Make unhealthy foods’ consequences plain

An award-winning Cambridge scientist will undoubtedly earn the ire of chefs and home-cooks the world over as he has sounded off this week on the attractiveness of food as temptation to ingest more calories. Of course he was targeting brightly packaged fast-food and processed snacks, but the point will not be lost on those who feel obesity is reaching epidemic proportions.

The scientist advocates plain-paper wrapping —à la the deliberately off-putting packs for cigarettes — to discourage impulse buying and consumption of fatty and sugary foods. His somewhat draconian logic is that since dopamine — the hormone that makes us feel good when we eat —cannot be controlled, the appeal and allure of food should be regulated instead. If his radical suggestion is ever taken up seriously and implemented, supermarket shelves will become deathly dull. But the stores’ — and their customers’ —bottomlines will doubtless become distinctly trimmer.

In this context, could it be posited that the no-frills style of traditional home-cooking promoted healthy apportioning and sensible ingesting of food? With no bewitching garnishes and foams, the plain presentation of daily meals may have been calculated to not induce gluttony in anyone but the most determined gourmands. This professor will not find favour with the hosts, participants and fans of MasterChef.