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A new book takes a close look at people’s concerns about processed foods and how the processed food industry has failed to respond to them. The author, Charlotte Biltekoff, says she wanted to try and understand what was happening around her, as people in her milieu came more and more to demand real food rather than processed foods, while the makers of processed foods failed to understand the deeper reasons underpinning those demands. Industry wants consumers who, reassured on questions of safety and risk, will buy and eat its products. People want answers to questions beyond safety and risk. And never the twain shall meet.
Notes
- Real Food, Real Facts: processed food and the politics of knowledge is available from the University of California Press.
- Other effects notwithstanding, a primary reason to avoid UPFs is that they encourage you to eat more.
- Here is the transcript.
- Thanks ChatGPT for sharing your stereotypical vision of a Mom and a Female Scientist.
Thank you for your generous reply. Let me try and address your points, starting with one I agree with.
“Proof of absolute safety” is indeed impossible, as you suggest. So too, I believe, is proof of absolute harm. How often, growing up, did you hear about your neighbour’s uncle’s cousin who smoked 40 untipped Camels a day and lived to be 96? As a statistician, I’m sure you don’t mean “absolute,” so what do you mean? That’s where “reasonable doubt” comes in and where one’s starting point becomes important. If you start with a precautionary principle, I believe it is much easier to demonstrate reasonable certainty about safety than if you start with a presumption of safety, which is exactly what industry has used to great advantage.
Obviously I don’t think the episode was one-sided, at least not entirely so, though my bias probably does show through. On the other hand, contrary to your point, I did raise the point that “real food” proponents also play on a deficit and stoke fears.
“Natural” does not equal safe or healthy, I agree, and we could probably both cite natural ricin, or tetrodotoxin, or Clostridium. Why, then, were industrial food manufacturers so eager to use the word on packaging? To take advantage of a cognitive deficit, I expect. You (and I) may realise that natural does not mean safe or healthy, just as we know that water and starch are “chemicals” but I would suggest that we also both know that that is not how most people use or understand those words, just as an aubergine (or eggplant) is a vegetable not a fruit to anyone except a pedant (like me).
Regarding the unpronounceable questions. The informed question is not “what are they?”. It is “why are they there?” That is qhat Charlotte Biltekoff means when she says real food and real facts talk past one another. Industry wants us to understand that something is, for example, an emulsier, or a buffer, or whatever. Reasonable people want to know why the industrial version of a dish requires an emulsifier or a buffer or whatever.
When you say “The public doesn’t need to be educated with fact, but rather taught how to discern reliable information from misinformation” I can only stand back, applaud, and wonder how on Earth you do that, especially lately.
Thanks again for your comments.
Bridgy Response
Thanks for the episode. As someone who spent 45+ years in agricultural research (researcher and statistician), it is a topic I’ve followed and been caught up in for a while. It is an interesting topic, although I was a bit disappointed in the one sided anti industry approach I got from the episode. Certainly, industry is not clean here, but the so called “real” food side is also quite tainted and equally, or even more, damaging and unaccountable. I’ve always been frustrated that people automatically villainize industry, yet unskeptically champion the real, clean, side. Dr Biltekoff asks what industry’s end game is, yet completely ignores (in your interview) what the Real food end game is. Hint, it’s money. The natural, real food movement is its own industry that grifts millions from the public. This deserves coverage.
Some other points:
1) No definition of natural was made because it’s simply impossible. Natural is not=safe or healthy. In terms of food, safety, health, and nutrition, it is meaningless.
2) Perhaps I heard wrong, but proof of absolute safety is actually what is impossible, while proof of harm is obtainable. That’s why the US, and many other countries, do not use the Precautionary Principle. It looks good on paper, but is not applicable in reality. A close look at EU food regs and their outcomes shows they either end up in a bind limiting advancements and causing political turmoil, or they simply find exceptions that allow usage. The PP does not work as a regulatory principle because it is not possible to prove something safe.
3) Those pesky unpronounceable names? They’re there because the public demanded they be there. It was the Real food movement and their kin who taught the public to distrust the very thing they demanded industry provide.
4) Writing off evidence and fact is foolhardy. Yes, they alone cannot correct things, but people cannot make accurate judgements without them either. The public doesn’t need to be educated with fact, but rather taught how to discern reliable information from misinformation.
Again, thank you for the episode and the opportunity to comment, although probably too long.
@etp listening finally for the first time, to the food science episode. Really enjoying the pod!