Junk food, junk statistics

A shock report in the Guardian highlights claims of the immense cost to the British economy of health problems resulting from poor diets.

The UK’s growing addiction to unhealthy food costs £268bn a year, far outstripping the budget for the whole NHS, the first research into the subject has found. The increased consumption of foods 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 (FFCC) report says.

The £268bn figure has emerged from the first academic research looking at the cost of Britain’s increasing consumption of food that, according to the government’s system of assessing nutritional quality, is deemed unhealthy.

However, such an astronomical figure immediately raises suspicion that it might be a tad exaggerated, and indeed needs to be taken with a substantial pinch of salt (which of course is bad for you). It also seems to have been subject to considerable inflation, having risen from a claimed £27 billion in 2017 through £98 billion in 2021 to £268 billion now. It also seems a suspiciously exact figure. Why not quote it as £270 billion?

Any figure of costs such as this cannot be taken in isolation, but needs to be compared with something else. The alternative is not doing nothing, but doing something different. In a similar way, figures are often bandied about for the costs to society of using fossil fuels, but fail to consider what the actual result would be from not doing so.

It also commits the frequent sin of public health messaging of failing to acknowledge that people can gain any enjoyment from activities they disapprove of. The fact that people actually enjoy eating burgers and crisps in preference to grilled locusts and steamed kale needs to be considered as a benefit and weighed in the equation.

Christopher Snowdon has looked into this in more depth and reached the unsurprising conclusion that these figures have indeed been plucked out of the air by people with an axe to grind. The Food, Farming and Countryside Commission is not some kind of official body, but a private pressure group run by an individual called Tim Jackson who has a clear anti-capitalist agenda.

In the absence of any firm evidence, Jackson simply assumes that 33% of all long term health conditions in Britain are caused by poor diet because that’s what one study attributed to “metabolic risk”. Metabolic dysfunction is extremely common among the elderly — Jackson says that “70% of adults over 65 suffer from one or more metabolic condition” — and while it is linked to obesity and diet, it is also linked to medication, genes, stress, physical inactivity and other lifestyle factors, as well as old age itself. Jackson ignores the other risk factors and for the purposes of his cost estimate blames every case on “the current food system”.

This makes the maths nice and simple. He takes 70 per cent of what the UK spends on healthcare, social care and disability benefit welfare and divides it by three. This gives him a total of £92 billion in direct costs to the government. He then adds less tangible costs, including “human costs” and lost productivity. “Human costs” depend entirely on whatever arbitrary figure you put on a year of life and are the Get Out of Jail Free card of health economists who want to make it look like personal choices impose a burden on society. Jackson simply nicks the figure of £60 billion from the report commissioned by Tony Blair’s think tank (and paid for by Novo Nordisk) last year.

So, in fact, the figure is entirely made up, and does not deserve to be given any credence. I’m not denying that poor diets do impose some costs on society and the health service, but the real figure is likely to be several orders of magnitude smaller. It is also questionable to what extent this can be addressed through the usual public health playbook of taxes, restrictions and bans. But no doubt it will be gleefully used in future as a stick to beat us with.

And it seems that we are regressing to a medieval worldview where illnesses are blamed on people’s moral failings rather than being attributed to disease and infection.

Bavarian bounty

Last Autumn, there was a bout of excitement on Twitter over the appearance of the Kalea Wiesn-Tragerl ten-pack of Bavarian festival beers as a special offer in Lidl. There was something of a feeding frenzy over trying to get hold of one and, as supplies seemed to be fairly limited, many people were disappointed, including myself.

This year, the same pack made a reappearance, again priced at £24.99 for ten 500ml bottles of beers varying between 5.4% and 6.3% ABV, which is pretty good value, although oddly it was not made available until the middle of October. This time, supplies seemed to be more generous, and I succeeded in getting my hands on one. Having now sampled them all, I thought I would offer some tasting notes.

Boak and Bailey wrote about this pack last year. I’m perhaps rather more enthusiastic about the overall style than they were, but they make the important point that these are beers that very much arise from a particular region and season of the year. Each year, in the early Autumn, towns and cities across Bavaria stage their own folk festival, and the local brewery produces a special beer, stronger than their normal ones, to celebrate. But only the six Munich breweries are allowed to call it “Oktoberfestbier”.

• Bischofshof – Original Festbier (5.4%) BB 14/02/25: Standard mid-gold colour, deep and persistent head, carbonation noticeably less vigorous than some. Relatively crisp flavour, with subdued maltiness and a slight fruity note. One of the better ones, and quite distinctive. Had a more contemporary and stylish label than some of the other more elaborate “Gothic” designs.

• Erl Bräu – Erlkönig Festbier( (6.1%) BB 28/01/25: Pale gold in colour, probably the lightest of the batch, although one of the strongest. Thin but persistent head, vigorous carbonation. Fairly subtle in flavour and not overtly malty, with a dry aftertaste, although a fuller feel developed as it warmed up.

• Ettl Bräu Teisnacher – 1543 Festmärzen (5.4%) BB 03/05/25: This one is labelled as “Naturtrüb”, meaning it still has some yeast in suspension (although not bottle-conditioned). Allowed it plenty of time to settle, and managed to pour with only a mild haze. Dark gold colour, deep head which subsided after a while, but persisted down the glass, strong carbonation. Full, rounded, malty flavour, considerably richer than some of the other beers. I agree with Boak & Bailey that it had “just a dab of welcome rustic character.”

• Falter – Pichelsteiner Festbier (5.9%) BB 28/12/24: Standard golden lager colour, good carbonation but didn’t form a dense head. Characteristic rich, sweetish flavour, with a bit of dry maltiness creeping in later. Good, but not an outstanding example. Possibly a bit lacking in freshness.

• Hofbräu – Oktoberfestbier (6.3%) BB 27/03/25: People may debate the merits of the various Munich Oktoberfestbiers, but surely this is the exemplar of the style. Mid-gold colour, dense, lasting head, vigorous carbonation. Rich, full, malty flavour, but with a distinct dryness there too; not excessively sweet. Splendid stuff!

• Hohenthanner Schlossbrauerei – Märzen Festbier (5.6%) BB 26/03/25: Light copper in colour, more like the traditional Märzen hue. Thin but persistent head, decent carbonation. Sweetish, malty flavour with a hint of caramel.

• Kuchlbauer – Gillamoos Bier (5.6%) BB 01/03/25: Much paler than others, almost Pilsner-pale. Good head formation and vigorous carbonation. Fairly subtle in flavour, less sweet and malty than some. Dry aftertaste. Gillamoos is a folk festival held since 1313 in early September in the town of Abensberg, which is north of Munich and just south of Regensburg.

• Irlbacher Premium – Gauboden Volksfestbier (5.6%) BB 04/07/25: Mid-gold colour, thin but persistent head, good carbonation. Rich flavour, full mouthfeel, but not particularly sweet. Not really the quasi-Pllnsner described by B&B “something like a strong pilsner: pale, powerfully bitter, and our favourite of the bunch”, although still one of the best of the set. One of the latest BB dates.

• Schneider – Festweisse (6.2%) BB 15/03/25: This one differs from the others in being a Hefeweizen, and thus intentionally cloudy. The yeast didn’t come anywhere near settling despite being stood for three weeks. Poured opaque and cloudy, with a thick lasting head and vigorous carbonation. Dark gold colour. Characteristic spicy flavour, with full malt body and a slight alcohol kick. Not, to be honest, one of my favourite beer styles.

• Wildbräu Grafing – Kirtabier (5.7%) BB 03/04/25: Dark gold in colour, which was lighter than I had been expecting from Boak and Bailey’s description. Thin but persistent head, adequate carbonation. Notably sweet and malty flavour, although not heavy; not really lager-like at all. Doesn’t really drink its strength. B&B said: “dark, orangey and syrupy, almost like Spingo Special.”, but this wasn’t really like that at all. It’s paler than the Perlenbacher interpretation. This one had the plainest and simplest label.

I also tried the Perlenbacher Festbier which Lidl were selling at a bargain £1.49 for a 500ml can.

• Perlenbacher – Festbier (5.5%) BB 07/08/25: Dark gold colour, good carbonation and head retention. Malty flavour with little hop character, but a slight “off” note. Probably what you would expect from a cut-price interpretation of a Festbier.

So there you are, ten beers (plus one ersatz knock-off), all basically variations on a theme apart from the Schneider Festweisse. All good beers, and it was interesting to see the differences in flavour and character between them. I’m guessing that most were unpasteurised, hence the shorter shelf-lives, although the Falter was the only one that gave the impression of being a bit stale.

I would certainly buy the pack again if it reappears next year, but it has to be said that Festbiers are an interesting diversion from the core theme of lager, which in general I would expect to be crisper and hoppier. If I had to pick favourites, apart from the Hofbräu, I would choose the Bischofshof and the Irlbacher.

Overall, though, I would say that the Oktoberfest beers from the classic Big 6 Munich breweries are better. And I still have examples of all six of those to drink, bought from the Bottle Stop in Bramhall for a rather higher price per bottle, plus Festbiers from Giesinger and Weihenstephan.

Beat the clock

A central London branch of the O’Neill’s chain has been in the news for imposing a surcharge on drinks prices after 10 pm.

The Soho branch of the Irish-themed pub states on a sign that it operates a “a variable price list” – what that means in reality is that after 10pm, the price it charges for drinks increases.

It is reported that this results in the price of a Brewdog IPA going from £7.40 during the rest of the day to £9.40, while a 500ml bottle of Budweiser goes up from £6.05 to £8.05. Even a tonic water goes up by £1 under the system, with the price rising to £3.15. Drinks purchased in the evening are also served in plastic cups, rather than glass.

This has met with a pretty hostile reaction with consumer rights expert Scott Dixon saying “The hospitality industry needs to rethink their business model instead of inventing new ways to rip people off, there needs to be more transparency.” One commentator even rather hyperbolically declared that it amounted to price gouging and would lead to the extinction of the institution of the pub.

However, provided that it is properly advertised (which reports suggest may not be the case here), is it really any different in principle from pubs offering cheaper prices at slack times, such as “happy hours” or discounts early in the week? Yes, it feels psychologically better to get a discount from what is perceived as the standard price, rather than a surcharge, but the basic concept of varying the price according to the time of day or day of the week is the same.

It is a principle well-established in other markets where pricing of services delivered and consumed immediately is varied according to the time. The most obvious example is peak pricing on the railways, which is directly comparable as the lower price applies most of the time, with a surcharge imposed when it is busy. And it is common, for example, for buffet restaurants to charge several pounds more at weekends for what is exactly the same offer of food.

This practice has been described in some quarters as “surge” or “dynamic” pricing, but that isn’t really accurate. These terms are applied to situations where the price is varied unpredictably in response to the level of demand, such as with the recent furore over Oasis concert tickets. Here, in contrast, the higher price is predictable and announced in advance, and applies to a specific, defined period. The licensing authorities, particularly in Scotland, would take a dim view of any pub that varied prices suddenly and arbitrarily during the course of a single session.

I can’t say I’m very keen on this concept, and I’d think less of any pub that applied it. But time-based pricing is a well-established concept in service businesses, and some of the objections to it seem greatly overdone. Having said that, I’m not sure I’d really be keen on paying £7.40 for a pint of Punk IPA, let alone £9.40.