The debate about Britain’s diets, particularly when it comes to policy, has historically focused on obesity, sugar reduction and telling people what to cut out. While those conversations matter, there is another challenge hiding in plain sight: many people are failing to get the nutrients they need for good health.
This matters because improving public health is not just about cutting back. It should also be about helping consumers make positive choices to get enough of the nutrients that support healthy growth, development and long-term wellbeing.
Arla’s Plate of the Nation combines consumer insight with national nutrition data compiled by the British Nutrition Foundation, and it highlights the scale of the challenge. While almost eight in 10 consumers say healthy eating is important to them, only 53% believe they eat healthily most of the time – revealing a clear gap between aspiration and reality.
Consumers are not short of information. Three-quarters say they understand which foods are healthy. Yet only 37% believe eating a healthy diet is easy. Cost pressures, convenience, time constraints and confusion around nutrition continue to make healthy choices harder than they should be.
As a result, Britain is facing a growing nutrition gap – a situation where people may be consuming enough calories but falling short on essential nutrients, such as iodine, calcium and vitamin B12.
The consequences are particularly concerning among younger people. Nearly one in five teenage girls (18%) are not getting enough calcium during the years when bones develop most rapidly. Almost one in three girls aged 11 to 18 (29%) are also falling short on iodine, a nutrient essential for healthy brain development. These are not abstract public health concerns, they are nutritional gaps that could have lasting implications for health, development and wellbeing later in life.
These stastics are the real concern here: a generation growing up with gaps in their nutrition, while the policy conversation stays fixed on calories. For too long, the conversation around healthier diets has centred primarily on restriction. While reducing sugar, salt and saturated fat remains vitally important, we should also be spending more time talking about what people should be eating and why those nutrients are so important.
That shift requires collaborative action across the food system. Everyone in the entire food chain has a role to play. The industry needs to produce healthy, nutritious products that appeal to consumers, while making them available and accessible. Policymakers have a responsibility to ensure that any future legislation protects foods that are nutrient-dense and have a positive impact on people’s diets.
At Arla we’re reviewing our product labels, exploring how they can better reflect positive nutrition and help people understand not just what to cut back on, but what their bodies genuinely need. We’re also running a school outreach programme to educate and inspire young people about healthy, nutritious food.
No one organisation can close the nutrition gap alone. The food industry has shown in the past that it can come together to tackle major public health challenges. The same collaborative approach is needed here. By focusing not only on what consumers eat less of, but also on how we help them get more of the nutrients they need, we can make meaningful progress towards a healthier population.
The UK’s nutrition challenge is deeper than just calories. We need to look at quality, balance and access. That’s why we’re committed to working with food producers, retailers, educators, health professionals and policymakers to help close Britain’s nutrition gap.
Bas Padberg is managing director at Arla Foods UK
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