here for the full 15 minute read.

The Big Read

If you know what junk food is, you can make informed choices

​        Public opinion about junk food leaves much to the imagination and brings with it confusing contradictions. In Ireland, councils desperately trying to do the right thing when it comes to childhood obesity, issue ‘no-fry zones’ which can allow a Starbucks to set up shop near a school, while banning the Fish & Chip shop – perhaps the original fast-food outlet. In New York, whole milk gets banned in schools while low-fat chocolate flavoured milk is permitted… not to mention that the school authorities now refer to whole milk as ‘full-fat’ milk.

        Meanwhile, manufacturers tweak their recipes for processed foods such as sausage rolls in the UK, so that the well-meaning traffic light labelling system shows them in a good light (no pun intended). By reducing the meat content and substituting margarine for the butter or lard originally used in the flaky pastry, they can even position them as a healthy snack. Yet logic tells me that they are a form of junk food.

        It does not help that the phrase ‘junk food’ is often used interchangeably with ‘fast food’. Maybe that’s why politicians make reference to junk food in their fiery speeches yet never in their policy decisions. Head-nodding junk food rhetoric can fire up the emotions, but there are a lot of votes at stake if you trouble the fast-food industry - a major employee category, particularly in urban areas.

​        In this opinion piece - Yes, a Big Read - I set out to clarify what junk food really is; why it is important that we officially define it, and why the resulting labeling should be made clearly visible on packages, in restaurants and at the point of sale. I am not trying to get junk food banned, just labeled appropriately. Then when people decide to eat that piece of cake, slice of pizza or snack-bar, they will know and better understand the role it plays in their overall diet - and what it's doing to their body.

        Such labeling would bring our attention back to the importance of less processed foods, to real food ingredients, to home-cooking and provide a better platform for the re-introduction of basic cooking lessons into a school’s curriculum …until such a time as their parents re-discover what their parents don’t seem to have passed on; cooking skills and the importance of family meals.

​Extract, on the subject of ultra-processed foods:

Read the full Junk Food Story

A singular feature of NOVA is its identification of ultra-processed food and drink products. These are not modified foods, but formulations mostly of cheap industrial sources of dietary energy and nutrients plus additives, using a series of processes (hence 'ultra-processed'). All together, they are energy-dense, high in unhealthy types of fat, refined starches, free sugars and salt, and poor sources of protein, dietary fibre and micronutrients. Ultra-processed products are made to be hyper-palatable and attractive, with long shelf-life, and able to be consumed anywhere, any time. Their formulation, presentation and marketing often promote overconsumption.
Studies based on NOVA show that ultra-processed products now dominate the food supplies of various high-income countries and are increasingly pervasive in lower-middle- and upper-middle-income countries.

​The UN Decade of Nutrition at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28322183