Articles by Christopher Stevens,Editor

Technology

CHRISTOPHER STEVENS on Joe Wicks: Licensed To Kill: Why The Body Coach's ultra-processed food protest needs its own warning

Joe Wicks: Licensed To Kill (Ch4 Joe Wicks is on a mission. ‘This is step one of a journey that I’m on,’ he declared, wiping away a manly tear and brandishing a protein bar. ‘Killer’, the congealed finger of chocolate-coloured, orange-flavoured sludge he’s promoting, is crammed with ‘nutrients’ and ‘vitamins’. It’s also packed with known carcinogens, artificial ingredients such as aspartame that have been linked to cancer. His aim, he insisted on Joe Wicks: Licensed To Kill, is to make politicians and the public aware of how poisonous ultra-processed food [UPF] can legally be, even when it is marketed as a health food. He and his fellow campaigner Professor Chris van Tulleken shovelled so many toxic additives into their recipe, they decided to add warnings to the packaging, to highlight the bar’s potential side effects. These included diarrhoea, strokes and ‘early death’. Studying heaps of chemicals in a laboratory, Joe seemed genuinely appalled at what can go into snacks. ‘I think it’s mad,’ he gasped. ‘You don’t see health warnings on food. I just don’t think enough people are aware of the actual harmful effects, long-term effects that these foods have on us. Could you say they’re evil?’ He became quite anxious at the ‘moral and ethical’ dilemma of selling his bars, even if they did come with a picture of the Grim Reaper on the packet. But if Joe’s ‘journey’ seems familiar, that’s because it isn’t the first time he appears to have trodden this path. Six years ago, he launched his own line of supplements and powders — not as a satirical protest against dangerous UPFs but as a bona fide health product. The Body Coach range included sachets of Bangin’ Whey Protein and Proper Vegan Protein, with a list of ingredients including the likes of soy lecithin and steviol glycosides. In a 20-second video ad, released in 2019, he bragged, ‘I just wanna make it easy for you to cook healthy and get all the nutrition you need.’ The clip showed him using a blender to mix up the dehydrated stuff. It looked very like the ultra-processed powders that so appalled him in the lab. This gunk, which is no longer available, was sold as a nutritional health food. For instance, Joe’s advertising blurb declared, ‘The Body Coach Vegan Protein powder is a delicious, plant-based protein source to enjoy in shakes post-workout or to support a balanced vegan diet.’ Perhaps it did have its benefits, but why was none of this mentioned during the hour-long show? Joe’s a busy chap, of course, and perhaps he simply forgot that, not so long ago, he was enthusiastically selling spurious ‘health products’, and now he is being loudly holier-than-thou. The alternative is that he’s a shallow, self-absorbed, deceitful hypocrite. And I’d hate to think that of him.