Headlines are what matter.
Who but the geeky boy with pebble-thick glasses ever reads the small print of the article? No-one.
The Commons’ Environmental Audit Committee wants the government to tackle the UK’s “unhealthy and environmentally damaging food system”. In headline terms the report says: “Food is unhealthy. It’s bad for you.”
In our minds we recognise this is an incomplete statement. And yet…
This is the culmination of a trend that has been apparent for some time. People endlessly bang on about obesity. They obsess about a restricted range of ‘healthy’ foods. The net effect is slowly but surely to move food from the positive to the negative side of the ledger.
“Be afraid, be very afraid” comes from the 1986 movie The Fly. In The Fly a brilliant but eccentric scientist begins to transform into a giant man/fly hybrid after one of his experiments goes horribly wrong.
Ill-informed public debate has gone horribly wrong. It has transformed food from a necessary good into a threatening bad.
And that’s something all food companies must fear.