Expert Letter: Target Ultra-Processed Food, Not Fat, to Fight Obesity

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James Capon responds to an editorial on the health select committee’s call for radical action to regulate food markets

The MPs’ report mentioned in your editorial is welcome and overdue ( The Guardian view on obesity: put public health before food industry pressure, 15 July ). The health select committee is right to clarify that obesity is an engineered outcome, not a failure of willpower. But there’s a flaw running through decades of British food policy that risks being repeated: the “ high in fat, salt or sugar ” framework itself.

“High in fat, salt or sugar” combines three nutrients as though they carry equivalent blame. However, the evidence on weight gain and type 2 diabetes points to sugar and refined carbohydrates as the primary drivers, not fat. Salt matters, chiefly when combined with sugar, but the body needs salt to function. Fat matters because without it many fat-soluble vitamins will just pass through our bodies. We need no sugar at all.

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