‘Misguided fears’ of nanny state to blame for obesity crisis, peers warn

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“Misguided fears” of nanny statism have led to a failure by successive governments to address unhealthy diets and properly regulate food companies, triggering an “obesity public health emergency”, a House of Lords committee has warned.

As the Labour government promotes preventive models to address the “broken” NHS, peers on Thursday urged ministers to draw up a “long-term” plan to fix the “broken” food system and ensure industry bears the cost.

The House of Lords food, diet and obesity committee said in a report that governments since 1992 had “proposed nearly 700 wide-ranging policies” on obesity in England but that rates had continued to soar.

This was in part because of a “clear conflict of interest” between ministers and industry “during the policy development process”, it noted.

“This failure is largely due to policies that focused on personal choice and responsibility out of misguided fears of the ‘nanny state’,” said committee chair Baroness Joan Walmsley, warning of an “obesity public health emergency”.

“Both the government and the food industry must take responsibility for what has gone wrong and take urgent steps to put it right,” she added.

England has one of the highest rates of obesity among high-income countries, with almost one-third of adults suffering from the disease.

The annual cost of obesity is at least 1 to 2 per cent of UK GDP, according to the Institute for Government think-tank, amounting to billions of pounds in healthcare costs and lost productivity.

Walmsley said she hoped recent comments by Sir Keir Starmer and health secretary Wes Streeting about the need for prevention to tackle the scale of the strains on the NHS would lead to more action on curbing on obesity. 

After a government-commissioned report in September found that the health service was in a “critical condition” because of years of underfunding, the prime minister said: “I know some prevention measures will be controversial but I’m prepared to be bold, even in the face of loud opposition.”

The peers — who found that “sophisticated lobbying strategies” by industry had succeeded in watering down regulation — recommended that the government force food companies to report on the proportion of their revenues derived from foods high in fat, salt, sugar.

They also called for businesses that make most of their money from sales of unhealthy foods to be excluded from policy discussions on food, diet and obesity prevention.

Karen Betts, chief executive of the Food and Drink Federation trade body, said industry took “obesity and poor diets really seriously, and we know we have a key role to play in addressing this”.

Manufacturers had made “significant” progress in creating healthier options for shoppers, but needed regulatory certainty to continue those efforts, she added.

Efforts by the industry to self-regulate, including by cutting the fat, sugar and salt content of food, had been ineffective, the committee said, pointing to the success of the soft drinks levy as a reason for introducing taxes on sugar and salt.

The peers acknowledged that such taxes would increase the cost of unhealthy foods, but said that they would disincentivise their consumption and push people towards healthier diets.

“Industry should not increase the prices of healthier foods in order to recoup the costs of the tax or reformulation,” the peers said, arguing that the revenues should help fund measures to make healthier food more affordable.

The Department of Health and Social Care said: “Our widening waistlines are costing the NHS and the economy billions of pounds. That’s why we are restricting junk food advertising on TV and online, limiting school children’s access to fast food, and banning the sale of energy drinks to under 16s.”