Eating too much red meat may mean an increased risk of cancer but it's sugar that poses a far greater threat
My in-laws were not happy. Not happy at all. Last week, the World Health Organisation published a report about the link between red processed meat and cancer. What the scientists behind the report did not realise was that in Spain they had unwittingly insulted a national treasure: Iberico ham.
My in-laws, like most Spaniards, take their food very seriously. On a half-term break last weekend, I drove several hours across the Spanish countryside in a family convoy until we found exactly the right wood to pick exactly the right wild mushrooms. Back in the village where my wife Miriam grew up, we spent hours discussing, preparing, cooking and eating the mushrooms. And eating lots of delicious, thinly sliced Iberico ham too.
Around the table the report was greeted with disbelief. Jamón bad for you? Come off it. The scientists, it was concluded, need to get out a bit more - less time in the laboratory, and more time relishing the delights of Spanish cuisine.
Just as any Spaniard is addicted to jamón, most Brits these days are addicted to sugar. The problem is, most of us don't even realise it.
The average Brit consumes a pound of sugar every week - and it's not just fizzy drinks and chocolate. What is particularly insidious about our addiction to sugar is that it is present in the vast majority of food products we eat - hiding in plain sight.
In his remarkable documentary That Sugar Film, released last year, Australian film-maker Damon Gameau revealed the full impact of sugar on his countrymen and women's diets. His mission in the film was to eat the equivalent of 40 teaspoons of sugar a day - apparently the Aussie average - without trying any obviously sugar-laden sweets or soft drinks.
On his first day he found he had consumed half that amount over breakfast - and he only had cereal, yoghurt and apple juice. On one occasion he ordered a fruit smoothie - advertised as a health food - and found it contained 35 teaspoons in one cup.
The upshot is there for all to see. An obesity epidemic. Diabetes. Liver damage. Heart disease. We are eating our way to an early grave and most of us don't even realise it.
How did we get here? Ironically, it is in large part because we tried to get healthy. In the Seventies, evidence about the impact of fatty foods on our health changed the food industry and sugar came into its own. It was used as a taste replacement for fat - as was its cousin corn syrup, which lurks under pseudonyms such as "glucose-fructose syrup" or "isoglucose".
We then started to exhibit classic addictive behaviour - the more we ate, the more we wanted. As a result, since 1990, sugar consumption in Britain has increased by nearly a third.
Now, finally, we are beginning to have a proper debate about what we can and should do about it. A recent report by Public Health England proposed a number of measures, as has the ever- compelling Jamie Oliver.
Reducing two-for-one deals, clamping down on advertising targeted at children, reining in the marketing of high-sugar food and drinks, reducing sugar content and portion sizes, and introducing a tax on sugary drinks and food have all been called for.
I always used to take a classical liberal view of these things - if you want to mess up your own health you should be free to do so. It's not for the state to tell you how to live. I was even ambivalent about the smoking ban when it was debated nearly a decade ago.
But I've become progressively more illiberal when it comes to sugar, precisely because so much of it is eaten involuntarily - or at least unknowingly. If you don't know what you're really eating - or you have to have a PhD to interpret the information on the packaging - it's harder to exercise true freedom of choice.
So, much as Jamie Oliver's campaigning zeal persuaded me some years ago of the need for healthy, universal free school meals for young children at school, I'm now convinced action is needed to help us kick our sugar habit. Stopping targeted advertising at children seems like a no-brainer. As do limits on heavy-handed marketing, reducing portion sizes and giving consumers simpler descriptions so that we can see how many teaspoons of sugar are contained in the cereals or soft drinks we buy for our children.
Inevitably, the proposal for a sugar tax has attracted the greatest attention so far. It's also the one where the effects are most open to debate. Some studies have suggested that we'd need to clobber sugary products with a pretty high tax to have any meaningful effect. It could have a disproportionate effect on poorer families. In France a new tax initially led to a drop in sugar consumption which then went up again. Belgium and Denmark have recently rejected a sugar tax, yet in Mexico a "soda tax" seems to have had some impact.
But just because there's an ongoing debate about a sugar tax, that shouldn't be an excuse for inaction on other fronts. Public Health England suggested, in any event, that changes to the way sugary products are marketed could have the biggest impact of all - some "end of aisle" displays in supermarkets have seen an increase in sales by as much as 50 per cent.
Whatever the solution, it is a real breakthrough that we are finally having the great sugar debate. Government action must now follow. If we managed to introduce free school lunches in the last Parliament we can take action against sugar in this one.
I reckon my in-laws will, over time, reconcile themselves to the idea that there are some downsides to the delights of Iberico ham.
But they'll keep eating jamón, just as we'll all keep eating sugar. We'll just have to have that much less of both.
