Rowett professor leading food inequality research says recommendations are good "first step"
A blueprint for a “comprehensive, integrated long-term new strategy to fix our food system, underpinned by a new legislative framework” has been welcomed by the Rowett Institute professor leading a £1.6m research project on food insecurity and obesity.
Professor Alex Johnstone said a report from the House of Lords Food, Diet and Obesity Committee was a welcome intervention to the debate on how to improve UK diets and aid weight management - but noted that the policies it recommended were “only the first step to move towards access to healthy and sustainable food for all to reduce the dietary health inequalities in the UK”.
The peers' conclusions, published under the title ‘Recipe for health: a plan to fix our broken food system’, finds that obesity and diet-related disease are a public health emergency that costs society billions each year in healthcare costs and lost productivity
It criticises an “utter failure to tackle this crisis”, noting that between 1992 and 2020, successive governments proposed nearly 700 wide-ranging policies to tackle obesity in England, but obesity has continued to rise.
It points to “strong incentives” for the food industry to produce and sell highly profitable unhealthy products and concludes that mandatory regulation has to be introduced.
While there is no “silver bullet”, the committee says, there are a number of “key actions” that should be taken, including making large food businesses report on the healthiness of their sales and excluding businesses that derive more than a defined share of sales from less healthy products from any discussions on the formation of policy on food, diet and obesity prevention.
Other recommendations include:
- A salt and sugar reformulation tax on food manufacturers, building on the success of the Soft Drinks Industry Levy
- Banning the advertising of less healthy food across all media by the end of this Parliament
- Commissioning further research into the links between ultra-processed foods (UPFs) and adverse health outcomes and reviewing dietary guidelines to reflect any new evidence.
Baroness Walmsley, Chair of the Food, Diet and Obesity Committee said: “Over the last 30 years successive governments have failed to reduce obesity rates, despite hundreds of policy initiatives. This failure is largely due to policies that focused on personal choice and responsibility out of misguided fears of the ‘nanny state’. Both the Government and the food industry must take responsibility for what has gone wrong and take urgent steps to put it right."
Professor Johnstone recently co-authored a paper which recommended that any move to issue public health guidelines around the consumption of UPFs would be premature in the absence of further research into how they are linked to poor health outcomes – and could result in some people, especially the least well-off, eating less healthily.
She said: "I welcome this report from the House of Lords and the ethos to support preventative strategies as part of healthy weight management in the UK. Our own research on Transforming the UK Food System (TUKFS), funded by UKRI, on food insecurity and obesity, with focus on the retail food sector, supports the priority actions identified, which include strengthening policy and mandatory reporting.
“As an academic, I particularly welcome the opportunity for future funding for more mechanistic research on ultra processed foods’ impact on health. The food system is complex and encompasses farm to fork, and we should not miss the lived experience of those with obesity. These measures are only the first step to move towards access to healthy and sustainable food for all to reduce the dietary health inequalities in the UK.”
Professor Johnstone can be contacted at alex.johnstone@abdn.ac.uk for more information