Extraordinary press conference just now in San Francisco where @SFCityAttorney David Chiu has just announced a lawsuit against the largest manufacturers of Ultra-Processed Foods, including Kraft Heinz, Mondelez, Post Holdings, Coca Cola, Pepsi, General Mills, Nestle USA, Kelloggs, Mars and Con Agra brands...🧵 The video is an incredible watch...starts at 3:00 youtube.com/live/LDCAOkzeH…

Chiu's blistering speech lays out with crystal clarity the case against these companies, their products and their corporate activities.

“Our case is about companies who design food to be harmful and addictive and market their products to maximise profits. Like the tobacco industry they know their products make people sick, but hide the truth from the public, profit from untold billions, and leave Americans to deal with the consequences.”

He compares UPF to tobacco, lead paint, and opioids..

Ultra Processed Food, and the system that produces it, has overtaken tobacco in terms of health and economic harms, and is also the leading cause of plastic pollution, loss of biodiversity and deforestation, and the second leading cause of emissions.
This week @TheLancet published a landmark three-part series on the science, policy and politics of #UPF. thelancet.com/series-do/ultr… In paper 1 we lay out the scientific evidence which shows that a dietary pattern high in UPF does *cause* health harms.
It includes meta-analysis of >100 of the type of studies that linked smoking to cancer, and shows links to 12 different harms including early death.
When combined with experimental studies it is no longer plausible to insist, as the UPF industry does, that these are merely associations. thelancet.com/journals/lance…

This @bmj_latest investigation reveals that more than half the members of the UK government’s Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition (SACN) have conflicts of interest with food companies including Nestlé, Tate & Lyle, and the world’s largest ice cream producer: Unilever🧵

https://twitter.com/bmj_latest/status/1834124820990038100

This is a huge problem because, despite two decades of work from a conflicted SACN, there has been an explosion of suffering and death from diet related disease in the UK.

There are six times as many outdoor ads in the most deprived areas of England as there are in the least deprived.
Extraordinary new report by @adfreecities which shows how much advertising affects health and how it targets low income communities🧵
theguardian.com/media/2024/mar… Marketing is one of the least talked about but most important aspects of the climate and public health crises. These ads are a form of brain pollution creating a wave of diseases ranging from malnutrition to depression.

Where do our calories come from?

I said on @StevenBartlett's podcast that "75% of calories consumed globally come from six companies"

I meant to say that 75% of calories come from six *crops*...but how many (or few) companies handle our food is an interesting question. 🧵 Last year @DeSchutterO, UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, told the @guardian
"A handful of companies control global seed and fertiliser markets, animal genetics, the global grain trade, and food retail."
theguardian.com/environment/20…

The rise in gastrointestinal cancers is one of the most alarming and underreported health crises - and the evidence linking it to Ultra-Processed Food is growing as @devisridhar describes in this excellent piece…🧵
theguardian.com/commentisfree/… One of the things this piece does elegantly is hint at what may be a very complex mechanism. Very few of the additives are likely to be directly carcinogenic, instead the real problem may be gut inflammation and microbiome changes. This is especially likely for liver cancer…

My five part prescription:
1. Treat the companies that make and sell Ultra-Processed Food like we treat tobacco companies. They shouldn’t fund health research or contribute to health policy. The scientists & medics they pay shouldn’t have a voice when it comes to health… 🧵

https://twitter.com/charlottelytton/status/1683029732445519872

Of course policymakers need to speak to industry and understand their constraints like I did for my book. But they shouldn’t take money.

I’ve read this article so you don’t have to (apart from the title).

This position is wrong scientifically and to publish it does real harm to those who live with overweight and obesity, especially children.

Thread on willpower and weight…🧵
dailymail.co.uk/femail/article… The prevalence of obesity began to rise in the late 1970s across the whole US population. The rate and amount of weight gain varied a bit by age, sex and ethnicity but in all groups most people became heavier at about the same time. Here’s some actual data thelancet.com/journals/lanpu…

“For every health and developmental outcome breastfeeding confers significant benefits, but what’s the point of advising breastfeeding when patients live in a context where it’s nearly impossible.”

@drguddisingh speaking at the launch of @thelancet 2023 series on #breastfeeding Katie Gilbert, managing director at M&C Saatchi World Services says that this is about caregivers being misled by an industry that spends over $3 billion on marketing every year. “People need to feel angry about this”

At some point in all our lives we will be kept alive by a nurse. Morally and practically we should pay them properly. Yet my nursing colleagues have had a decade of real terms pay cuts - I support the #nursingstrike - it’s not about politics it’s about public health. Some say… …that nurses are paid above average wage.
1. They should be: it’s incredibly skilful work with enormous responsibilities
2. This is a nursing STAFF strike which includes many people who are paid way below average and who have been terribly affected by the economic crisis

Food addiction is scientifically unfashionable (for good reasons) but lots of us do feel addicted to Ultra Processed Food - aka UPF. So @xandvt and I made a series about addition, food and trying to change. It starts today on @BBCRadio4 and @BBCSounds bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00… We spoke to @GilesYeo about why Xand is 20kg heavier than me and how genes affect our weight through our brains and behaviour - buy his amazing book here simonandschuster.com/books/Gene-Eat…

Lots of truth in this video - colossal damage to business, mental health and treatment of non-COVID disease. But these are the exact reasons NOT to release lockdown early. Crushing community transmission before gradual release is the best hope of avoiding further lockdowns.

https://twitter.com/JamesMelville/status/1363060003104563200

James presents a similar logic to the Great Barrington Declaration - shield those who want to be shielded. But without any detailed consideration of the hard data about what this looks like.

I have two daughters so I was interested in this study. If I had a son (and I lived in the Netherlands) I would have a 20.12% chance of divorce by the time he was 18. Turn that son into a daughter and the rate of marriage collapse skyrockets 🚀 to a staggering...

https://twitter.com/theeconomist/status/1357776021743939587

...20.48%.

An absolute risk increase of 0.36%.

Without exhaustively going through the methodological flaws it’s very clear that this isn’t important. Divorce rates whether you have boys or girls are the functionally identical.

The K number describes the variability in the number of people an infected person infects! So pathogens with low K numbers (like SARS-CoV-2) are spread by a SMALL number of infected people who pass the virus to a LARGE number of others. This is really important...thread

https://twitter.com/jennifertamu/status/1363043046284288000

For the influenza which caused the 1918 pandemic, K is around 1. So 60% of people spread the virus. Sars, Mers and COVID-19 have K around 0.1 so only around 30% of people are responsible for most of the spread of the virus. Large outbreaks are caused by a few super-spreaders.

This is not an important study. Neither its findings nor its methods are clear. It is flawed to the point where it has no use.
I’m sympathetic to David Davis not understanding cluster randomisation, bias in trials, t-tests and Kaplan Meier analyses, but...

https://twitter.com/DavidDavisMP/status/1360647462197878791

...I’m not clear why he would share something he didn’t understand and follow it with such dogmatic assertions about policy?

GROWN UPS: If the humans in your care aren't at school for some reason then every day STARTING TOMORROW at 2:30pm @xandvt and I will be live on Youtube, IG and Facebook. First topic will be BONES🦴💀. THERE IS HOMEWORK!!!🙄... As pre-homework please FORCE your children to watch Episode 1 of “Do Try This At Home” on @BBCiPlayer.
Ideally start the experiment but we do get that you *may* be a little stretched at the moment.
bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episod…

If you’re worried about the delayed second dose of the COVID vaccines here’s a thread.

I live with my wonderful mother-in-law (below): she is high risk and has had a single dose. She's hoping for another but is worried about a delay. You may feel the same...
#VaccineStrategy I’ve also received a single dose of the Pfizer vaccine and since COVID gave my identical twin brother a serious heart problem I have a dog in the fight (two dogs including the MiL). I don’t want this virus and I have to go to work in a hospital where there is a lot of it about.

A piece in the @nytimes today asserted that the UK “quietly updated its vaccination playbook to allow for a mix and match regimen".

This is both strictly true and entirely misleading.
#mixandmatch #vaccine
Thread... nytimes.com/live/2021/01/0… It is NOT now UK policy to give whatever vaccine is at hand for the second shot. But it is an option for a tiny number of individuals where it is not known which vaccine was given first.

Infant formula is a £50 billion industry. It’s growing because manufacturers are using the kind of marketing techniques you might expect from the tobacco industry to exploit COVID fears.
Here’s our publication in @TheLancet
and a thread
thelancet.com/journals/lance… There are many examples of companies using COVID to reduce breastfeeding rates but one of the best (worst) is a YouTube channel “facilitated “ (their word) by Danone called #VoiceofExperts.

If you haven’t GREAT barrington declaration I can’t recommend it. It’s tough read. So great, so grand, the words don’t fit easily into a human eyeball. The tone is subtly repellant but it’s also unkind, fraudulent, political, arrogant and entirely pointless.

https://twitter.com/stuartjdneil/status/1315052261639323648

Here’s the declaration - a page of assertions written by three Profs who have the trappings of credibility.

Fake news kills during a pandemic but wild 5G conspiracies may be less dangerous than the lowering of standards in mainstream science. Friday saw the most egregious example of this so far -
"Gilead drug shows positive signs in early testing" from @FT
ft.com/content/c59a38… The Washington post used the word "hopeful" in their headline.
washingtonpost.com/business/2020/…