Towards a Nutritional Arms Race: Shifting Blame from Consumers to Producers

Addiction Economy Thought for Today - how to force a 'nutritional arms race' and a word about 'victim blaming'

Following on from the House of Lords food report last week, here is an industry boss also asking for regulation of food.

Stéfan Descheemaeker the CEO of Nomad Foods, which owns Birds Eye fish fingers, Findus frozen foods and Goodfella’s pizzas and publishes its own health stats, tells the Guardian that mandatory publication of what proportion of each firm’s sales count as healthy or unhealthy under government guidelines would kickstart a “nutrition arms race” in which manufacturers would vie with each other to make their products better for health.

"His comments underline what one diet campaigner called the “quiet revolution” going on in the industry in its views on how best to tackle the UK’s addiction to unhealthy food."

We are exploring the entrenched 'victim blaming' culture of 'addiction'. So see how again that it is 'people's addiction to unhealthy food' which is the problem.

Perhaps instead it could be 'the quiet revolution going on in the industry about its production of foods which are destroying the public's health'.

Many health campaigners say nutrition labels don't work in making customers switch, but harnessing capitalism for nutritional purposes is something to incentivise. These people are not going away anytime soon, so they might as well make us decent food instead of crap. We are all for the 'nutritional arms race'. Though lots to say about the language 'arms race' which I will leave to another day!

Any thoughts on this language switch Simon Bratt?