As I tried to negotiate my way around a supermarket already towering with Quality Street tins I was interested to see the latest headlines about Britain’s ‘addiction’ to ultra-processed food. The fast-food habit was now costing the country a whopping £286 billion every year. This startlingly high figure came from a recent report from the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission (FFCC) which found that the cost of chronic disease was now almost matching the total healthcare spend in the UK. For unhealthy food that is literally ‘cheap as chips’ it turns out that we are all paying for it through the cost of healthcare, social care, welfare and losses of productivity from ill health. Although the figures are shocking, the knock-on effects of the country’s increased consumption of ultra-processed foods high in sugar, salt and fat are sadly, nothing new. However, what did surprise me about the media coverage surrounding the report was the number of sources that still referred to the UK’s population of ‘junk food addicts’.