Britain’s House of Lords has pushed the UK government to rule the food and drink industry with a tighter grip, accusing previous governments of being ‘nanny state’ scared, in a new Food, Diet & Obesity committee report today.
There is no one silver bullet to prevent and reverse the harms done by food and drink manufacturers selling and marketing unhealthy products high in fat, salt and sugar, the report says.
A series of recommendations, however, would help to take control of the UK’s growing obesity epidemic, it advises.
Under the proposals, large food businesses must reveal the healthiness of their sales and any business with more sales from unhealthy products would be excluded from food policy and diet discussions.
The Obesity report recommendations
The UK’s Food Standards Agency would be given independent oversight of the food system, and a salt and sugar reformulation tax on food manufacturers would be introduced, with revenues to go towards making healthier food cheaper.
Less healthy food advertising would be banned across all media and research into the links between UPFs and poor health would be commissioned to help fight obesity and diet related ill health.
“Food should be a pleasure and contribute to our health and wellbeing, but it is making too many people ill,” said committee chair, Baroness Walmsley.
“Something must be going wrong if almost two in five children are leaving primary school with overweight or obesity and so many people are finding it hard to feed healthy food to their families.”
Food manufacturers weighed in, with the UK’s Food and Drink Federation chief executive, Karen Betts, highlighting how keen the sector was to work with government on tackling the crisis.
“Manufacturers have already made significant progress to create healthier options for shoppers, based on government guidelines and the high fat, salt and sugar regulations,” she said.
“UK shopping baskets now contain far fewer calories, less salt and sugar than they did in the past. To continue with this, what industry needs is regulatory certainty.”
A food and drink tax
Nomad Foods CEO, Stefan Descheemaeker, was also positive about the report, saying the business supported measures requiring companies to report on the proportion of sales coming from healthy products.
However, “on tax, we believe this should be science-based in line with the UK government’s nutrition profiling model that determines whether a product is healthy or less healthy based on its overall nutritional profile, rather than focusing on the specific levels of nutrients,” he said.
Campaign group Impact on Urban Health said the recommendations would benefit the poorest in society, but called for the government to better consider how food is made and sold in the round.
“The places where our children and young people shop, play and go to school are currently flooded with unhealthy food,” said IUH children’s health and food programme co-director, Nikita Sinclair.
“Those from the most deprived areas are most affected by a lack of healthy, affordable options where they live.”