British consumers complicit in forty-year ‘healthy eating’ failure, new study suggests

‘Healthy eating’ campaigns have largely failed in Britain for the last four decades because consumers have adapted confusing advice, and incorporated fast and convenience foods into self-defined ‘balanced’ lifestyles, a new study argues.

Supermarkets and food manufacturers have been excessively blamed for Britain’s unhealthy eating habits since the 1980s, according to Cambridge historian Dr Katrina-Louise Moseley.

In an article published in Contemporary British History, Moseley argues that far from being passive victims of manipulation in this period, consumers were ‘complicit’ in long-term behavioural shifts, proactively selecting, rejecting and sweetening advice from the government, the food industry and the media to fit their circumstances and to satisfy their appetites.

Please find the complete article by Tom Almeroth-Williams here.

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