Closer to The Whole Truth
We’ve been seeking The Whole Truth and we’ve made some great progress
With your support, we’ve demonstrated citizen outrage at UPF corporations interfering with public health policy and clear support for the government to make minimally processed food available to all.
More than 20,000 people have signed our petition, calling on the UK government to resist the influence of the ultra-processed food (UPF) industry and make minimally processed food accessible to all. Additionally, over 2,000 people have written to their MP, asking for their support. An amazing result - thank you for supporting The Whole Truth campaign.
We’ve written again today to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Wes Streeting, to outline citizen support for our campaign as a follow up to a letter sent in May. That letter was signed by 23 leading food and health organisations and alliances, to express support for the Government’s cross-departmental Food Strategy and to ask for urgent action to make healthier, unprocessed and minimally processed foods more accessible and affordable to the British population, as recommended by the House of Lords Committee on Diet, Health and Obesity.
Through a leading story on the Guardian newspaper’s website, The Whole Truth campaign exposed how the government's Department of Health and Social Care had planned to encourage retailers to shift the balance of price promotions towards minimally processed foods. This includes fruits, vegetables, beans, whole grains such as rice and pasta, and unprocessed meats. But lobbyists working on behalf of the UK’s biggest ultra-processed food companies demanded that this advice be removed from the guidance issued to retailers. And yet, there is overwhelming scientific evidence that minimally processed and whole foods are crucial for a healthy diet.
For the campaign, we surveyed 2,000 people. They said that making whole and minimally processed foods more affordable was the most important thing the government could do to make healthy food easy to access. Scientists at University College London also recently published the results of a clinical trial, demonstrating significantly greater weight loss among participants on a minimally processed versus ultra-processed diet, even when both diets aligned with government dietary advice. Among other things, we're calling for the advice to be updated to explicitly encourage people to eat more whole and minimally processed foods.
Last week, UNICEF published a report which revealed that, for the first time, obesity exceeds underweight among school-age children and adolescents globally. The report warned that “ultra-processed and fast foods – high in sugar, refined starch, salt, unhealthy fats and additives – are shaping children’s diets through unhealthy food environments, rather than personal choice”.
We will continue to call on the UK Government to position whole and minimally processed foods at the centre of the Government’s Food Strategy and that the UK’s dietary advice is made fit for purpose by explicitly promoting more minimally processed diets.
