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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics

Yes, obesity is a problem – but a greater one is the food industry and its greed

Girl working on a laptop surrounded by unhealthy snacks.
‘The generations below me have eaten ultra-processed diets from birth.’ Photograph: Alamy/PA

Your editorial on cancers in under-50s (8 October) rightly names food among the culprits. But the confrontation it calls for should be aimed less at obesity than at what produces it. Obesity is the intermediary; the exposure is a food system engineered for profit.

The Lancet’s series on ultra-processed foods showed these products displacing traditional diets worldwide and driving chronic disease, and documented more than 200 interconnected lobby groups through which the industry organises its influence to block regulation.

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