Gousto ultra-processed foods burger campaign summary
- Gousto launches most addictive burger campaign targeting ultra-processed foods
- Big Secret meal designed with dietician Clare Thornton-Wood partner
- Meal packs 165% daily salt and triple sugar limit
- Total 2,100 calories highlighting fast food reward-system engineering claims
- Bloomsbury Policy Lab estimates £67bn annual UK health costs
Ultra-processed foods continue to court controversy, with consumers increasingly demanding foods with less processing.
Critics say that UPFs can be addictive, and are more likely than their less processed counterparts to be high in unhealthy ingredients. Defenders say that the healthiness of a product should be assessed based on its ingredients, not level of processing.
Now, anti-UPF criticism has come from a new source: meal kit provider Gousto has created ‘the UK’s most addictive burger’, aiming to show, in the company’s view, just how unhealthy UPFs can be.
Fitness personality Joe Wicks, a prominent critic of UPFs, has invested in Gousto in the past. Wicks released the ‘killer’ protein bar last year as part of a tie-in with his documentary Joe Wicks: Licensed to Kill. The bar was packed with numerous legally compliant additives in order to satirise the alleged unhealthiness of fitness products.
‘Most addictive burger’ designed
Gousto’s burger meal, known as The Big Secret, was created in partnership with dietician Clare Thornton-Wood. The “dramatised” meal is designed to criticise the health properties of fast food in the UK.
It appears normal – nothing but a bacon cheeseburger, a milkshake and fries – but it has been carefully designed to be addictive.
It contains 165% of the UK’s daily recommended salt intake, more than three times the daily sugar limit and large quantities of saturated fat to boot.
In total, the meal is 2,100 calories – more than the UK’s daily recommended intake for women and just under that for men.
The way the meal’s ingredients are “layered together”, says Thornton-Wood, “can make moderation much harder – particularly for those trying to eat more healthily. The challenge isn’t the individual, it’s the food environment they’re navigating.”
Thornton-Wood was tasked by Gousto to create the UK’s most addictive burger, in order to ‘hijack the brain’s reward system.’
The burger is not available to the public, but instead created to highlight the health impact of fast foods and ultra-processed foods in the UK diet.
Fast food is, according to Gousto, “designed to drive cravings and overconsumption“.
According to research for Gousto conducted by the Bloomsbury Policy Lab, it costs the UK health system around £67bn a year through associated conditions such as obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.
