Before the era of barcodes and biometrics, dinner was the easiest decision of the day. You looked in the pantry, not at a food influencer's post. You trusted your appetite, not a nutritional label printed in type so small the Hubble space telescope would strain to read it.

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Your meal grew in the ground or walked in a nearby paddock. You chose what to cook by the flow of the seasons. Food carried no promises of being sugar-free, protein-boosted or omega-3 enriched.

But choosing what to eat today feels less like nourishment and more like a multiple-choice exam devised by biochemists. For the first time in history we have outsourced our eating instincts to a priesthood of food scientists, multinational corporations and wellness prophets.

Yet here's the rub: the healthier we have tried to eat, the sicker we have become. Obesity has tripled worldwide since 1975. Two-thirds of Australian adults are overweight or obese. Rates of type 2 diabetes have more than doubled in a generation. After counting more calories and downloading more diet apps, we are heavier and more unwell than any previous generation.

You might think this crisis in the Western diet, which an increasing body of evidence partly links to ultra-processed foods or UPFs, would be at the forefront of government policy. Not so. Australia's food labelling system remains a patchwork of voluntary schemes, loopholes and worthless half-measures that more often protects industry interests than consumers.

Ingredient panels are riddled with euphemisms. Sugar becomes "evaporated cane juice". Additives hide behind unknowable numbers. Products claiming to be "lite" and "immune-boosting" flourish in a regulatory grey zone, allowing companies a free pass to imply health benefits without proof.

Last week the Albanese government announced the formation of the National Food Council to provide advice on its national food strategy. Unsurprisingly, it is dominated by players from the agricultural and food production industries whose devotion to profit at the cost of nutrition has been blamed for many of our burgeoning health problems.

Last month a series of papers in the medical journal Lancet reported that almost half of the average Australian diet now consists of UPFs. Products ranging from frozen pizza and lasagna to breakfast cereals, margarine, soft drinks, processed meats, bottled sauces and chips are dubbed ultra-processed because they are built from refined ingredients, additives and chemical formulations with little or no whole food remaining.

The Lancet report analysed the results of more than 100 international studies........

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