Looking for healthy: why is it so bizarrely difficult to eat and drink healthily?

Next time you go grocery shopping, secretly take a peek at the baskets and carts of other supermarket visitors. The chances of seeing unhealthy food are high. Very high. But really, are you surprised? 80% of the products in the supermarket are unhealthy. The ‘Looking for healthy’ campaign aims to wake the Netherlands up. Why is it being made so damn difficult to eat and drink healthily? And above all: something needs to be done about this NOW.

The campaign is an initiative of the Diabetes Fund, the Dutch Heart Foundation, the Dutch Digestive Foundation and the Dutch Kidney Foundation. Together, they form the Alliance Nutrition for a Healthy Generation (AVGG). Their ambition? For Dutch youth to be the healthiest in the world by 2040. But if we continue like this, it seems we are heading towards a very different—and unfortunate—outcome. In that case, 60% of our population will be overweight.

To be clear: that is already half of the population. “A tsunami of people with diabetes, cardiovascular disease, kidney damage and digestive diseases is heading our way,” says AVGG chair Diena Halbertsma. Yikes.

Looking for healthy

The future does not look particularly rosy. Action is therefore needed. And that means awareness. Together with three Dutch celebrities—presenters Fidan Ekiz and Renze Klamer and actress Hanne Verboom—the AVGG made a three-part documentary series: ‘Looking for healthy’. Each celebrity investigates a different part of the major problem. Because how exactly did we end up heading towards this future? Why is it being made so ridiculously difficult for us to ‘simply’ eat and drink healthily?

Availability

Fidan Ekiz investigates the unhealthy selection in the supermarket. We wrote about it recently: the vast majority of supermarket products are not included in the Wheel of Five, and most of that food is even ultra-processed. The presenter first speaks with supermarket owner Ed Slooten. He says that ‘it’s not really that bad’. “We don’t necessarily look at whether the selection is healthy or unhealthy, but at what we can earn from it,” he says. Professor of Nutrition and Health Jaap Seidell says we are caught in a negative spiral. The supermarket tempts us with bargains, which are unhealthy nine times out of ten. “Overweight and obesity are normal reactions to an abnormal environment,” he says. Well, what else can you expect when 80% of what is on supermarket shelves is unhealthy?

The supermarket is not the only culprit in this story, by the way. Unhealthy food is everywhere. At petrol stations, train stations, company and school cafeterias… Just look around you.

Price

There is not only a lot of unhealthy food in the supermarket; all that unhealthy food is also considerably cheaper than the healthy selection. Yes, groceries have become insanely more expensive due to inflation anyway. But try comparing healthy and unhealthy products yourself next time you are in the supermarket. Hanne Verboom did so with a can of soup. The can, packed with fillers such as sugar, was much cheaper than the individual ingredients needed to make soup yourself. Even soup producer Michiel Janssen says in the episode that he would advocate making soup yourself instead of buying canned soup. Another shocking detail from the episode: fruit and vegetables have become 40% more expensive in recent years. How is that possible?!

Advertising

Finally, Renze Klamer looks into advertising. Here too, 80 is a devilish number: 80% of the advertisements you see promote unhealthy products. Only 1% puts healthy products in the spotlight. Just think about what that does to children. And, incidentally, to yourself as an adult. “A lot of people think they are not influenced,” says behavioural scientist Frans Folkvord in the episode. But they really are. There is actually nothing you can do about it. It all comes together here: you see unhealthy advertising everywhere, unhealthy food is abundant, and unhealthy food is cheap. No matter how hard you try, in today’s society you can hardly avoid unhealthy food.

Time for action

Now comes the appeal to producers, supermarket owners, advertisers, politicians and everyone who can exert even the slightest influence here: this has to change. Surely we do not want a society in which the vast majority of people are unhealthy and depressed? What will our future look like then? In Renze Klamer’s episode, Frans Folkvord already offered a disturbing glimpse ahead: if we do nothing, it could well be that this generation and those to come will live shorter lives than the generations before us. Let’s please hope it doesn’t come to that. Step 1—awareness—has at least been taken. Hopefully, this will allow us consumers to walk through the supermarket with a different perspective.

Want to learn more about the campaign and watch the episodes? Check out the Healthy Generation website.

Also read:

• This is how supermarkets trick you (and the book Voedingsweetjes will make sure it doesn’t happen anymore)
• This is the unhealthiest sweet and savoury bread topping
• Are fruit and vegetables really cheaper at the market than at the supermarket?

Source and image: press release from De Gezonde Generatie