ICE

I like the announcement today that the European health body – NICE – is calling for artificial  trans-fats to be eliminated from foods such as biscuits, cakes and fast food because it’s helping people  to be healthier without even having to change their eating habits.  If we are such an intelligent civilisation, I think it makes sense that we can manufacture food which doesn’t contain harmful chemicals – even if they are in the foods we should have less of anyway.

Everyone knows eating too many biscuits, cakes and fast food will in the end contribute to a range of health problems, but in our excess-food culture with multiple opportunities to consume way more than we need, we’ve created a society which is simply consuming more than it can live with.

Changing our British culture of high-fat foods is a difficult and long term goal, so why not use our ability to remove the ‘added’ chemicals  and ’nudge’ people into healthier choices by creating a market filled with healthy foods?  Also the second recommendation to use a simplified ‘traffic light’ coding system so consumers can make informed choices, can surely only be a step forward for us – and puts control back into the hands of people tucking into their cream cakes. 

It could smack of crowd control, but if we’re engineering recipes for processed foods in the first place, why not design them with the consumer in mind?