Paul Kaye discusses the issues raised in his book ‘The Killing Fields’

Show Notes

Paul Kaye is a former food industry executive, who has international experience with blue chip organisations. He thus has unique insights into the operations of the (fake) food industry – the advertising, marketing, product development and more. Paul’s book is called “The Killing Fields: How to avoid a premature death in the supermarket.” Paul and I have never met, but we feel as if we have, as we both worked for the food giant, Mars, albeit both in the electronics division of that organisation.

Once we stopped working out whom we both knew, we cracked on with a lively conversation about the (fake) food industry and the tricks of the trade.

In this 40-minute conversation we cover:

- How Paul came to write an expose of the industry.

- Why the poacher turned gatekeeper?

- The scale of the food industry in the UK (I scribbled some ‘factoids’ when I read the book: in the UK alone, the food industry employees 450k people, has a turnover of more than £100bn, and represents 19% of total UK manufacturing output).

- The different roles of the three key stakeholders in shaping the nation’s diet: government (and related bodies), the manufacturers/retailers (the food industry), and the individual.

- Why do consumers make poor food choices?

- Some of the myths that Big Food love to propagate.

- We close with what Paul would do about the obesity crisis – his five-point plan.

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