Our Food and Health Systems Fail to Keep Us Healthy

I clearly remember, a few years ago, enjoying what I thought was a healthy snack bar. Halfway through, I looked at the label and realised I had no idea what most of the ingredients were. I had just trusted the claim on the wrapper, trusted the well-known brand, trusted that it must be good for me. It was a lightbulb moment!

Looking back, knowing what I know now, I feel a bit daft to have trusted a company with something as important as my diet, trusting them to keep me healthy and alive. Big food brands exist to make money, not to safeguard our health, so why did I ever think my wellbeing was their priority?

Now walking through a supermarket makes me uneasy, sad, frustrated and a bit angry. The aisles are full of flashy packets and boxes, stacked with snacks and ready meals and very little of it is real food. Even single ingredient foods are sealed in layers of plastic and sprayed with anti-fungal coatings.

It saddens me to see people filling their baskets with things that are probably going to make them sick. Much of what we buy is not food in any traditional sense; it is an edible product, engineered to be cheap, long-lasting and addictive, often at the expense of our health.

I am frustrated because I know that things aren't going to change overnight. History shows us how slowly knowingly harmful ingredients are removed from our food. Take trans fats. Concerns about trans fats date back to the early 1950s when scientists began noticing links between partially hydrogenated oils and raised cholesterol levels.

These fats became common in UK margarines, baked goods and fried foods from the 1950s to the 1970s because they were cheap and had a long shelf life. By the 1990s the evidence was clear that industrial trans fats were linked to heart disease. From the mid-2000s, UK food makers, with guidance from the Food Standards Agency, cut most industrial trans fats from their products.

Today, people consume far less trans fat than in the past, mostly just small amounts that occur naturally. However, unlike some countries, the UK still has no official ban. Trans fats can still be found in certain deep-fried foods, such as doughnuts and chicken nuggets, in some fast food and in commercially baked pastries. (Check labels for partially hydrogenated oils.)

So even though scientists warned decades ago that trans fats were linked to heart disease it took years for governments to restrict or ban them. If something so obviously dangerous could remain in biscuits, margarines and takeaway food for so long, it is worth asking how many other substances are still avoiding scrutiny.

That slow action isn’t just a thing that affects our past, it continues to shape the food landscape we live with now. When warnings take years to turn into change, the result is that harmful ingredients and unhealthy food environments stick around, quietly fuelling today’s epidemics of chronic disease.

Sugar is a clear example of slow action. We’ve known for a long time that too much sugar is bad for our health, yet it’s added to most foods in large quantities, especially those aimed at children (a serving of Coco Pops, followed by a slice of toast and Nutella contains about four teaspoons of sugar, the recommended daily amount for a 4 to 6 year old child is five teaspoons!).

Sugar is added to foods under countless names like syrups, concentrates, fructose, sucrose, or maltose. Even products labelled 'no added sugar' can hide it, making it all too easy to consume far more than we realise.

The consequences of this way of eating are visible everywhere. More than 5.8 million people in the UK have been diagnosed with diabetes, and a further 1.3 million are thought to have type 2 diabetes without yet knowing it. Around 6.3 million more are at increased risk. Together, that means about one in five adults is affected by diabetes or prediabetes.

Treating and managing the disease costs the NHS over £10billion every year, in Scotland alone almost £875million is spent annually, close to five per cent of the national health budget. The cost is not only financial. Being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes at the age of thirty can shorten life by as much as fourteen years. A diagnosis at fifty typically cuts six years off your life and even at sixty-five the loss can still be one or two years.

Despite the huge impact that food has on our health, advice about diet is often absent from medical consultations. Nutrition receives little attention in many medical schools and doctors’ appointments are too short to allow detailed conversations about eating habits. Health systems lean towards quick solutions, such as medication or procedures, rather than preventing illness in the first place. Support from dietitians and nutritionists is limited, and programmes that teach people how to eat well don’t get the funding they need.

In the UK, the healthcare system leans heavily towards treatment rather than prevention, helped along by financial incentives: private healthcare providers and the pharmaceutical industry often earn more from medications and procedures than from helping people stay healthy through better diets. As a result, tackling the effects of poor eating habits tends to take priority over addressing their causes.

Sugar, additives and ultra-processed ingredients have become so common that we barely notice them. Labels are confusing and often hide what is really in the product with phrases like 'no added sugar', 'natural' or 'fortified with vitamins', even though the product is loaded with additives, sweeteners, sugars and preservatives.

Over-processing has stripped much of the natural flavour from food, so manufacturers add sugar, salt and flavourings to make it taste the way we expect. At the same time, it’s lost many of its nutrients, which is one reason the supplement industry is thriving.

Real food should nourish us. It should come from the soil, from trees, from farms and seas. It should not need a long list of ingredients or a label to explain itself. I would love to return to a time when bread meant flour, water, yeast and salt, when vegetables were tasty and meat or fish had not been marinated in chemicals or pumped with sugar. When real food was the norm.

So what can we do? I am not suggesting we should all live on homegrown kale and quinoa, but we do need to rethink our relationship with food. Food should be protected, held to high standards and kept as close to its natural state as possible. We can't rely on big food companies to do this, maintaining proper standards requires us to play an active role.

We should be questioning our diet, looking at what is on our plates and thinking about where it comes from and how it is flavoured. We should also think about who benefits from keeping things as they are! Food is more than fuel or a source of pleasure. It is fundamental to our health and should be treated with the respect it deserves.

So what else can we do? Shopping locally and choosing seasonal produce is a smart investment in your health and it tastes better, too. It also supports farmers, independent businesses and keeps money circulating in your community. Will it cost a little more? Possibly. But (and this might be controversial) many of us could trim our food bills simply by eating a bit less.

We don’t actually need as much as we often eat. Real, whole foods nourish your body, while ultra processed 'fake' foods tend to just fill you up without offering much nutrition. It’s about quality over quantity. You don’t have to eat until you’re full to bursting, just enough to give your body what it truly needs to thrive.

Small changes add up: buying fresh, seasonal produce, cutting back on ultra processed snacks, or cooking more at home can make a real difference over time. In the long run, nourishing yourself through food is far more effective than trying to undo the damage later with medication or medical procedures.

References

• Diabetes UK — Statistics on Diabetes, 2025

• NHS England — Tackling Diabetes Risk, 2025

• Diabetes UK Scotland — Cost of Diabetes Complications, 2024

• University of Cambridge — Life Expectancy and Type 2 Diabetes, 2023

• PubMed — Life Expectancy with Type 2 Diabetes, 2020

• BBC — Doctors Need Nutrition Training, 2018