The Worst Sugar Pushers of all - Health Food Stores

Julian Graves Responds to 'Sugar Pushers' Post (Worst Sugar Pushers Part 2)
The Worst Sugar Pushers of All Part 3 - Holland and Barrett Takes Centre Stage

UK-based health food stores like Holland and Barrett and Julian Graves are selling garbage to us. These retailers masquerade as health food vendors but are no less cynically exploiting the junk food market than vilified organisations like McDonalds. Sure, these ‘health food’ stores also sell nuts, dried fruits, supplements and sundry other harmless products, but they also sell confectionary.

I am interested to know whether there is a similar phenomenon in the US or elsewhere. I am visiting the US next week and will be sure to check it out.

This is what you find in the UK: healthy products featuring prominently around the store – bags of nuts, dried fruits, seeds and so on - but equally prominent, and sometimes mixed in with these products so that the layout implies no obvious distinction, are bags of confectionary. Yogurt-coated nuts or raisins are favourites, and whilst these at least contain a natural food, nevertheless the coating is usually made mostly of sugar. In some cases – as with Julian Graves – you find products made almost entirely from sugar.

Obviously these retailers are not breaking any laws. Apparently, they are entitled to position themselves as health food stores and yet sell food which by any reasonable definition is unhealthy; and please, if anyone from any of the stores is thinking of responding with the phrase we suggest customers enjoy these products as occasional treats as part of a balanced and nutritious diet, then don’t bother. This has no relevance here. By positioning yourself as a health food store and selling unhealthy food alongside healthy food, you are implicitly indicating that the unhealthy food is also healthy; and I know you have the ingredients on the back – but many people do not read or understand these labels, and you know it.

The thing is, I can picture them in the marketing meeting. The cynicism is breathtaking.

-Bob, we’re not making enough money on nuts – what can we do?
-Well sir, we could start selling those sugar-coated nuts that make us more profit.
-But people might not buy them, Bob.
-Why not, sir?
-Well, because they’re coated in sugar. It has something of a reputation for not being healthy.
Long pause.
-Sir – what if we added a small amount of yogurt and called them ‘yogurt-coated nuts?’ People will convince themselves they are healthy.
With growing excitement and conviction:
-...and the fact they are in our health food store, and located near these other genuinely healthy foods will seal the deal! Bob, you’re a genius. Give yourself a raise.
-Thank you sir.

The worst part is that they prey on our biggest weakness - weakness. We want to believe that by eating yogurt-coated nuts or raisins we are being healthy. We want to believe that they taste so good just because they do, and not because they are 1% yogurt, 99% sugar.

You might say it is naive to think that health food stores are any less driven by the bottom line than other stores. If people want to buy this food, stores will sell them. The products they stock merely reflect what we want to eat.

However I disagree. By choosing to enter the ‘health food’ market, these stores have taken on an unwritten burden of responsibility. Their activities now come under the same ethical umbrella as medicine, and as such they are required to operate with the same transparency and respect for their customers. I don’t care whether they are legally obliged to do so and I don’t care whether their spokespeople are able to worm their way out of criticism with gibberish and sophistry. They know what they are doing and we know what they are doing, so the only conclusion we can draw from the fact they continue is that they have nothing but contempt for the people they serve.

See Also:
Julian Graves Responds to 'Sugar Pushers' Post

For more background on why I feel so strongly about the inclusion of sugar in our foods read We’re all Junkies.

The cereal industry is another hot bed of sugar pushers – check out Drop that Spoon from Ross Enamait's blog. I love the quote “If you currently eat cereal, consider eating the box instead.”

Also of note is this recent advertising campaign for the sugar-laden Special K, encouraging us to eat not one, but TWO bowls per day, replacing two meals.

Admittedly the sugar issue is more complicated than making ‘refined sugar’ the only bad guy. Nevertheless, see this evidence for the dangers of refined sugar. If you don’t like the technical stuff, you could do a lot worse than just avoiding that and eating fresh food.

But if you do want to know the full skinny, check out Modern Forager’s excellent explanation here.

…and Dr Eades’ piece on the medical implications.

If you want to read one testimony that supports the notion of sugar as an addictive substance, check out Fit Shack’s Ban the Refined Sugar Experiment.

Here is a post on Diet Blog that for me epitomises what we are up against. It’s a list of healthy snacks being suggested for kids on journeys. Number 9 on the list? Boiled sweets. When I read this I almost had an aneurism.

And finally, a superb rant from Mount Baker Cross-Fit about the shame of so much sugar being in the foods our kids eat.

See Also:
Julian Graves Responds to 'Sugar Pushers' Post (Worst Sugar Pushers Part 2)
The Worst Sugar Pushers of All Part 3 - Holland and Barrett Takes Centre Stage
New York - Limited Cake Porn but Plenty of Sugar Pushers
New York Part 2 – Another Sugar Pusher and Cake Security Threat
Cigarettes, Sugar and our Innate Short-Termism