How Can Families Limit the Ultra‑Processed Foods Their Kids Eat? (Your Radical Questions with Thomasina Miers)

0:00Amol Rajan:This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. What they are ultimately trying to create is going to replace humans. What it's doing is par-boiling the inside of your brain. This could be a turning point in the history of social media. Welcome to The Interface, the show that explores how tech is rewiring your week and your world. Coming up next in our latest episode, we look at the secret meetings at the world's biggest AI summit. the truth about the mystery of a brain-melting weapon, and the lawsuit that could shift the future of social media. Listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

0:46Amol Rajan:Hello and welcome to Your Radical Questions. This is where I put your questions to one of our magnificent radical guests. And she was very radical. Go back and listen to Thursday's episode. You're going to hear a lot of radical ideas. Joining me today is the cook, writer and restaurateur. Is it restaurateur or restaurateur?

1:04Thomasina Miers:Restaurateur.

1:05Amol Rajan:Restaurateur.

1:06Thomasina Miers:To restore.

1:07Amol Rajan:Restaurateur. That's what it means.

1:08Thomasina Miers:You see, the French word for restaurateur comes from the word to restore, which is what good food does to you.

1:14Amol Rajan:Oh, what an advert for your entire existence. That is, of course, the voice of Thomasina Myers. She won the first ever season of UK MasterChef in 2005. Two years after that, she set up a restaurant called Oaxaca, which has been, can I call it, wildly successful. You're now 14 restaurants, 650 people in your employ, though not without its challenges, as you were explaining in our podcast release last Thursday, but also a hugely influential author and campaigner and charity founder. Because you and Henry Demelby and others set up chefs in schools when?

1:46Thomasina Miers:About six years ago.

1:47Amol Rajan:About six years ago, okay. We've had a lot of questions for you, and this isn't from hungry people that want to know how to do a delicious Mexican recipe. This is people who care passionately about our food system. Are you feeling ready for some radical questions?

2:00Thomasina Miers:I'm ready, I'm ready.

2:01Amol Rajan:Let's have your radical answers. This is our first question, and it's a big thank you to Helen from the Wirral.

2:07Thomasina Miers:A lot of the problems with our food systems and nutrition issues comes from our modern lifestyle. Too much time spent at work, too much focus on productivity,

2:17Amol Rajan:manipulation of our food by big food. Do you think the only solution is government-level intervention? If so, how do we make this a priority for our government? Also, having worked in the hospitality industry for over 20 years, I can see that the lack of respect for this profession, especially for those working front of house, has resulted in an unstable, poorly paid working environment that is often not seen as a serious career. What ideas does Tomasina have for changing this and making hospitality an attractive career prospect, especially in the AI generation where human contact will become more important than ever?

2:55Amol Rajan:What a fantastic question, Helen. Thank you so much for that. I should say, as I'm sure you will have heard already because you might well have heard Tomasina on the main edition of this podcast on Thursday. There are lots of radical ideas specifically for the government. But you know what? Just in case some people are coming to this podcast without having heard that one. Let's have them, Tomasino. You've got lots of them, not least. Well, I'll let you do it. VAT, green grocers, school, social canteens and on and on.

3:18Thomasina Miers:But I think what Helen says is absolutely spot on. There has to be regulation. And I would, we didn't really talk about health levies. So that is taxing. Taxing. Let's talk about taxing ultra processed food. So if you are on a radio programme, you will get hounded down for talking about taxing cheap food because of the effect on people with low incomes. But I would argue if you put a proper health levy on unhealthy food and use that very same money to put better food into the pockets or the hands of people on low incomes, then that is a really good solution.

3:50Amol Rajan:So what they call a hypothecated tax. In other words, you raise the money with a specific connected related sort of spending idea. You know in advance how you're going to use the money you raise.

4:00Thomasina Miers:Yeah, exactly. And the sugar levy on drinks has been really, really good.

4:05Amol Rajan:No one in the UK is campaigning at the next election to undo the sugar tax.

4:09Thomasina Miers:No, no one's campaigning to that. So that's really interesting. But in the run up to it, there was so much campaigning against it and how dreadful it would be. So if you talk to anyone in Big Food, they will argue you don't need to regulate us or self-regulate. But that basically hasn't worked and it isn't working. so what is interesting as well is that the ban on advertising junk food has not translated so much onto social media I don't think but I would argue regulation is absolutely the answer and Helen's spot on now the other thing she talked about is the status of food and restaurants in society and I would argue that the government approach to food in this country and to restaurants kind of mirrors that.

4:49Thomasina Miers:So if you, again, if you look to Europe, Spain, Portugal, Italy, where the consumption of ultra-pressed food is really low, but the levels of restaurants is really high. They, you know, they do low VAT, which we talked about on the main programme. They really support restaurants because they see it as part of a social canteen structure where people, even on low incomes, can afford to go out to eat. So I think we've got to radically change how we see restaurants and how we see working restaurants. Because in Italy and Spain and France, a job in restaurants is seen as a full-time career and it's seen as an amazing career because it is an amazing career.

5:28Thomasina Miers:You know, you get off on the happiness of other people. You're producing food that makes people happy. You're producing wonderful environments where men and women meet each other first time and get married, where you meet up with old school friends you haven't seen, where you take your aging parents out to supper and you give them pleasure. We've lost sight of the fact that food is intrinsically about pleasure. And if we put it on the pedestal that needs to be, I think maybe start fixing some of these things.

5:56Amol Rajan:On the regulation and tax, I should say that in the main episode, there are some specific things that you suggest. For instance, cutting VAT from 20 to 10 percent on restaurants. You would make a distinction between restaurants that serve, can prove they serve very, very low amounts of ultra processed food versus those that serve more. You've also got this social canteens idea, a bit like in Europe. And you like the idea of a greengrocer on every high street incentivised to set up there because they've got 0 % business rates, which sounds weirdly affordable. Because if the greengrocer didn't exist beforehand, then you're not going to necessarily lose a lot from the business rates, as it were.

6:30Amol Rajan:You don't get, but you might get better outcomes. Thank you so much, Helen. Really appreciate your question. The next one is in and it's from Olivia. I'm the mother of two autistic children who will only process foods. I use the Yucca app to try and choose the least bad choices. I have regular discussions with a hospital-based dietitian. And I model what I would call healthy eating with a diet full of fresh fruits and vegetables. The discussion around UFPs does cause me and many parents of seven children quite a lot of stress when we're really doing our best to keep our children fed. I've tried contacting others in the spotlight talking about this issue, but no one will respond.

7:11Amol Rajan:so I guess my question is what advice do you have for parents of send children who really only eat processed foods? Are we at risk of demonising foods when for some children fed is better than not fed? Thank you. Olivia thank you so much for that thoughtful question. To be honest I haven't given that enough thought.

7:30Thomasina Miers:I love that question and I love it for many reasons but mostly Olivia I love it because the gem, the kernel for setting up chefs in schools was a conversation I had with a head teacher and her chef who won an award at the OFM, Observer Food Monthly Food Awards. I mean, 15 years ago now, I was a judge and this incredible head teacher had transformed the way the autistic children or the children's special needs in her school in West London had eaten because she put a trained Brazilian chef into her school kitchen and it had completely transformed what had become. I mean, if you have children on the spectrum, you will understand that food and feeding them is this kind of awful, neurotic, tense moment where you're, as a parent or as a teacher, desperately trying to get nutrition into them.

8:20Thomasina Miers:But they've got so many, you know, there's so many issues with eating, with texture, with what it looks like. And so it is a really, really critical time. What this head teacher did is she put a trained chef into the school kitchen. And, you know, the chef, a very, the motivation of a chef is to make food that tastes and looks as delicious as possible. And so the motivation of this amazing Brazilian guy who went in the kitchen was to make all this delicious looking and tasting food, the colours, the textures. And over time, these kids, their mealtimes were completely transformed by this wonderful food.

8:55Thomasina Miers:So I would say to Olivia, it might be that right now her children are only eating processed foods. But I don't know what Olivia's background is. I think getting those skills back into the kitchen, prioritising cooking is so important because often it's just the way food is presented. And I would argue that children will eat. It's a very complicated subject, but children start consuming different flavours when they're in your womb. That transforms to when you're breastfeeding, they get all sorts of different flavours. And then when they're starting to wean. and so from the word go from them and their tiny tiny dots they start taking different flavors but if you only feed them a very narrow diet now i don't know what olivia's children are what her particular circumstance i only know that the very basis of chefs and schools was started by putting this wonderful man into a school of special needs children and he transformed their whole experience so i think i would argue that it's about the skills and it's how you present food i have found

10:00Amol Rajan:is a parent of four kids mine are nine six four and two there's just a huge because there's so much food in the house so much what you do at the weekend especially if you're indoors because it's raining as it always seems to be so much of your life is revolves around food and i've had this huge thing about trying to make food fun and my son um a very moving thing this christmas just passed uh which is that for the first time he arranged for me and my wife to get a present and he gave us a cookbook and it was a cookbook of a chef who pops up in various gaming universes that he and his mates are interested in.

10:31Amol Rajan:And this has been transformative because actually it's a really exciting thing. There's this cool chef who does cool viral things, which we don't necessarily watch, but he's got a cookbook. And yes, I've totally bought into the merch of this young influencer, but whatever. Actually, there's like 300 pages of really exciting. Some of them are like not the healthiest things, like chocolate and orange pancakes, but other things are like sauces and cool things with really nutritious food. And it's become a real thing. What should we cook this week? And I don't want to mention that one health influencer because this is slightly susceptible to that thing where a bit like with kids' books, you know, celebrities write them and everyone else gets annoyed.

11:03Amol Rajan:But I'm sure there's loads and loads and loads of recipe books for kids, which I've just found as a parent. And I'm not suggesting this wouldn't necessarily work for you, Olivia, because send is a very specific set of issues. But making food fun by saying, this Saturday we're going to do this recipe, it's amazing. And the kids are really up for it. And actually they get excited about it and then they're part of this whole process. So I would recommend that. Thank you very much, Olivia, for that question. Really, really appreciate it. Here's another question from Sarah in Cheshire. Sarah says, would it be helpful to make food technology or cookery a compulsory part of the school curriculum in the same way that physical education continues until age 16?

11:39Amol Rajan:Does she, does Tomasino think that this could be one part of a national strategy to embed the knowledge and skills they need to be able to have more nutritious diets as they go into adulthood and to try and level the playing field for those who may not be taught such skills at home? Sarah, thank you for that. Two things come to mind. One is, whatever happened to home economics? Wasn't that a thing? Maybe it's a terrible title for a great thing. Actually, three things come to mind. A, whatever happened to home economics? B, there was a national strategy. It was called the National Food Strategy.

12:08Amol Rajan:It was written by a friend of Tom Sten's called Henry Dimbleby. And not much happened as a result of that. And that's more to do with our politics than to do with the desire for a national strategy. And the third thing that comes to mind is that I got a B in food tech at GCSE level. And I was so annoyed because I thought it was one of my strongest subjects. HACCP, hazard analysis and critical control points. And I got a B and I love doing food tech. And I'm still a little bit sore about it. Anyway, you don't want to hear from me, Sarah. You want to hear from Thomasina.

12:36Thomasina Miers:Why is it even called food tech? Why isn't it just called cooking? I mean, literally, why would you take the pleasure out of the most pleasurable thing ever?

12:43Amol Rajan:I'm going to answer that because cooking is a skill rather than an academic subject. And there's a difference between schooling and skilling. and schooling traditionally owes more to a kind of exalted idea of pedagogy where it's about kind of bodies of knowledge which you transfer between the generations rather than skilling which is practical vocational work.

13:04Thomasina Miers:Well anyway I think absolutely cooking should be in every school. The chefs in chefs in school schools are chef educators so the ultimate thing is that they teach cooking to all the kids in those schools.

13:15Amol Rajan:Chefs in schools being the charity that you and Henry Dim will be author of the National Food Strategy set up about six years ago.

13:20Thomasina Miers:Which should be in every school in the country. So we're in 150 so far. So let's get moving government and let's get us in every school because it's such vital work. And we can change the whole food culture of this country with the work we do. So I would say let's get back to cooking in classes. I mean, if I was probably a radical prime minister, I might even say a national service. Get every single young person into a restaurant kitchen for six months because you learn how to cook. You learn how to work as a team. You learn how important it is to be a dependent part of the team. You learn how to run a business.

13:53Thomasina Miers:You learn hospitality. That is the art of looking after people, seeing their needs, looking after other human beings. So, yeah, that's a radical idea. Let's get cooking or working in restaurants on the national service.

14:06Amol Rajan:I spent so many years as a waiter at this place called Common Ground in Wandsworth Common in South London. And me and my mate Simon, this is back in the day, kids, trust me, there were these things called newspapers and they were actually things called local newspapers. and I think it was called Lute. Was it Lute? Yes. Lute. Was it called Lute? And Simon saw an advert. Hey, Simon, if you're listening, shout out to you, mate. I hope you're doing well. He saw an advert for kind of scrubbing the floors of this new restaurant and it's called Common Ground. It was on the tennis courts in Once With Common in South London and then we became the waiters there, the first waiters there.