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The Current Transcript for May 16, 2023

Host: Mark Kelley

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

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CHRIS VAN TULLENKEN: When you read this very long list of ingredients, it just makes you think much more deeply about what am I tasting? What are they trying to get me to taste and how does this all feel in my mouth?

MARK KELLEY: If you're feeling a bit peckish this morning and reaching for a protein bar or yoghurt cup as you dash out the door, you may want to pump the brakes and read the ingredients first. Chances are there are some you have never heard of, never ever found in your own kitchen. In 30 minutes, we are what we eat and what we're eating is ultra-processed. Spoiler alert, it's not good. And then.

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TREVIN BROWNIE: It's not for anyone. You need to be given a special training in order for you to deal with things that you probably would never have come across in the whole of your life if you didn't do this job.

MK: Making your late night doom scroll a little less toxic. In an hour, we meet the people removing the darkest content from our tech from social media to ChatGPT, and hear about the human cost to making those platforms palatable. But we start in B.C., Canada's eviction capital. I'm Mark Kelley, in for Matt Galloway. This is The Current.

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EVICTIONS

Guests: Fiona Scott, Douglas Kwan, Mathieu Laberge

MK: Finding a place to live is one thing, but keeping that place is not a given these days. Rising rents and house prices are forcing people to get creative as you've heard many times on this program. But if you get a notice of eviction, there aren't a ton of options for renters. New research from the University of British Columbia says that B.C. leads the country in evictions, and the rate of no fault evictions where a tenant is forced out through no fault of their own is more than twice the national average. Last summer, Fiona Scott was evicted from her Vancouver apartment. It was the third time she'd been evicted in the past 15 years. Fiona, good morning.

FIONA SCOTT: Good morning. How are you today?

MK: I'm doing well. I'm wondering how you're doing. You’re living in the eviction capital of Canada in Vancouver and you seem to be the poster woman for that. Tell us, what was the reason given for your most recent eviction?

FIONA SCOTT: Well, the building had sold to a new landlord, and it was obvious from the get go that the landlord would be renovating the apartment as they also own an apartment a couple of doors away. So it was clear that my time there was not going to be a long time.

MK: And you had no choice in that matter.

FIONA SCOTT: No, no, really. You know, it's an emotional thing. And the new owner came over to my apartment to speak with me in person. And, you know, he could see from my space that I was very settled and very happy there. And he came over to my place and said, well, this is what it is. You know, we are going to be redoing this apartment and it'll take some time, so you'll need to find somewhere else to live.

MK: And how long had you been there, Fiona?

FIONA SCOTT: For that place, I'd been there just over seven years.

MK: Wow!

FIONA SCOTT: So yeah, you know, it's not a lifetime of 30 years in an apartment, but it's enough to be very settled. And honestly, I was still putting things on the wall, you know, six months before I moved out, and then I had to move out.

MK: As I mentioned, it's the third time that this has happened to you. In the other instances, what were the reasons, the rationale that you were given, why you had to leave?

FIONA SCOTT: Well, it's a slight variation of the same thing, to be honest. It was a new ownership of the apartment building and they were doing some work. And the conditions were just so bad in the last apartment or the apartment before that there was just no alternative almost. You know, they didn't say we had to move out, but I had to live in a zone that was cordoned off with yellow tape for asbestos. And it just was not being made a comfortable apartment even though I could have stayed in that apartment thereafter. But they just weren't doing anything around the common areas to make it comfortable or a proud place that I had, you know, originally felt about the place.

MK: And as you're bounced from apartment to apartment, these renovictions as they're known, what happens? What happens to the price of your rent every time you walk into a new place?

FIONA SCOTT: Well, you know, my baseline that I have from longevity of being in that place is gone because I'm starting from scratch again. So there's certainly a yearly increase with most landlords, which I can accept because my own rate of pay in employment is also increasing. But when you're stepping into a new contract with a new landlord, they have an opportunity to sort of update their dwelling things and then get the latest price point for an apartment. I was fortunate and I found an amazing place, but it was just luck. But I still had to, you know, up my rent paid. And that was a bit of a pressure I wasn't really prepared for.

MK: And when you were told last year you had to move out because the place was going to be renovated, To the best of your knowledge, has that place been renovated?

FIONA SCOTT: It definitely has been renovated. You know, I go by it often. It's still a part of my community and my life, but there's nobody living in it. I know. I can see there's nobody there.

MK: Do you feel at the end of the day that landlords have been taking advantage of your precarious situation?

FIONA SCOTT: You know, I understand it's business for everybody. And I don't have a personal grudge against them, but yes, I do. We are the victims of their, you know, game of going from property to property. We're casualties in this game. And I understand that it's business. And the landlord when he was speaking to me about there's not really been any alternative and he doesn't want to cause any upset, well, that's great, but you are. And that's just business.

MK: And do you feel in a situation like this, Fiona, that anyone has your back or do you feel like you're on your own fighting this fight?

FIONA SCOTT: Oh, well, I'm on my own as a renter, for sure. But I do have lots of other friends in the same situation. It's really unfortunate to have a relationship with a landlord that I'm so fearful of, you know, finding out that they're wanting to, you know, do updates or anything because that changes my entire life.

MK: And do you ever see yourself being able to get out of the rental market and become a home owner?

FIONA SCOTT: I do. I do. But no, actually, you know what, I don't. Oh, I have no idea how I would afford it. So it's a long journey. I can't afford it in Vancouver. I'd have to move out and move up to Squamish or I can't even afford Squamish anymore. I don't know where I would go.

MK: Long may you last at this current address and thank you so much for taking time out to speak with us.

FIONA SCOTT: Well, thank you as well. Best of luck to everybody out there.

MK: Fiona Scott is a renter in Vancouver. Well, British Columbia may well be the Canadian leader in evictions, but stories like Fiona's are also playing out across the country. Earlier this spring, the Ontario government brought in policies it says will help limit the number of so-called renovictions. Douglas Kwan is the director of the Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario. Douglas, good morning.

DOUGLAS KWAN: Good morning, Mark.

MK: Well, this report in B.C. referred to the phenomenon we're calling no fault evictions. Help us define that term for the audience. What does that term encompass?

DOUGLAS KWAN: Well, in Ontario and most provinces, the tenant can only be evicted for at fault reasons such as not paying the rent. But there are certain provisions where they may be removed from their unit through no fault of their own such as if the unit needs to be vacant when their renovation needs to take place or if a landlord or a member of their family needs the unit for themselves. What we've been finding is that these rent control loopholes have caused a significant shift in the market where we are seeing the doubling of rents year over year. Whereas sitting tenants are seeing rent increases at 1.2%, we're seeing rent increases in Hamilton at 26%, 17% in Ottawa, 29% in Toronto because units are being turned over. And so that's creating significant rent increase and driving the market. So there is a significant financial incentive for landlords to try and pursue these no fault evictions in order to maximize their investment.

MK: And you used the word loophole. So by that, are you suggesting that they are doing this deliberately to maximize their profits?

DOUGLAS KWAN: We're seeing that that's a significant driver of unaffordability across the province. And so as a result, they're seeing their neighbour who has a basement apartment that's empty getting an incredible increase which drives the incentive for them to remove their sitting tenants. So we're seeing far more no fault evictions as a result.

MK: So what is a tenant to do? What are the rules in Ontario for when it's okay to evict someone in this way? What are their alternatives?

DOUGLAS KWAN: Well, it starts with a notice of a termination, which is a notice of intent that they want the unit vacant because of these reasons. Usually, the tenant has a right and always has a right to challenge that decision. But oftentimes, tenants, when they see this notice, they don't realize the difference between a notice and eviction order. And some take it very seriously and leave. And there's also if they do challenge the merits of that notice, then they can ask whether or not the unit needs to be vacant for that reason, whether there are permits applied that requires the unit to be vacant. And there are significant fines against landlords if they've demonstrated that they're trying to evict a tenant in bad faith.

MK: The Ontario government announced new policies earlier this spring to try to limit renovictions, including requiring landlords to give tenants an opportunity to move back in once renovations are done with the same rent as before. So how effective is a policy like that?

DOUGLAS KWAN: Well, those provisions are helpful, but they still rely on a complaint based system where it's incumbent on a tenant to pursue legal means to enforce their rights. But what we've seen is that tenants are reluctant, whether it's because we're in the midst of an affordable housing crisis and they don't want to risk their housing or their situation to challenge the landlord at the landlord and tenant board. And tenants are also disproportionately low and middle class. They may have language barriers. You know, disproportionately, more newcomers are tenants, and so they may not understand their rights or may not be willing to enforce their rights. Also, what complicates matters in Ontario is that the landlord and tenant board which hears disputes between landlords and tenants are experiencing significant delays where landlord applications are taking an average of seven to eight months to be heard and tenant applications are waiting up to two years. In fact, there's a couple of applications that have yet to be resolved going back to 2017.

MK: In my conversation with Fiona, she used the word casualties and victims. How do you see it as the plight of the renter in this current housing market?

DOUGLAS KWAN: You know, Fiona's situation is sadly not uncommon. They are frustrated in having to be displaced from their community every couple of years. And it's very difficult to build roots in the community and to feel secure in your own home. It's very challenging. And there are some solutions that could possibly help tenants such as Fiona in their situation. And some of them include, you know, provinces and municipalities can offer more robust, proactive protections where they insist on seeing a building permit before tenants are evicted. There are renovation bylaws at the municipal level that can be implemented. Significant rent control provisions, closing those loopholes so that there is no longer a financial incentive to pursue bad faith evictions is another solution. In Ontario, significant reforms at the landlord and tenant board needs to take place so that tenants can feel that there's a place where their rights can be assured efficiently and fairly. A commitment for more non-profit housing so we can build more affordable housing because the market relying on private development to provide affordable housing has proven not enough. And also, every level of government should look at the financialization of housing where corporate landlords are given preferential tax treatment and so we're seeing the rise of more corporate landlords. So those are some of the solutions that could calm down the market and create less incentive for landlords to pursue bad faith applications.

MK: Douglas, good to talk to you this morning. Thank you.

DOUGLAS KWAN: Thank you so much, Mark.

MK: Douglas Kwan is the director for the Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario. We reached him in Toronto. And for more on the National Rental Outlook, I'm joined by Mathieu Laberge. He's the partner and leader of economics and policy at KPMG Canada. He's also a former chief economist at the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. Good morning, Mathieu.

MATHIEU LABERGE: Good morning, Mark.

MK: You've been listening into the conversations here. What is driving this increase in no fault evictions in your opinion?

MATHIEU LABERGE: Yeah. I want to start by saying, you know, we all need to acknowledge there's a very human phenomenon here. Evictions are human drama, drama, very emotional and very challenging in the current context. And landlords absolutely need to comply with local regulation. One point I wanted to make is that we need to be careful before we point towards financialization of housing because really, landlords are there to supply the market. And that's the purpose. They're not the home owner. They're not occupying the space. They're there to actually supply rental housing units. Now, when you look at the root causes of what's being observed today is that the economics of rental hardly makes sense at this point. And for existing rental units, rent inflation is very regulated. That's actually what makes them appealing and attractive to renters because they have, you know, a relatively stable payment over time. But for a landlord that are facing rising costs and rising rents at a much slower pace, what that means is that over time, it makes it more and more difficult to make it work, right? And that's actually what Fiona described. They start by, you know, delaying maintenance and not keeping the asset up to a good state of repair. And eventually, they have to do an eviction for renovation purposes because it's that we reach a point where there is no other option.

MK: Well, and Mathieu, I'm sorry, we want to hear more from landlords. And we spoke with David Hutniak. He's the CEO of Landlord B.C., which represents owners and managers of rental housing. And he says the high demand for residential real estate generally means that sometimes, people are simply being evicted so that the new owner can occupy the building. Let's listen.

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DAVID HUTNIAK: There is an important narrative that's being ignored and that is that at the end of the day, you know, we're part of the housing system. And the harsh reality is that more and more people have been buying homes over the last handful of years. We have very, very low supply and so they're all competing for these same homes. And it's within their right, obviously, to take over these homes that they're buying for personal use. That's why presumably they're buying these homes. But what's being framed here is it's the evil landlords evicting people. And it's really important that whoever is studying this, they take into consideration the reality of the real estate market.

MK: Mathieu, what do you think of the point he's making there?

MATHIEU LABERGE: Well, you know, two things on that. The first one is in the current environment, I have no doubt that some landlords have to repossess to actually occupy the unit. I mean, housing is not cheap. It is expensive for everyone, right? And with people that are maybe, you know, have been investing intensely over the past couple of years, they may be at a point where they actually need to buy one of the units. The other thing I want to say is, you know, the phenomenon of a no fault eviction, we hear about it across the country. And it's good that there's a report that's coming to document it because up till now, it was largely anecdotal. And so it's something we definitely need to look into more thoroughly and understand better to actually fix it and make it work for landlords and renters.

MK: How do we fix it?

MATHIEU LABERGE: Well, you know, it's both, housing is both a short and long term place, right? In the end, what will fix it is supply. We need to bring more units to the market, but that takes time.

MK: Which is going to take time. Right.

MATHIEU LABERGE: Exactly. So in the short term, you know, there are subsidies that have been put forward. Maybe they could be revisited and enhanced. You know, there are federal and provincial subsidies. I like what Douglas mentioned about, you know, not for profit and co-op housing. That's definitely, you know, a way to repurpose existing building towards affordable housing. But in the end, even for the long term game where we need more supply, I think we need to be creative in Canada. We need to think about land trust. We need to bring in some more patient capital. Not just pension fund, but maybe social finance mechanism to actually incent those patient investors to come in and supply the market with affordable housing.

MK: Very quickly, what are we waiting for? This is a problem that has been festering for years. Why haven't we moved on this?

MATHIEU LABERGE: Well, I think that the system now is quite uncoordinated. What we need is to bring everyone, all stakeholders, governments, industry and civil society together in fixing this. I put forward the idea of a summit or estate general on Canadian housing. And I think that's where we're at right now.

MK: Mathieu, thank you for your time. Merci bien.

MATHIEU LABERGE: Merci beaucoup.

MK: Mathieu Laberge is a partner and leader of economics and policy at KPMG Canada. He's also a former chief economist at the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. We reached him in Ottawa. The CBC news is next. Then.

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MALE SPEAKER: It’s 4 a.m. I’ve had to come to the kitchen. I can't sleep. I’ve gotten up and I've got a headache. I feel like eating more food.

MK: Well, turns out waking up in the middle of the night or sitting at your desk mindlessly reaching for another salty snack isn't so mindless. In fact, your mind has been hijacked. In six minutes, the science of ultra-processed food and why it keeps you wanting more. I'm Mark Kelley. Stay close. You're listening to The Current.

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ULTRA-PROCESSED PEOPLE

Guest: Chris Van Tullenken

MK: Hello. I'm Mark Kelley and you're listening to The Current.

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MK: Still to come, we like to blame the faceless algorithm for what we see online. Instead, maybe, just maybe we should be thanking the people who help filter the content. In half an hour, the people monitoring what makes it onto your feed and the toll that takes on them. But first, we are what we eat.

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MK: On this busy weekday morning, there's a good chance cereal, granola bars or flavoured yoghurt have made their way onto your table. Part of a balanced breakfast or so it says on the package. But you might want to take a second look at the side of the box. Do you see some ingredients there you've never heard of before? Well, enter ultra-processed foods. The name may make you think of sugary drinks and junk food, but it's likely a lot of the foods in your kitchen qualify as UPF. Chris Van Tullenken is a physician and author of the new book, “Ultra Processed People”. We've reached him in London. Hi, Chris.

CHRIS VAN TULLENKEN: Hi, Mark. It's so nice to be here.

MK: And wonderful to have you on the program. Let’s define our terms before we dig into this conversation. What exactly is the definition of ultra-processed foods?

CHRIS VAN TULLENKEN: So there's a really long, formal scientific definition. If you go to the United Nations Food and Agriculture website, you can read it. And it runs bizarrely to about three pages. It's one of the longest operational definitions we have in science. But it boils down to this. If it's wrapped in plastic and it contains an ingredient that you don't have in your kitchen at home or you wouldn't typically find in a domestic kitchen, then it's an ultra-processed food. So that wraps up about all of it. Another good working definition would be any food with a health claim on the packet is likely to be ultra-processed. And another really simple one is could you make this in your kitchen at home? And if you couldn't, then it's probably ultra-processed.

MK: Well, that was the thing that jumped out at me, Chris, as I read your book, was the paradox, as you're mentioning here, that many foods that we consider healthy like milk alternatives, low sugar yoghurts, granola bars, unsweetened cereals, that I would think that these were good for me, but yet they qualify as ultra-processed foods. Why is that?

CHRIS VAN TULLENKEN: Well, the reason they qualify, if you look at anyone who is eating something now or has a kitchen cabinet next to them, if you get down your bread and you look at the list of ingredients, you will find on your bread probably an emulsifier called, in the U.K., we'd call the E472. E in Canada, you might call it datum or panettone. It may say something like tartaric acid esters of mono and diglycerides of fatty acids. So your bread is what we call an emulsified foam. It's not really bread. It's a foamy mix of wheat, protein, sugar and some flour, but it's not traditional bread. The flavoured yoghurt will probably have something like maltodextrin, guar gum, xanthan gum. It will have these thickeners and stabilizers. And some of that is to stop yoghurt separating. Yoghurt naturally does separate a little bit into food and people don't like that, but a lot of it is to replace fat. So in order to make a low fat claim on a yoghurt, you need to get rid of all the fat and you can then replace it with a slippery gum like xanthan gum, which is a bacterial exudate.

MK: And so that's the reality of how so much modern food is made now. But what's the downside? What's the danger? Because you really point a finger at the downside and what this is doing to our diet and our bodies.

CHRIS VAN TULLENKEN: So for a long time, your parents, my parents, my grandparents have worried that this kind of fake Franken new food may not be very good for us. And my mom called it junk food or processed food.

MK: Right.

CHRIS VAN TULLENKEN: And there's been this long confusion, but processing is ancient. No one's been clear how we delineate the line between sort of traditional processed food like cheese or butters, that's processed food, and ultra-processed food, which would be plastic cheese or margarine would be ultra-processed butter. And so in 2010, a team of scientists came up with this definition, which allowed us to study this whole category of modern industrial food. And what's really clear now is that our grandparents and our parents were absolutely right. And it's one of the sort of reassuring things about science. I would think. Science is only interesting if it completely confirms everything you already believe or it turns all your beliefs upside down. And this is one of those stories where the science absolutely confirms what we all suspected, that food made by transnational food corporations with obligations to pension funds is very different for us, for our bodies and food made at home with love by our parents or caregivers. So the evidence is clear now that this food leads to weight gain. It's specifically engineered to drive excess consumption, but it's also clear that it leads to heart attacks and strokes, cardiovascular disease, metabolic disease like type two diabetes, inflammatory diseases like Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis, increases in certain cancers and deaths from all cancers. And it also increases your risk of dementia, anxiety, depression and death from all causes. So ultra-processed food is now the leading cause of early death on planet Earth. So it's a huge public health problem.

MK: There's another twist which I learned from your book, is that these UPF products, as you claim, are as addictive as cigarettes or drugs. So explain to me because it's not only that what we're eating isn't good for us, but at the same time, our body is craving more of it. How can that be?

CHRIS VAN TULLENKEN: In Canada and the U.K.? This food has been our food culture now for two, three, four generations. It is what we eat. And if you're in your 60s, you're still eating the same product that you ate in your childhood. So a popular breakfast cereal, for example. The products have been designed in a focus group, tested again and again over the decades until they become extremely edible to the point of addiction. And many listeners will say, well, I don't really struggle with any of that, but I would reckon more than half of the people listening will recognize there are some foods that they struggle to stop eating. And if they examine which foods they are, they might be biscuits, they might be cakes, they might be particular types of potato chip, it might be takeaway spicy food or fried chicken from high street shops. Those foods are all ultra-processed. And the food companies I don't think have set out maliciously to get us addicted. It's just by putting food through focus group panels, you know, hundreds of times and iterating it through the lab. Where the incentive is always to sell as much food as possible, what you end up with is addictive substances. And some people can consume these products moderately and they may just want to cut down. But the invitation in my book is really for the addicted person to eat along because we're all part of an experiment that we didn't volunteer for, right? We don't get the results of this experiment, but new molecules and new combinations of nutrients and foods are being trialled on us the entire time to see which of them is best at extracting money from us. And my proposal to the reader is to keep eating this food while they read about it and examine it because necessarily, this is the food that we are asked to examine least as it passes our lips and we swallow it. We don't inspect it. It's consumed while we drive, while we stand up, through a hurried lunch break, while we're, you know, hurrying our kids home from school. It's kind of the food we don't consider. And once you do start eating it and learning about it and chewing it and thinking about it, most people in the U.K. who've read the book find that it becomes inedible. So the book is there's no promises there, but it's there's a proposal to try and help someone who feels addicted. And I should say that's the relationship that I recognized I had with many of these products.

MK: Yeah, because in the process of researching this book, you weren't just reading, you know, studies and lab reports. You actually conducted an experiment on yourself to intensify your relationship with UPFs. Tell us about that.

CHRIS VAN TULLENKEN: So I'm a scientist at University College in London, and I teamed up with my colleagues there in the endocrinology and obesity Department. And we didn't do this frivolously. We did this. I was the first patient to generate pilot data for a much bigger study which we're now conducting. And so I ate an 80% ultra-processed food diet for one month. And this sounds a bit extreme, but this is an entirely normal diet for a Canadian teenager. This is a typical diet for a Canadian adult. Probably one in five people in Canada eat 80% of their calories from ultra-processed food. And I wasn't force feeding myself. It wasn't super seismic. Three things happened. I gained so much weight that if I'd continued for a year, I would have doubled my body weight.

MK: Wow!

CHRIS VAN TULLENKEN: And that's consistent with, I have an identical twin brother and that's consistent with his experience. When he went and lived in the States and was exposed to a lot of ultra-processed food, he gained a huge amount of weight in a very short period of time. But the second thing we found is that this food doesn't just make you gain weight, it interferes with your satiety mechanisms. So we measured my hormonal response to a standard meal at the beginning and at the end of the month. And at the end of a standard meal, the end of a month of ultra-processed food, my hunger hormones remained sky high. And you can't fake that. Obviously, journalists and broadcasters do like to exaggerate, you know, it’d be great to write about, you know, be good to. I could have deliberately gained the weight, but you can't fake your hormone response to a meal. So that was very powerful. And it's consistent with what we think the food is being engineered to do, which is to get around the evolved systems inside our bodies that tell us when to stop eating. And listeners will recognize there are foods that even though they may feel full, as if by magic, their hand will propel another mouthful or another chip or another bite toward their mouth. So it is food that interrupts our brain’s ability to say no. And the final effect was an MRI scan. We scanned my brain. At the end of just one month, we saw very significant increases in the connections between the habit bits of my brain, the bits that control sort of automatic behaviour and the bits deep in the middle of the brain that are linked to addiction and reward. What this means isn't clear, but it was a robust enough result to make us really concerned about what this food is doing to children with growing brains. I mean, I'm 44, right? You can't affect my brain all that much. You know, it's on it's on its way out, if you like. I'm over the hump. It's pretty fixed. If you can change the connectivity in my brain in one month, what we're doing exposing kids from birth to the age of 10 or say that peak neurodevelopmental time to high doses of this food is really troubling.

MK: Well, that's exactly what I was thinking as you were mentioning this is in an adult, it's one thing. But what about kids? Because we would be feeding so much of this food with good intentions to our children. What are we doing to our children in the process?

CHRIS VAN TULLENKEN: Well, one of the things we know is that in the U.K. and in Canada, we are creating a pandemic of childhood overweight and obesity. And this causes, this is a real tragedy. One of the things in the book I want to be really careful about is we use the term obese a lot, and I would like us to stop using that term. I think that people live with overweight, that live with obesity, they don't have it as an identity. And with adults, you know, it's problematic to refer to the obesity crisis as a crisis. You know, it's a way we all have to live now and it's not going to be easy to solve. With children, it is a tragedy. We know that they suffer physically, emotionally, socially and developmentally. But there's something else that's happening, which is that children are getting shorter. So in the U.K. where we have U.K. and Canada and Australia and the States, we have the highest rates of consumption of ultra-processed food of anywhere in the world and our children are much shorter as well as being heavier. Our children are much shorter than they are in say Scandinavian or other northern European countries where they consume much less ultra-processed food. So there is this double effect where obesity, we should start thinking of it as a form of malnutrition.

MK: But there's also a class component to this. How does it affect lower income people more than others?

CHRIS VAN TULLENKEN: In the U.K., in Canada and in America, we spend less on food per household than in any other countries on earth. You know, we spend around between five and 10% of income, depending on what income your bracket in. People are so squeezed at the lower end of the economic spectrum by the cost of gas, by the war in Ukraine, the global effects of that, that there is no more money to spend on good food. And the tragedy of our current food system, and it's identical in the U.K. and Canada, is that the only affordable available food for many, many families is ultra-processed. And the people who are… So one of the things that's really difficult when we talk about this is to not stigmatize people who have no choice but to consume this and are trying to make the best decision they can. And what we know is that when we give people money, they stop eating this. So there's always this paradox when you write a book like mine that the people who have enough money to buy the book are probably the people who least need to read it. So I spend quite a lot of time in the book talking about what governments need to do and what policymakers need to do. And it's the same in Canada, the same in the States and the same in the U.K. We need to disentangle ourselves from the food industry. The companies that profit from diet related disease in children, including obesity, but many other diseases as well, the companies that make money from that are the same companies that propose themselves as partners in the policies that affect child health. So they control the charities. They control scientists. You write on the nutritional guidance, they'll control a lot of the information that goes to the public through NGOs. They control all the basic science. Most food science is funded by the food industry, and they fund lots and lots of broadcasting scientists and doctors like me to promote very subtle messaging that distracts away from ultra-processed food. So removing those conflicts of interest. Really, the food companies, as I see it, are a bit stuck. They're doing what they are legally obliged to do, which is make as much money as they possibly can. The people who own stock are governments and physicians and scientists. And it's those groups that have to start turning down the money from the food industry.

MK: Well, as you point out, with all the problems, not potential problems, but real life problems that this ultra-processed food is causing, it does make me wonder, why isn't there more regulation over the food industry?

CHRIS VAN TULLENKEN: Well, that is such a brilliant question, and that was one of the main questions I set out to answer in my book. Part of it is because of the power of the food industry. So the companies that make most of the food that we eat, the companies that people will be able to name, and I won't name any particular brands, there are only about 12 of them. By some measurements, there are only really four companies who make most of our food. These are companies with revenues the size of a medium sized European country. You know, they are incredibly powerful. And for example, they fund efforts. In the U.S., there was an entire national public health program called Exercise in Medicine is Medicine, which promoted the idea that if you go for a run, you will burn calories and that can compensate for your intake of fizzy drinks or junk food. And that whole area of science was a complete lie. It's not possible that you go for a run in order to lose weight. That doesn't work. It's much more complicated than that. But we're certain that increase in exercise levels does not lead to weight loss. And yet, there were thousands of papers and the National Public Health Program and a huge institute, all of which was devoted to promoting this false messaging. So getting a control of the industry is going to be really important. I think the public are starting to wake up to the idea that these food companies are comparable to tobacco companies. Now, that doesn't mean we should treat ultra-processed food like tobacco. We mustn't tax this or ban it. You know, at the moment, as I say, it's the only affordable available food and we mustn't do anything to increase stigma. But what we could do is start to treat the companies like the tobacco industry and start to make it a bit more shameful to take their money. And I think we are going to see lawsuits. I mean, in the U.K., we've just had a, you know, this weekend, we just had an amazing new breakfast cereal released that's, you know, almost entirely made of pieces of chocolate. And the outcry was really, really violent. You know, people are very, very angry and upset that this food is being sold to them as healthy. And it says on it it's vitamin enriched and contains some, it's a source of fibre. And so I think we will start to see legal action. And I think the tobacco campaigners created a world in which we are increasingly willing to understand that the companies who take our money privatize all the benefits and externalize all the costs. We all bear the brunt of the cost to the environment, to our bodies, to public health. The plastic pollution, the rates of deforestation, we all pay for that, but the profits are all accumulated to a very, very small number of people. And I think people are starting to get that particular piece of economics.

MK: For everything you've learned during the process of writing and researching this book, is ultra-processed food even food?

CHRIS VAN TULLENKEN: I had a conversation with a scientist in Brazil called Fernanda Raba. And while we were planning a research project, she's one of the team who came up with this definition in 2010. And every time I mentioned food, she'd say, it's not food, Chris, it's an industrially produced edible substance. It's not food. It was like a nervous take, almost, where it became quite irritating in our conversation. Anyway, I hung up the phone and went to eat my dinner. And I was on my UPF diet, so I had some takeaway fried chicken and I was unable to finish the food. That was the moment I was sort of released from my addiction. I think it's very reasonable to say that this stuff isn't food. It contains molecules that we've never been exposed to in our evolutionary past, you know, and combinations of historic molecules that have been modified and put together in ratios that we would never imagine. So I don't think it is food. If you look at your standard COLA, for example, that's a great example of a thing that we all accept as a sort of it's normal to have cola drinks sponsoring sporting events. It's almost seen as athletic. People drink it for lunch, and yet it's a mixture of artificial colouring, phosphoric acid, a bitter addictive drug and more sugar than you could ever, ever put in a cup of tea or coffee. And the phosphoric acid and the bitter caffeine mean that you can add so much sugar that you get this addictive jolt. Because of the sourness and the bitterness, you can add more sugar. And that's part of what we think drives the cycle of addiction. Now, that's not food. It's an artificially flavoured brown mixture of phosphoric acid and sugar. And yet, that's completely normal. In the U.K., our national dish is baked beans on toast. It's a tin of beans and modified corn starch with artificial sweeteners and flavourings on emulsified foam bread. And that's not to be, that's what people can afford. It's not to be snobby, but we must realize when this stuff is our national diet, that that constitutes a form of structural violence. It does physical harm to people's bodies. And allowing the companies to produce these substances and market them in an entirely unregulated way, we are going to look back on this era and go, wow, who were the people who let that happen?

MK: But given all that, Chris, and just a last point to you, given the cost effectiveness, given the convenience of ultra-processed food, what do you suggest for people to help them cut back on the foods in their diet?

CHRIS VAN TULLENKEN: I come from a background of real privilege. Now, I'm a physician. I have enough money. I have time. I have a job that allows me to prepare food for my kids. And I feel deeply uncomfortable saying to anyone, these are my top tips for how you can live and save money and, you know, prepare food for your kids. For many people, this is going to be a real struggle. And my book and the science around it should make people feel anxious and angry that change will be so hard. There are some brilliant resources out there from people with lived experience. There are books by indigenous people and by people who've lived with low incomes who really understand this problem and its solutions. And I would urge anyone to, if they can possibly do it, create time and try and feed their children real food. But all I will say to go with that without lecturing anyone is you have my love and my support and some limited understanding of how hard that will be. But really, in the end, I think all of us are going to have to vote for change. It's going to be policymakers that are going to have to persuade us that we can use this to remove some social inequality, to create more justice in the world. We can use this science as an argument about why we need more fairness in our society. I dodged that question because I just don't want to tell anyone how to live.

MK: Yeah, no, I respect that. And as someone who had beans and toast for breakfast this weekend, you got my attention. I'm listening.

CHRIS VAN TULLENKEN: The other thing I want to say is I fed my kids beans on toast and fish fingers two evenings last week. So this is not an easy project. And having some level of this in many of our diets is fine. You know, having a microwaved lasagne once a week to save some time, you know, no one should feel ashamed or guilty or poisoned by that. But if all of what we eat is microwavable plastic wrapped containing additives, that should force us to ask why the food system is designed like this.

MK: Chris, a pleasure to talk to you. Thank you so much.

CHRIS VAN TULLENKEN: It's such a pleasure. So nice to speak with you, Mark.

MK: Chris Van Tullenken is a physician and researcher at University College London. His new book is “Ultra-Processed People and Why We Can’t Stop Eating Food That Isn't Food”. Well, coming up after your regional update, a lot of strange and often disturbing content gets posted online, but it's unlikely you'll see all of it. Coming up, the people behind the tech monitoring what gets shared online, keeping much of the violence and hate out of your feed, but the toll that that takes on them. I'm Mark Kelley. You're listening to The Current. We're coming back to you in 90 seconds. Stay close.

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MATT PROMO

MK: I'm Mark Kelley and you're listening to The Current. Well, regular listeners may be wondering where's Matt? Where is Mr. Galloway? Well, fear not. Matt is in Alberta and he'll be bringing you special programming from that province tomorrow and Thursday. And to give us a sense of what to expect, I've turned the tables on Matt. I get to interview him. Matt joins me this morning from Calgary. Hi, Matt.

MATT GALLOWAY: Mark, good morning.

MK: As we journalists know, there is no better way to get a story than to be on the ground. You're out in Alberta. You are in a province with two tales right now between the forest fires that are burning in the north and the election in the province that is going to be pivotal for the future of the province. Let's start with the election. How are you covering it? Who are you talking to? What are you doing?

MATT GALLOWAY: This is a huge issue and it's an issue in this province. But as you'll hear over the course of our conversation, it's very much an election that people across the country should be paying close attention to. And we're in Calgary in part because the belief for many people is that this is where the election will be decided, that in areas outside of the city, Edmonton likely generally will go for the NDP. Areas outside of the urban centres probably will go to Danielle Smith and the United Conservative Party. But in Calgary, it really is a battleground, as people say, and there are a handful of ridings that are being fought over. That in itself is a story, but it’s the issues themselves that really I think are interesting in terms of what people are debating and how people are figuring out how to choose their vote. So we set off in an area right near the airport on a train. We met with Naheed Nenshi, the former mayor of Calgary, in a community where he lives. As he says, it's one of the least diverse communities in Calgary because it's largely South Asian, hyper diverse. He was kind of playing around a little bit with that, but it is a hyper diverse community. We met him there and talked a little bit from his perspective about why he believes this election is so tight and what's at stake. He says in many ways it's a referendum on leadership and the issues that those leaders who want to lead this province will have to figure out how to handle and take on. And then we jumped on this train and headed into downtown and picked up some people along the way. It was really interesting just in hearing Nenshi talk about how the city has changed and how the issues at play are the issues that are at play across this country when it comes to affordability, when it comes to issues of safety, people trying to figure out health care and how they're going to be able to access the health care that they need. These might seem unusual for a former mayor to be talking about, but they are issues that he has a real handle on as somebody who speaks to the rest of the country about what Alberta is and what Alberta perhaps is not in opposition to perhaps some of the ideas and the myths that people have. So on this train, we picked up another of his former colleagues, Jeromy Farkas, who used to be a city councillor, actually ran for mayor to succeed Naheed Nenshi. He is very much a staunch conservative, but it's interesting, he and Nenshi do this thing on local CBC Radio here in Calgary. Every Friday, they have a political panel. And last Friday, if you know Naheed Nenshi, he's not shy of words.

MK: No, not at all

MATT GALLOWAY: No, not at all. What Jeromy Farkas was able to say kind of put Nenshi’s mouth just hanging open. He could not respond because Farkas, who is, as I say, a very staunch conservative, laid out the case for not voting for the conservatives because of the leader, Danielle Smith. So you'll hear our conversation with Jeromy Farkas, a little bit about what they share, what he and Nenshi share in terms of thoughts on this province, but also very much what they differ on in terms of politics. And then one more stop on the train, we picked up Mike Solberg, who his father, Monty Solberg, was a long time MP. Mike himself worked in the Cabinet and in the office of Stephen Harper, and he says that Danielle Smith, who has gotten in all sorts of trouble as a leader of UCP for what she said before she took on that role is just fine as the leader. And so three different, very different perspectives on what it means to be in this city in this moment, what this election is about, what Danielle Smith and Rachel Notley, the leader of the NDP, could bring to the conversation, but also just about values and what the values are in Calgary in Alberta in 2023. And it's interesting, three people with very different perspectives, as I say, but who also agree a lot. And so that was an interesting way just of seeing in a city like this that is the battleground, seeing different perspectives as you move through the city.

MK: And all of this is happening, as I mentioned at the outset, with forest fires burning in the north. Tell me how that is also consuming the interest in the province. You've got the election over here, but you've got something very, very clear and present danger to deal with right now.

MATT GALLOWAY: Well, and here in Calgary, I mean, it's, you know, blue skies, a beautiful day. It is not the hazy skies of the north of this province. And in many ways, it is a story of two provinces in one. The fires there have led to, as we know, evacuations of communities, calls from some of those communities to delay the election because they have much more pressing issues to deal with. So we're going to head up to Edmonton on Thursday to talk a little bit about what is going on there in the most immediate crisis points when it comes to these fires. The weather here is hot. It's dry. The sense is that this is just the beginning of what's going to be a terrible fire season. And there are people who know of what they speak when they know of terrible fire seasons. We spoke with a couple of different firefighters, one of which he worked and fought the Fort McMurray fire in 2016. He says that he hasn't seen the kind of conditions that we're seeing right now since then. And so you hear a little bit about what it's like to fight those fires, how these fires, as we heard from John Vaillant last week on the program, are very different now than they were before. And again, there's a collision between politics and, as you say, a much more immediate pressing concern. It has become a political issue. Certainly, when the leaders debate on Thursday, there will be questions about how they would handle these fires, how they'll handle them in future. But for people who are in the north of the province, I think politics is very much on the back burner. They're just trying to figure out how to fight these fires and how to save their homes. And so we'll hear from some of them on Thursday when we make our way up to Edmonton.

MK: The Current coming live from Alberta on Wednesday and Thursday. Matt, I'm looking forward to it.

MATT GALLOWAY: Mark, thank you very much.

MK: Stay tuned. More from Matt on the ground in Alberta tomorrow.

AI

Guests: Trevin Brownie, Sonam Jindal

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[we want our money chants]

MK: We want our money. Those are chants from content moderators in Kenya. They're the people behind your social media feeds and AI tools like ChatGPT, monitoring what gets posted online. And although it's a critically important job, they are paid a pittance. Earlier this month, more than 150 workers joined together to form Africa's first content moderators union. Trevin Brownie is one of them. We've reached him in Nairobi. Hello.

TREVIN BROWNIE: Hi. How are you, Mark?

MK: I'm doing very well and I'm happy to talk to you today. Trevin, help me understand a little bit more about your job and your working conditions. What was it that pushed you to join this union?

TREVIN BROWNIE: Okay. First of all, I’m a Facebook content moderator. So what the job basically entails, we filter out the Facebook platform. That means that we take off any form of abuse of content that violates policies such as bullying and harassment or hate speech or violence in graphic content, suicides. You've got child pornography, you've got gangs, cartels, dangerous organizations, individuals, terrorism. So our job basically is to make sure that Facebook users across the world does not get exposed to such type of content. So we make sure that the platform is cleansed from all the content that would violate these type of policies.

MK: That sounds like it could be traumatic work.

TREVIN BROWNIE: It is traumatic. I've seen very disturbing images. I've been in the job for almost four years now. When it comes to, for example, child pornography, it is inhumane imagery or videos that we have to look at to make sure all of the age categories, if it's child exploitation or if it's an adult and if it's a normal pornographic movie or scene. I've seen more than 500 beheadings on a monthly basis. I’m speaking of capital punishment, murders, I'm speaking of countries that had war quite recently. Last year, we had the war between Ukraine and Russia, and those type of images we had to filter out to make sure that Facebook users across the world does not get exposed to the graphic side of what happens on the ground and what people actually do to people.

MK: As I mentioned in the outset, you've joined this union. You described in detail about sort of the graphic nature of your job. What is it you need? What is it you're looking for to help improve your working conditions?

TREVIN BROWNIE: The first thing that I would like in place is actually professional psychiatry. Basically, we would like a professional psychiatrist to be on the job that would know how to deal with people that is constantly exposed to this type of content instead of your normal wellness counsellors who doesn't actually understand the nature of the content. Secondly, I feel like this is a new type of job. It hasn't even been opened for more than five years. Content Moderation, it's basically a new title that entered into the digital or technological world. So I feel like the policies that threaten to protect these type of employees should be relooked at and redrawn up based on the type of work they do. This is a unique job. It's basically the future when it comes to social media and platforms. That is how the world connects. So this union would serve basically as body to protect the rights of these employees, to proper labour practices, to proper mental health, and also to find or train the right type of people that should be allowed to do this type of work. Like I said, it's not for anyone.

MK: So Trevin, are you well-compensated for your job?

TREVIN BROWNIE: We’re saying $2 an hour. So personally, I would not think this job is well compensated specifically in Kenya, Nairobi. I've been earning $2 an hour since I started working here. That would add up to about 60,000 shillings monthly. They add an out of country allowance for expatriates of 20,000 shillings. So you total it to 60,000. So your basic salary is 40,000 and only for expatriates they add the extra 20,000. After an almost 30% ratio of tax, I would come home with about 49,000. 49,000 shillings, it's just enough to keep me by, living pay cheque to pay cheque basically.

MK: You mentioned making $2 an hour, which I find quite surprising to hear. How does that compare to what someone in a Western country might make for doing the same job?

TREVIN BROWNIE: One of the main reasons why we even started questioning our salaries of $2 an hour, research and rumours since 2019 has been given that other moderators around the globe, specifically Facebook moderators, has been earning $20 an hour. And whereas, we've been on $2 an hour. We've got colleagues who's actually reached out via social media too, a couple of moderators globally. And this information has come from like when we asked them, from rumours we started believing and started questioning. So we believe that we deserve to be compensated more than what we’re being given.

MK: And prior to forming this union, what kind of response had you gotten from companies about your concerns over pay, over working conditions and such?

TREVIN BROWNIE: One of the most common responses that we received here in Kenya, Nairobi was that our current salaries, it was aggressive in the current salary market across Kenya. In other words, what they tried to enforce is that we were one of the 13 highest paying jobs in the country. That was what we were mostly told, is that our salary was market related and it was actually aggressive compared to other salaries within the same position. So even though we thought it was a bit unfair, the fact that we're not doing the same work as we were being compared to or the fact that we were expatriates from another country, we had to just accept what we were told at the time.

MK: Trevin, it sounds like you've got a lot of work ahead of you, so I wish you well and take care of yourself.

TREVIN BROWNIE: Thank you so much for this call.

MK: Trevin Brownie is a member of the newly formed African Content Moderators Union. Well, in a statement, Sama, the company that subcontracts work to Trevin and other content moderators, says in part, “We recognize that content moderation is a tough job and we have paid wages that are four times the minimum wage and two and a half times the living wage in Kenya. We care deeply about the health and emotional well-being of our team.” Sonam Jindal studies the labour and economy of AI for the non-profit organization, Partnership on AI. The group published guidelines on what companies should do to better equip employees doing this work. We've reached Sonam in San Francisco. Good morning.

SONAM JINDAL: Good morning. Thank you for having me.

MK: Thanks for being here. You listened to Trevin as he outlined the challenges of his job, the trauma that's baked into his job and the fact that he feels he's just not being properly compensated. What do you think about his story and his working conditions?

SONAM JINDAL: I think it's unfortunately very, very common. And I'm very excited, though, by his efforts and others efforts to form a union and start raising that conversation and standing up for other content moderators and data enrichment workers across Africa. I think it's a big step forward, but there's a lot more to be done. And them sharing their stories is certainly very, very powerful.

MK: Metta, the owners of Facebook, they've reported sales last year of $28 billion. The stock is soaring. Why is it that workers are getting paid $2 an hour?

SONAM JINDAL: That's a great question. I think part of the problem potentially in the industry overall is that data is sometimes an afterthought. If you talk to engineers, they obviously know that AI algorithms, machine learning algorithms require significant amounts of data, but it's sort of the unsexy part of AI development, right? It's not as exciting. And so the goal is let's build the algorithm, let's get it to market, let's make everything shiny and beautiful and work. And data is sort of a means to that end or it's treated as a means to that end. I think we need to shift to a situation where we see that actually that is central to AI development. And we need to be paying more attention to it and thinking about all the downstream impacts, right? And central to that is the impact on humans who are absolutely critical to making sure that data is actually usable to build accurate, precise AI algorithms.

MK: I'm learning about this as we talk about this. And when we think about these AI engines and the data enrichment, we're always thinking of machines. And it's important for us to be talking about having this conversation to talk about the human cost to keep AI engines running. And just tell me about how labour intensive this is.

SONAM JINDAL: Yeah, it is incredibly labour intensive, right? So at a high level, a lot of AI algorithms and machine learning algorithms require massive amounts of data. That data is often unstructured or unusable as is. And so it requires people to go through and look at that data and use their human intelligence. So I think a lot of the narrative, as you correctly pointed out, is around AI is so great, we've made these technological advances. And there are advances, but those advances are based off of human labour and input. And I think we need to recognize how important they are. So we have people who are looking at individual pieces of data, and that's a lot of data, and using their human judgement and knowledge and training and their lived experiences to analyze data and label it so that it can be used. And it's incredibly challenging work as well. You have to, I mean, depending on the context, you need specialized information or training. And as Trevin was pointing out, there's a psychological cost to looking at certain types of data. And at the end of the day, without that human labour, we wouldn't be able to have data that could be used to train AI models.

MK: Well, in the case of ChatGPT, because everyone's talking about this now, can you explain to me the role that people play when I'm asking ChatGPT to write a poem about my cat? Who's behind that? What's the human component of that?

SONAM JINDAL: In a situation where you are prompting any sort of chat or a search function that uses AI, an algorithm on its own may not know what is a poem or what is a cat. So data that it's being trained on needed to have been classified by people. And the other thing is sometimes, results from AI algorithms may not be entirely accurate. And so in the cases where it's not accurate, humans can go back and look at it and say, why wasn't it accurate? What needed to have actually been output it as a result to this prompt? Or if the poem that's generated is toxic, that's not a good user experience for you as the prompter. And so there are people who are looking at prompts to make sure that the results are actually accurate. So there's a lot of human judgement that goes into something like that.

MK: How does contracting out of this work contribute to the problem? Does that create sort of a plausible deniability for companies to take any responsibility for the working conditions that these people are living through?

SONAM JINDAL: Yeah. I think that part of what makes this industry a little bit complex and difficult is because there are so many different actors involved. It kind of leads to a situation where there's limited transparency around who is actually accountable at a given point. And so I think part of what we can do is try to create more transparency around what harms are being caused and by whom and more reporting needs to happen. But certainly, part of the challenge right now is that there are so many different actors involved in this ecosystem who all have a role to play in impacting the conditions of workers.

MK: And what regulations, if any, exists to hold those companies accountable for work related issues if they are outsourcing and contracting out?

SONAM JINDAL: So at the moment, there is not a whole lot of regulation. And as Trevin pointed out, this is a new job. And, you know, it looks like a lot of other jobs that we've seen before, but it is quite unique also. And so we need to be thinking about it more proactively. And I'd urge policymakers to start thinking about this labour market because there is potential for this job to be, you know, there's a lot of narrative around how AI is going to be displacing jobs or replacing jobs. And while that's certainly true, there's also this new job that's being created and we have the opportunity to make this a high quality job. And I think that more actions by policymakers and civil society and unions can put pressure on that ecosystem to shape this job into a high quality job.

MK: Partnership on AI, your group, has issued guidelines for companies to follow to improve working conditions. What are you hoping that these companies will do?

SONAM JINDAL: So we're hoping that more companies will adopt those guidelines and introduce transparency around how they are treating data enrichment workers downstream. I think the big thing, though, is that we want more people in the industry to be proactively thinking about the human cost and the human workers that are critical to any AI advances.

MK: What role could consumers play in that? Because if it's up to industry and right now, industry isn't regulated and according to some of these workers, are not taking care of them, what about consumers? Do they have a role in this?

SONAM JINDAL: I mean, the first thing is that I think it would be really helpful for more consumers to be informed about the production process. And I'm hopeful that, you know, similar to other industries where people became more concerned about downstream impacts such as like in the garment industry and manufacturing industry around workers’ treatments across the globe, I'm hoping that as people get more informed, they'll become more vocal as well around the treatment of data enrichment workers and advocate for their policymakers to step up and start prioritizing this as an issue that deserves our attention and our consideration.

MK: Do you have hope now that things will improve after you hear a story like Trevin’s happening in 2023?

SONAM JINDAL: I do, actually. I think it's exactly actions like Trevin’s and the union that's formed that give me hope, that makes me really excited. I think that we are still in sort of the early stages of understanding the full cost to humans and understanding AI as a society and how it's being developed. And I'm hopeful that as more people speak up, we're going to be able to change things. And I'm seeing more attention on this topic from the OECD and ILO and others and journalists like yourselves, and I'm excited to see where it goes and we'll just keep pushing forward.

MK: Well, I appreciate your time to talk about this today. Sonam, thank you so much.

SONAM JINDAL: Thank you.

MK: Sonam Jindal is the AI labour and economy lead at the non-profit group Partnership on AI. She was speaking to us from San Francisco. Well, deep breath. That's our program for today. Cue is next on CBC Radio One. Tomorrow, just a reminder, The Current will be live from Alberta. We'll be talking about the almost 100 wildfires burning there. So we are pulling for all the people fighting those fires. We're going to leave you now with a bit of music from Edmonton's Ruth B. Here is Dandelions. I'm Mark Kelley. Thanks so much for listening to The Current.

[Song: “Dandelions” by Ruth B]

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