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Action on Sugar

Hungry for change: fixing the failures in food

Mhairi Brown, Policy and Public Affairs Coordinator 

The House of Lords Select Committee on Food, Poverty, Health and the Environment have today released their timely report ‘Hungry for change: fixing failures in food[1] - the culmination of their inquiry into the links between inequality, public health and food sustainability, painting a stark picture of just how hard it is for many families across the UK to live healthy lives.

Action on Sugar and Action on Salt provided written evidence to this inquiry, and I was lucky enough to represent the organisation and provide oral evidence, alongside Dr Hilda Mulrooney from the British Dietetic Association and Kate Halliwell from the Food Federation. I was pleased to find a lot of common ground between the evidence I provided and the evidence provided by the other panel members. There was particular agreement on the need to create a level playing field to deliver interventions, meaning government intervention is now required. While it was daunting to present to the Committee, they were so informed, and very responsive to what I put forward.

The report lays out why it is not merely down to individuals to make healthy choices and protect their own health. Unhealthy food is around three times cheaper than healthier food, advertisements across TV and social media tend to show less of the food that is good for us, supermarkets are laid out to influence our choice and fast food and other unhealthy takeaways clustering in more deprived areas.  

Many will be aware of dietary advice such as eating at least five portions of fruit and vegetables a day, getting enough fibre and wholegrains and eating two portions of oily fish a week, which form Public Health England’s Eatwell Guide. However, even if everyone had easy access to well-stocked supermarkets, the Food Foundation estimates that those living in the poorest households would need to spend 74% of their after-housing disposable income to afford the Eatwell Guide, compared to 6% for the richest households[2]. This disconnect is not new, but that doesn’t make any less unjust that health is only available to those that can afford it.

However - well written and comprehensive though this report may be - Government is well aware of the issues raised. In fact, their Childhood Obesity Plan (chapters one, two and three) contain many measures that would go some way to addressing the issues, such as restrictions on the advertising and marketing of unhealthy food to help ensure we see more of the food that is good for us, implementing a calorie reduction programme to remove excess and unnecessary calories from every day products, and restructuring the tax system to help make healthy food cheaper. Four years after the first chapter was released, we’ve seen more lengthy consultations than action. This new report echoes recommendations made in our Treat and Prevent plan[3], by the wider health community, researchers, Public Health England and the Department of Health and Social Care. If Government can deliver on the promises they’ve made, reports like the one released today may become a thing of the past and the poorest in society can have as much access to a healthy life as anyone else.

Mr Johnson – it’s time to give the Childhood Obesity Plan the green light!

 

 

[1] https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld5801/ldselect/ldfphe/85/85.pdf

[2] https://foodfoundation.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/The-Broken-Plate.pdf

[3] http://www.actiononsalt.org.uk/media/actiononsugar/Action-on-Sugar_Action-on-Salt_Treat-and-Prevent-Report-29th-May-2020..pdf

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