masters of illusion
Consumer awareness has grown and manufacturers are looking for respectability. In reality, they have too much to lose and are only making a sham effort. They know how to exploit the gaps and inaccuracies of the regulations. It would be necessary, for example, to eat the whole package of very sweet biscuits to reach the recommended daily allowances of such a vitamin put forward on the packaging. A very fashionable method consists of diverting consumers’ attention to a positive point (respect for the environment, recycled packaging, absence of coloring agents, gluten-free) in an attempt to make people forget that the product remains bad overall. For the manufacturer, a product is of quality if it meets the specifications set by itself. For the author, it must above all be healthy, that is to say free of toxic molecules and nutritionally balanced.
Incalculable damage to health
Sugar, very inexpensive and very addictive, is placed wherever possible. The direct involvement of junk food in obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease has been established, causing healthcare costs to explode. For this, manufacturers are rarely worried and even less condemned. On the contrary, they do not hesitate to blame the victims who would be responsible for their condition for lack of will. “The obese are not culprits to be punished but the victims of a perverted system”reframes Christophe Brusset.
Ultra-processed products are not only “too fatty, too salty, too sweet” but also pesticides, additives and nanoparticles, which are still too numerous despite some efforts made. Additives, which the French consume up to four kilos a year, contribute to many other diseases in a much more insidious way, starting with cancer or the destabilization of the microbiota. In 2021, EFSA had 96,302 products analysed: 47% contained pesticide residues, and 2% contaminated enough to be unfit for consumption ! These figures are probably underestimated, the agency only looking for 182 pesticides while there are more than 600. There are also particles of plastic, ink, solvents and varnish… Bon appétit!
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Methods that have an air of deja vu
These are the same methods that have been used during the health crisis to smash all scientific dissent: ad-personam attacks, questioning of legitimacy, accusation of spreading false information, smear campaign, accusatory inversion. Shortly after the publication of Christophe Brusset’s first book, the Ania (national association of food industries) published an article in the form of a “true or false” taking up several points from the book, with an argument that was incomplete to say the least. Remember that the author, with whom Ania would have refused any publicized debate, lived at the heart of fraud in the food industry for more than twenty years. A website to fight against so-called “fake news” has even been created, in which the industrial lobby has every opportunity to give back its truth to the public without being contradicted. The author also denounces the classic financing of researchers with little regard for carrying out scientific studies of convenience, then taken up by intense media communication.
“I was hoping for a helping hand from the manufacturers, but it was in my face that they wanted to stick it in my face. »
Silence whistleblowers
You would think that legislation and health agencies protect us. However, we learn that the legislator considers that if the additive is present in very small quantities, it is permissible not to declare it. Multinationals exercise a ongoing lobbying with health agencies. A report by the CEO concludes that almost one in two experts find themselves in a conflict of interest with the companies whose products they are supposed to assess. The regulation is, moreover, always late of a war on scientific and technological advances.
Those who sound the tocsin a little too loud end up in court. Like this small association heavily condemned, and its president pushed to ruin for having denigrated wines grown in synthetic chemistry, despite analyzes of pesticide residues carried out by an independent laboratory. Or Yuka is regularly sued because the evaluations given by her application displease manufacturers. The commercial courts have condemned it several times, with the implication: if it’s legal, it’s safe. What then of the substances formerly authorized and now prohibited, such as bisphenol A, titanium dioxide or even asbestos?
Even more serious: for having revealed the practices of Breton intensive agriculture and their negative impact on the environment, our colleagues Inès Léraud and Morgan Large were victims of methods worthy of the mafia : anonymous calls, death threats, break-ins and damage to property. The message is clear: do not investigate us.
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Towards a health democracy?
The author urges each of us to get back to cooking. With an average of six hours of free time per day, much of it spent in front of a screen, lack of free time is no longer an excuse. To do our shopping while being well informed, the Yuka, Siga or Open food facts smartphone applications remain safe bets. On the regulatory side, Christophe Brusset does not hold back: he proposes neither more nor less to apply to junk food the same rules as for tobacco: mentions “harms your health” on packaging, ban on and any communication to children; these taxes could be donated to the development of healthy products. For him, the health of all citizens should be the priority. It joins the concept of food democracy, with the desire that citizens regain power over agriculture and the supply chain, and that they actively participate in the paths of improvement.
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“Big Tobacco organizes the permanent questioning of scientific data”
Go further :
Christophe Brusset, Junk food strikes back, ed. Flammarion, 304 pages, €19.90