The 1970s was a confusing decade in which to be a smoker. People knew, of course, that smoking was bad for them: the evidence linking it to lung cancer had been incontrovertible since 1956. But despite government education programs, hiked taxes and restrictions in selling to children, these warnings hadn’t fully permeated the atmosphere.
How could they? Daily life bathed the brain in the idea that smoking was fine. Cigarettes were advertised in magazines, on billboards and at sporting events; they dangled from the mouths of the suave or rebellious in film and on TV; and a nicotine fog enveloped offices, bars and public transport. Could something that everyone was doing, and which suffused the culture, really be that shockingly dangerous?
It was a confusing time, also, to be a tobacco company. You could no longer claim that smoking was supported by doctors, as you did in the 50s — but you were not yet forced to admit on every packet that your product actually killed people. It was only in the 80s and 90s that, festooned with obligatory warnings, cigarette ads started to flirt openly with death: one advert for Silk Cut referenced the shower scene in Hitchcock’s Psycho, another for Benson & Hedges featured a dead fish on a coffin-like piano. (If you’re going to die, die with us.)
Photo: AP
But in the 70s these companies were still making the uneasy transition between denial and nihilistic acceptance. The idea that you could make cigarettes healthier, that you could acknowledge the warnings but claim they did not apply to your own product, became a central defense and marketing ploy. New “filter” cigarettes (themselves sometimes tainted with dangerous chemicals) flooded the market, falsely claiming to protect against the worst harms of smoking. Thousands switched to “low-tar” cigarettes in an effort to make a healthy choice.
“Considering all I’d heard, I decided to either quit or smoke True. I smoke True” ran one advert in 1976, featuring a sporty-looking girl at a tennis net — “The low-tar, low-nicotine cigarette.”
ULTRA-PROCESSED FOOD
Photo: AFP
And this is where we are, I think, in 2024, with what used to be called junk food, and which is now beginning to be called ultra-processed food. UPF is food that has at some stage been ground into unrecognizable pulp and bathed in additives, a definition that is gaining acceptance among experts. But it is nothing too new. We are now, and have been for years, talking about the kind of food that encourages us to eat vast quantities of salt, sugar and fat in one barely chewed gulp. It is hamburgers, crisps, chocolate bars, ice-cream, fizzy drinks and pappy processed cereal.
As with cigarettes in the 70s, much of the evidence is in. Junk food is linked to cancer. Two landmark studies last year showed UPFs caused heart disease and strokes. It is also beyond question that these kinds of foods cause obesity, a condition linked to 30,000 deaths a year in England alone. One in five children are obese by the final year of primary school and levels of obesity are spiraling upwards. Unhealthy diets are, worldwide, now killing more people than tobacco.
But these warnings have yet to filter through to our daily environment, in which junk food is beamed at us from bus stops and TV ad breaks — framed as an indulgence, a guilty pleasure, but not a scourge.
Photo: AFP
Our brains, evolved for scarcity, navigate a world of cheap, easy, delicious dopamine hits on high streets and supermarket aisles. Fast food companies follow teens online and use cartoons to sell unhealthy cereals. Last week, an 18-year-old told the Times that, when she got her GCSE results, she was congratulated by the pizza chain Domino’s before her mother.
Last week, the youth activist movement Bite Back published its study Fuel Us, Don’t Fool Us, developed with researchers at Oxford University, and reported that Ferrero made 100 percent of its UK sales in 2022 from foods high in saturated fat, salt and sugar (HFSS). In response, a company spokesperson claimed it was “supporting consumers” by “offering our products in small, individually wrapped portions” along with “education on how to enjoy our products as part of a balanced lifestyle.” Are you really supposed to stop after a single (wrapped) Ferrero Rocher?
Unilever, which the study found had made 84 percent of its UK sales from HFSS the same year, stressed its lower fat options: “Ben & Jerry’s Lighten Up, Carte D’Or Vanilla Light.” The owner of Kellogg’s, just behind at 77 percent, told reporters it had reduced sugar in its cereals by 18 percent, and salt by 23 percent.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Yet these are foods saturated in unhealthy substances and designed to make you eat more and more of them. Removing 18 percent of the sugar is going to do very little. There is no such thing as healthy junk food.
TOBACCO AS BLUEPRINT
We know what has to happen next: tobacco has given us the blueprint. Food high in salt, sugar and fat has to be more strictly regulated.
And regulation is the only way. Highly processed food is profitable — the business models of the world’s largest food companies rely on it. Expecting them to fix themselves is like expecting a tired and hungry commuter to resist a burger. Good intentions and willpower go only so far.
But the psychological shift — the recognition that this thing that everyone does is dangerous — is overdue. Every government for the past 30 years has identified obesity as a problem. Even food companies — some of them — are asking for new legislation: at present, they say, retailers that want to do good are penalized.
Labor claims it will “steamroll” the food industry into a healthier model, banning online junk food ads aimed at children and bringing in more restrictions on packaging. It would be a start.
Sept.16 to Sept. 22 The “anti-communist train” with then-president Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) face plastered on the engine puffed along the “sugar railway” (糖業鐵路) in May 1955, drawing enthusiastic crowds at 103 stops covering nearly 1,200km. An estimated 1.58 million spectators were treated to propaganda films, plays and received free sugar products. By this time, the state-run Taiwan Sugar Corporation (台糖, Taisugar) had managed to connect the previously separate east-west lines established by Japanese-era sugar factories, allowing the anti-communist train to travel easily from Taichung to Pingtung’s Donggang Township (東港). Last Sunday’s feature (Taiwan in Time: The sugar express) covered the inauguration of the
This Qing Dynasty trail takes hikers from renowned hot springs in the East Rift Valley, up to the top of the Coastal Mountain Range, and down to the Pacific Short vacations to eastern Taiwan often require choosing between the Rift Valley with its pineapple fields, rice paddies and broader range of amenities, or the less populated coastal route for its ocean scenery. For those who can’t decide, why not try both? The Antong Traversing Trail (安通越嶺道) provides just such an opportunity. Built 149 years ago, the trail linked up these two formerly isolated parts of the island by crossing over the Coastal Mountain Range. After decades of serving as a convenient path for local Amis, Han settlers, missionaries and smugglers, the trail fell into disuse once modern roadways were built
“Once you get there, you think, that’s a little embarrassing or revealing or scary... but ultimately, I learned that is where the good stuff is,” says Taiwanese-American director Sean Wang about writing indie breakout Didi (弟弟), which debuted at Sundance Film Festival Asia 2024 in Taipei last month. Didi is a heartwarming coming-of-age story centered on the Asian American experience. Not just a 2000s teenage nostalgia piece, but a raw, unflinching look at immigrant families and adolescent identity struggles. It quickly became the centerpiece of the event, striking a chord with not only those sharing similar backgrounds but anyone who’s ever
“Magical,” “special,” a “total badass:” step forward Kamala Harris, the 59-year-old dynamo who has rebranded her country at lightning speed, offering it up as a nation synonymous with optimism, hope and patriotism. For the rest of us, Kamala’s gift is her joy and vibrancy — and the way she is smashing it just months away from her seventh decade, holding up 60 in all its power and glory. Welcome to the new golden age. Hers is the vibrancy of a woman who owns her power, a woman who is manifesting her experience and expertise, a woman who knows her time has