Urban Food Chains

the links between diet and power

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Big Food’s Big Secret
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The UK government spends more than GBP 90 billion a year treating chronic food-related illness, according to the Food, Farming & Countryside Commission (FFCC). Researchers estimate that investing half that sum would be enough to make a healthy diet accessible to everyone living in the British Isles. The full extent of the damage caused to the UK economy by a dysfunctional food sector is GBP 268 billion pounds a year, taking lost productivity and early mortality into account, FFCC warns.

The Food, Farming & Countryside Commission is an independent charity, set up in 2017 to inform and extend public involvement in ongoing discussions about food and farming. Using government data as a starting point, FFCC argues that it would be significantly cheaper to produce healthy food in the first place. More to the point, it is not an option to go on footing the bill for damaged public health resulting from the commercial sector’s activities. There is simply not enough money in the kitty and time is running out. 

Researchers took into account government estimates of productivity and lost earnings arising from chronic illnesses. These indirect costs are borne by a range of actors in the economy, such as local government departments. Such costs are real expenditure, but the total figure is not recorded as a single aggregate figure. When combined with the initial figures, the result is a more imposing figure and looks like figure S1.

The direct costs (in red) are existing government data; indirect costs (in orange) indicate the economic impact associated with the prevailing levels of unemployment and early mortality. Like the submerged part of an iceberg, we ignore these costs at our peril.

Working with indirect costs opens the door to accusations of misinterpretation, but economists have worked hard to establish methods that can avoid serious pratfalls. Healthcare is supported by a wide range of funding sources, from government down to private individuals. The money is real enough, even when it comes from private individuals. It just becomes harder to count. There are times when budgets for nearby or related units will be skimmed to meet ad hoc requirements. Welcome to the economists’ underworld, where early retirement due to ill health is just another negative variable.

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The real cost of doing nothing
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The food industry is making more people ill with processed foods than its management would ever admit, according to the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission. Researchers put the cost of chronic illness to the UK economy at GBP 268 billion. (https://ffcc.co.uk/publications/the-false-economy-of-big-food)This figure is four times the cost of fixing the problem, the report’s authors estimate. The opening statement reads like this:

New analysis commissioned by the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission (FFCC) has found that the costs of Britain’s unhealthy food system amount to £268 billion every year – almost equivalent to the total annual UK healthcare spend.

The report by Professor Tim Jackson provides the first comprehensive estimate of the food-related cost of chronic disease, caused by the current food system. The analysis combines direct costs – the costs paid for from the public purse – including healthcare costs, social care costs and welfare, and indirect costs – costs that don’t show up in government accounts – which are productivity losses and human costs.

It concludes that £268 billion is the food-related cost of chronic disease in the UK – calculated by combining healthcare (£67.5bn), social care (£14.3bn), welfare (£10.1bn), productivity (£116.4bn) and human cost (£60bn) of chronic disease attributable to the current food ecosystem.

The report makes the case for a new economy of food, anchored in three key principles:

  • the right of every citizen – irrespective of class, income, gender, geography, race or age – to sufficient, affordable, healthy food;
  • a regulatory environment which curtails the power of Big Food, promotes dietary health and halts the rise of chronic disease;
  • a financial architecture that redirects money away from perverse subsidies and post-hoc damage limitation, towards preventive healthcare and the production of sustainable, nutritious food.

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Pink, salty and out of stock
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The UK’s high spending foodies have been facing empty shelves, where they would normally find taramsalata. The strike action at a Bakkavar factory in Lincolnshire has successfully kept the salty pink dip out of big name retailers, including Waitrose, Sainsbury and Tesco. These industry heavyweights will get their on back on all those involved in due course — and reduce dependency on Bakkavar by recruiting other suppliers. Here is how the BBC covered the story.

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Animal intake of alcohol wider than previously assumed
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A number of scientific journals are running stories in their November issues about species that routinely consume alcohol as a part of their diet. Naturalists argue that it would be strange if animals were to avoid naturally-occurring sources of alcohol, such as rotting fruit. The topic got a fresh airing in specialist titles, such as Science Daily or the news pages of Phys.org, as well as UK dailies such as The Independent and The Guardian.

The impetus for the current editorial interest comes from Trends in Ecology and Evolution. The journal collates behavioural observations from past years, to make a strong argument for removing anthropocentric assumptions about alcohol and the routine overlooking of certain aspects of dietary intake in wild populations. For instance, levels of Alcohol By Value (ABV) can top 10% in over-ripe palm fruit, while ethanol can be routinely detected in 29 of Costa Rica’s 37 fruits routinely eaten by the country’s frugivores.