Saving your bacon: healthy-eating policy evolves

October 9, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

Governments have spent decades telling people to eat more vegetables and cut down on fat, sugar, and salt. It has not worked. Obesity rates in Britain have doubled since the 1990s. In America, 72% of adults are now either obese or overweight. The economic cost of poor diets now amounts to roughly 3% of GDP across OECD countries, which has shifted the argument for government intervention from a moral one to an economic one. As a result, policymakers are moving beyond public service messaging and toward more forceful measures: labeling, marketing restrictions, location bans, and taxes. The episode examines how well these tools are working, where they fall short, and what comes next.

Three kinds of intervention, with mixed results

Slavia Chankova, The Economist’s healthcare correspondent, describes three broad categories of action now being adopted by governments. The first is labeling. In Europe, the Nutri-Score system combines healthy and unhealthy ingredients into a single A-to-E grade printed on packaging, so consumers do not have to parse individual nutrients. A more aggressive approach has spread across Latin America and was adopted by Canada earlier this year: stark black warning labels, modeled on cigarette packaging. These appear to be the most effective at changing behavior.

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What you'll learn

1 (01:13) **Introduction** - Host Jason Palmer sets up the episode's three segments: the evolution of government healthy-eating policy, a mysterious plague death at a Russian lab, and the obituary of flat-screen display inventor Cyril Hilsum.
2 (01:37) **Governments Get Radical on Unhealthy Food** - Slavia Chankova, The Economist's healthcare correspondent, explains why decades of dietary advice have failed and what governments are now trying instead.
3 (05:35) **Do These Interventions Actually Work?** - Evidence from early adopters shows real but modest effects, and experts say the real gains come from combining multiple policies.
4 (07:55) **The Real Public Health Impact** - Even small changes matter because the costs of poor diets are so enormous.
5 (09:13) **Segment Wrap-Up** - Jason thanks Slavia Chankova. The segment ends with a promotional note for The Economist Insider video series on AI regulation.
6 (10:42) **A Mysterious Plague Death in Siberia** - Alex Turner, The Economist's defense editor, examines the case of a 28-year-old researcher who died at Russia's Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute.
7 (12:28) **Russia's Troubled History with Bioweapons** - The lack of transparency around this death feeds into longstanding concerns about Russia's biological weapons programs.

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Show Notes

Decades of messaging have not worked, so governments are trying new ways to get citizens to eat well, from scary labelling to taxing the junkiest foods. Will it work? The death of a plague researcher in Russia is made more mysterious by the government’s resolute lack of transparency. And a tribute to Cyril Hilsum, the inventor behind ubiquitous flat-screen displays.

Watch extended clips from Insider here.

Guests and host:

Slavea Chankova, health-care correspondent
Alex Turner, defence editor
Ann Wroe, obituaries editor
Jason Palmer, co-host of “The Intelligence”

Topics covered:

diet, public health, health policy
Russia, plague, bioweapons
Cyril Hilsum, liquid crystals, flat-screen displays

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