The UK’s growing addiction to unhealthy food costs a “staggering” £268bn a year, far outstripping the budget for the whole NHS, the first research into the subject has found. Increasing consumption of foods either high in fat, salt and sugar or which have been highly processed is having a “devastating” impact on human health and Britain’s finances. “Far from keeping us well, our current food system, with its undue deference to what is known colloquially as ‘big food’, is making us sick. The costs of trying to manage that sickness are rapidly becoming unpayable,” the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission
