UN Special Rapporteur: Processed Foods Are Making The World Sick

In a report written by Olivier De Schutter, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Schutter warned that our food systems are making people sick.

“One in seven people globally are undernourished, and many more suffer from the 'hidden hunger' of micronutrient deficiency, while 1.3 billion are overweight or obese.”

In 2010, Professor De Schutter addressed the way that agribusiness interacts with food producers, and has since undertaken research on the impact of food systems on diets and associated health problems. 

Schutter argues that urbanization, supermarketization and the global spread of modern lifestyles have shaken up traditional food habits. The result is a public health disaster, Schutter said. “Governments have been focusing on increasing calorie availability, but they have often been indifferent to what kind of calories are on offer, at what price, to whom they are accessible, and how they are marketed.”

Schutter claims that in 2010, U.S. companies spent $8.5 billion advertising food, candy and non-alcoholic beverages, while $44 million was budgeted for the U.S. Government’s primary standing healthy eating program.

Schutter identifies the abundance of processed food as a major threat to improving nutrition. “Heavy processing thrives in our global food system, and is a win-win for multinational agri-food companies. Processed items can be produced and distributed on a huge scale, thanks to cheap subsidized ingredients and their increased shelf life.”

“But for the people, it is a lose-lose,” he stressed. “Heavily processed foods lead to diets richer in saturated and trans-fatty acids, salt and sugars. Children become hooked on the junk foods targeted at them. In better-off countries, the poorest population groups are most affected because foods high in fats, sugar and salt are often cheaper than healthy diets as a result of misguided subsidies whose health impacts have been wholly ignored.”

The UN expert blames the West for exporting diabetes and heart disease to developing countries, along with the processed foods that line the shelves of global supermarkets. 

Writing for the Guardian, Felicity Lawrence notes that in Mexico, 70% of the adult population is overweight or obese and the average adult requires medical treatment for 18 years for related diseases such as diabetes.

"China too has reached a tipping point, where 10% of the population is overweight or obese, matching for the first time of numbers of its citizens who are undernourished."

Schutter is right, of course; but among his solutions is a tax on processed foods which will be passed on to those least able to absorb the extra costs: the poorest population groups that he himself admits are the most affected because foods high in fats, sugar and salt are often cheaper than healthy diets.