Unlock Editor’s Digest for free

FT editor Roula Khalaf selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

The author is the author of the novel “Chop Chop” and “Sweet Dreams”, an immersive cinema experience

Imagine a world where Tony the Tiger is locked up, Ronald McDonald has hung up his clown shoes, and Colonel Sanders is court-martialed; where foods euphemistically labeled “less healthy” are sold without much fuss. A world without mascots grinning over photoshopped burgers or whispering through the TV, “Go on, try it!” If we did it with the Marlboro Man, we can do it with a cartoon tiger.

It took 50 years from the discovery of the link between smoking and lung cancer to the final abolition of cigarette advertising in 2003, and a further 13 years for branded packaging to be abolished. The proposed fast food advertising ban has taken a similarly tortuous path. It has been on the table for well over a decade, supported by one Conservative prime minister and then scrapped by the next, and is now on the long list of tasks facing Labour ministers. Under the proposed ban, less healthy products will no longer be allowed to be advertised on television before the deadline (9pm-5.30am) and online 24 hours a day from next October.

That’s not enough. As with cigarettes, it’s time we had honest branding – or no branding at all – in fast food and ultra-processed foods. Obesity costs the NHS £6.5 billion a year and is the biggest preventable cause of cancer after smoking. One in four adults in England is obese. Even more shocking, a national study this year found that almost one in four children in England’s primary schools are obese by the time they leave school, increasing the likelihood of them suffering health problems throughout their lives. Our inability to regulate the brands and their colourful mascots is harming young people in particular.

Over the last six months there has been a flood of reports about ultra-processed foods, both about the danger they pose to our health and their ubiquity. The list includes things we might not have thought of as particularly bad, like pasta sauces and ready meals. Ultra-processed foods now make up more than half of the average British diet. “Let food be thy medicine,” wrote Hippocrates. What is meant to nourish us is harming us.

How did we get to this point? Part of the blame lies with the food companies. It’s nothing new to anyone that advertising manipulates us. Edward Bernays, Sigmund Freud’s nephew, applied his uncle’s theories to public relations at the end of World War II, persuading women to smoke by marketing cigarettes as feminist “torches of freedom.” (Funnily enough, Bernays subsequently spent years trying to convince his wife to quit.) Food photography is notoriously deceptive (strawberries brightened with lipstick). Forms of psychological manipulation known as “dark patterns” make us feel guilty or unloved so that we succumb to temptation and eat all the ice cream.

But as consumers, we also need to be aware of our role in this story. When I worked as a restaurant chef, I realized that a big part of the social contract between guest and chef is that the guest doesn’t know what’s in their food. We want the chocolate cake without seeing the calories on the package or the sugar that goes into it because we’re making it ourselves. We want the food to taste delicious without thinking about how much butter or cream was used to make it taste so good. But it wasn’t until recently that I realized how poorly this willful ignorance serves us.

I’m not suggesting banning the food itself. People should be allowed to make their own choices, good or bad. Personally, I think fried chicken at two in the morning is one of life’s greatest pleasures.

Aggressive taxation has some effect. According to a new study in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, the UK’s sugar tax halved children’s sugar consumption in just one year. That’s cause for celebration, but it’s not the whole story. Soft drink manufacturers have just replaced sugar with artificial sweeteners. Punitive measures target one ingredient but encourage dishonesty – now the drinks are “sugar-free” and “diet” – rather than helping people understand what they’re consuming. The basic problem remains: our food lies to us.

Warnings and labels are a start. Some say counting the calories in mac and cheese spoils the enjoyment of the meal. But we already know that. Our shock when the truth is spoken out loud feels like a theatrical overreaction.

The branding must go. Ban the cartoon mascots, our false friends. Ban the evasive words and the crocodile smile. No more trick photography and attractive packaging. Include health risk warnings where appropriate. (Personally, I will contribute a picture of my belly if it will save the nation.) Let’s stop fooling ourselves and silently allowing others to fool us. Some foods are not good for our health and sometimes that is exactly what we want. We are only human. But we should have all the information, free from manipulation. An informed choice is a delicious thing. Try it.