DR CHRIS VAN TULLEKEN: There's a catastrophe of suffering and death caused by ultra-processed foods...
and the experts supposed to protect us are being paid to turn a blind eye By Dr Chris Van Tulleken Published: 01:48, 24 September 2024 | Updated: 01:50, 24 September 2024 e-mail View comments When I was at medical school in the 1990s, it was totally normal to have our lunch paid for by drug-company sales reps. We’d eat their sandwiches and they’d give us branded pens and mugs. None of us thought it affected our prescribing but, of course, there’s no such thing as a free lunch.
The evidence shows that their gifts swayed us to prescribe their drugs preferentially, leading to inferior and more expensive prescribing. The pharma industry still pays around £40million per year to UK health professionals, but at least the body that determines whether the drugs themselves are safe, the MHRA, is free of these conflicts of interest. People who regulate drugs obviously shouldn’t take money from drug companies.
This pandemic is driven by the fact our diet is mainly made up of pre-prepared packaged food that’s high in calories, fat, sugar and/or salt; aka ultra-processed food or UPF You might expect that the situation would be similar with food. But it isn’t. There are a number of government bodies which regulate different aspects of our food but the last word in what is healthy or unhealthy comes via the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition, or the .