Irish shoppers are among the most health-conscious in Europe, though often their aspirations do not translate into behaviour, according to research presented to a Bord Bia health conference.
Two-thirds of shoppers in the Republic pick foods for health reasons, more than in France, the UK and Sweden, the research found. However, their behaviour is often contradictory, with healthy choices more prevalent in the morning and comfort foods more common as the day wears on. The research also points to a heavy reliance on dairy as a source of healthy food.
Prof Vincent Marks, a retired diabetes expert, said that the public was being bombarded constantly with stories of how harmful food was, when the opposite was true. "We've never been healthier and we've never lived longer."
Food scares were "as old as the hills," he said. "Sometimes they are justified; more often, in modern times, they are not. Food scares sell books, magazines and women's magazines. Good news is no news." Prof Marks, co-author of Panic Nation, described as "myths" and "nonsense" claims that sugar, or additives, were harmful to our general health. He said that eating beef was "bad for cows but not for humans".
E-numbers had been proven to be safe and were accepted as such in the EU, he added. Sugar caused dental cavities but none of the other diseases, such as heart disease or diabetes, for which it has been blamed. Talk of a world epidemic in obesity was "utter nonsense" and he claimed there was "no evidence" that "healthy" foods were any healthier than "unhealthy" foods.
Food scares were mostly promulgated by people who believed in the greed of "unscrupulous" food manufacturers, or thought that food was contaminated with additives and that we had become addicted to "junk food".
Prof Marks suggested the following definitions:
Health food = a sales gimmick;
Healthy food = food I believe is good for you;
Junk food = food of which I disapprove;
Good food = food I enjoy eating;
Organic food = a marketing ploy.
Junk food, he suggested, is an oxymoron. "Food is either good for you or it is good food that has gone bad. No single food is a complete food. Milk, cheese and eggs are among the nearest approaches."
In the 1940s, baked beans on toast with tomato ketchup became the first junk food.
"Now this is an almost ideal food, i.e. rich in protein and slowly-absorbed carbohydrates, low in fat, and a good source of fibre and anti-oxidants," he said.
There are no good or bad foods, only good or bad diets, he argues, adding that the best advice to follow is "moderation in all things nutritional".
Crawford Hollingworth of Henley Centre Headlight Vision said that companies were increasingly turning to the "virtual world" on the internet as a testing-ground for products.