No, Joe Wicks, reading lists of ingredients will not solve our health problems

Food fear is the most toxic ingredient of all, and the new breed of supermarket scarers are making a living from it 

Joe Wicks and Chris van Tulleken face a decision about whether they can stomach feeding people the ‘killer’ bar they know to be harmful. Picture: Anthony Harvey/Shutterstock/Channel 4

Joe Wicks, the UK’s “loveable” fitness coach, has just released his new 'Killer' protein bar as a way of promoting his new documentary all about the dangers of ultra-processed foods, or UPFs, sensibly titled Joe Wicks: Licensed to Kill. I, along with many others, watched it on Monday night.

His Killer bar is designed to be, according to Wicks, “the most dangerous health bar in Britain”. He even goes as far as to say excessive consumption of some of the ingredients in the bar can lead to things like diarrhoea, cancer, stroke and even death. Sounds pretty serious right?

The ingredients list on the bar is long, but that’s because Joe has intentionally written the name of many of the ingredients twice: in plain English, and then also in its scientific name so the list seems longer and even scarier to people who might not be familiar with that scientific language.

The average person might read 'DL-Alpha Tocopherol Acetate' and think “My goodness, I certainly don’t want that in my body”, not knowing it’s good old Vitamin E, an essential nutrient. 

The idea behind the documentary is supposedly to inform the public of the dangers of UPFs. What it actually tries to do is to highlight just how “bad” some of the ingredients in UPFs are, even though they're legal in the UK, just as Joe explained all the health issues they can cause if you eat them in excess.

“Excess” literally means “too much” and too much of anything is a bad thing. For example, porridge makes a nice healthy breakfast but if you eat too much, all that fibre can cause problems like stomach upsets and even diarrhoea. The devil is in the dose, but Joe doesn’t explain that.

You see, Joe and his partner in this documentary, Professor Chris van Tulleken (a medical doctor who specializes in infectious disease, not nutrition), fall into the new social media category I like to call 'supermarket scarers'.

You might have seen some of them on Instagram or TikTok, running around supermarkets, pulling products off shelves and immediately pointing the camera at the ingredients list. They’ll then list off everything they don’t like, usually a predictable list that includes vegetable oil, sugar, preservatives, emulsifiers or sweeteners.

They follow up with “This is not good for you”, or “You don’t want to give that to your kids”, but they don’t actually say why it’s “bad”, how much is in a portion of food you’d eat, and if that amount is even a problem if your overall diet is good.

They leave out a lot of this vital information for a combination of two reasons:

Firstly, if you give people more information and context, it makes the food less scary (which doesn’t get as many likes), and secondly, they don’t actually know much themselves, because, funnily enough, you don’t need any qualifications to speak about food and nutrition on social media. You can say what you want as long as it gets you more likes and followers.

When I read my first nutrition book as a teenager, I started telling anyone who would listen about everything I read in it like it was gospel. I simply knew I was right and everyone else who hadn’t read the book, knew nothing about nutrition.

Now, after a bachelor’s degree in biological sciences, a master’s degree in nutrition and metabolism, a PhD in clinical nutrition, 10 years working as a one-to-one nutritionist, and being a senior lecturer in nutrition at university, I am very aware of how little I actually know and that means I’m much more cautious when I give advice.

The big difference between a real, trained nutritionist and these supermarket scarers is that they thrive on black and white statements like: “This food is bad. Don’t eat it.” Whereas a real nutritionist will give much more context, like the amount of the food, or how it fits into a diet overall. It’s much more complex and nuanced. 

The level of fear-mongering in Joe’s documentary was cringeworthy. From constant mention of the links to disease like cancer, to using an image of the grim reaper on the packaging of Joe’s protein bar and even to the dark grimy 'lab' where they created it. Picture: KEO Films

Ireland is not immune from these supermarket scarers either. I recently watched one walking around an Irish supermarket and telling her audience a certain brand of protein bar is bad for you as she pointed out it contained emulsifiers (among some other ingredients she didn’t like).

The term emulsifier is used to describe a group of very different ingredients that have similar functions in food: they improve the texture in some way. That means saying a food has emulsifiers is meaningless if you don’t know specifically which one it is.

Even then, there is no definitive evidence specific emulsifiers are bad for human health. There are a couple that seem to lead to stomach issues in people who already have gut-health problems like irritable bowel syndrome. 

In everyone else, as a small part of a healthy diet, they’re probably fine. One of the most common sources of emulsifiers in the diet is the humble egg, which naturally contains an emulsifier called lecithin. 

I’ve seen the same Irish “influencer” compare two types of biscuits and claim one was better, because it had fewer ingredients (fewer ingredients means nothing about the health effect of a food); and because it had butter instead of vegetable oil. She failed to mention it’s just a bloody biscuit (which I think we can all agree, is never going to be a health food) and that one biscuit isn’t going to have any effect on someone who eats an otherwise healthy diet. 

Fear is a powerful motivator.

These same influencers say they’re just trying to help people eat better. But the problem is, when you scare people so much they’re afraid to eat any processed foods or additives, you immediately make it harder for them to follow a healthy diet.

They have to work harder to find foods that are less processed; they have to spend more to find additive-free options; or spend a lot more time cooking from complete scratch.

That makes it really difficult in a family with two working parents who want to feed their kids well but are now terrified to buy anything with an ingredients list longer than one or two items.

And to be clear, many of these influencers sell or are sponsored by supplement companies. Some actually have the gall to sell courses on nutrition or how to read food labels.

The level of fear-mongering in Joe’s documentary was cringeworthy. From constant mention of the links to disease like cancer, to using an image of the grim reaper on the packaging of Joe’s protein bar and even to the dark grimy “lab” where they created it, which they themselves compared to a meth lab.

If you listened to these supermarket scarers, you’d be forgiven for thinking UPFs are the worst thing you could possibly put in your body. UPF is a classification based on how foods are made and doesn’t necessarily reflect their nutritional value.

The problem with ultra-processed foods is that in general, they are very tasty, very cheap, and not very filling. Think crisps, cakes, cookies. They’re also low in important nutrients like protein, fibre, vitamins and minerals.

Richie Kirwan: 'The problem with UPFs is we eat far too much of them. Not that we eat any at all.'

Processed foods now make up almost 60% of all the calories we eat. This not only pushes up the calories we eat (meaning we gain weight), but also pushes out valuable whole foods like fruits, vegetables and wholegrains (meaning we get fewer nutrients).

So, the problem with UPFs is we eat far too much of them. Not that we eat any at all. 

Processed foods are convenient and have long shelf lives, which saves us time and money (which let’s be honest, we all need) as they are less likely to go off before we eat them. On top of that, some UPFs can actually make following a healthy diet easier.

For example, if kids will eat veggies only with a little barbecue sauce or ketchup on the side, that’s an overall nutritional win because the benefits of eating more veg far outweigh any possible negatives of a little ultra-processed sauce.

Unfortunately, Joe Wicks and the rest of these supermarket scarers are not able to explain any of this complexity. Instead they just say: “Don’t eat this. It’s bad for you” whenever they see an ingredient they can’t pronounce.

Maybe they should actually help people to improve their overall diets by focusing more on whole foods. 

In fairness to Joe, I think he’s done a good job of getting people to cook more at home (and exercise obviously). But unfortunately, this latest stunt with the 'killer' protein bar and his documentary, demonising ingredients and processed foods in general is very disappointing.

Nutrition can be a very emotional topic because we all need to eat and there is a lot of confusing information out there, which makes some people very anxious about their food.

I see more and more people becoming almost afraid to eat certain foods. It’s a condition known as orthorexia, or an obsession with eating foods that someone considers pure or healthy.

What’s worse is if those people are parents, they’ll pass that food fear and orthorexia onto their children, who can end up with an even worse relationship with food. The last thing we need is more people, and especially children, developing bad food relationships. 

Despite all the “experts” the documentary featured, not one of them was a nutritionist.

When it comes to food, don’t listen to the likes of Joe Wicks and these nutritionist wannabes. If you see videos on Tiktok or Instagram or YouTube of someone running around a supermarket, pulling things off shelves just to tell you how bad the ingredients are, avoid them like the plague.

Fear is the toxic ingredient we need to avoid. 

• Richie Kirwan has a PhD in clinical nutrition, is a registered nutritionist (RNutr) with the AfN, a researcher of nutrition and heart disease, and a senior lecturer in nutrition and exercise physiology at Liverpool John Moores University. He comes from Co Waterford. For more of his work, see his Instagram page https://www.instagram.com/dr.richie.kirwan/