A stone’s throw from Westminster’s ancient corridors of power, 350 movers and shakers from the food industry, campaign groups and scientists flocked to the sellout The Grocer Health Summit today. 

At stake: no less than the future of diets, the NHS and even the existence of large parts of the industry itself, in the face of a revolution in consumer tastes and the threat of a new wave of regulation.

But who holds the answers? Who should take the blame as the obesity crisis risks economic disaster, and new drugs threaten to wipe billions off industry profits?

Big moves on health 

In the days running up to the event, the significance of the occasion was rammed home by a series of major announcements and calls on health. 

Just last week,Tesco announced it had banned more than 100 additives from its own-label range as it starts a major clampdown on ultra-processed foods.

That came shortly after a group of leading health campaigners called on Andy Burnham to intervene to tackle the health harms from UPFs, as they attacked a decision by the government’s scientific health advisers that there was ”not enough evidence” to warrant a further crackdown on them.

Yesterday we discovered deep-fried food and fruit juice will be banned from school menus, as the government announced “once-in-a-generation changes” to school food standards. And then, also on the eve of the summit, four major food companies announced they were following in Premier Foods footsteps by starting to reporting on the proportion of the food they sell that is defined as healthy,

Carlsberg Britvic, Danone North Europe, KP Snacks and Nomad Foods all said they were making the move whilst writing to health secretary Yvette Cooper, urging the government to finally push ahead with delayed plans to bring in mandatory reporting to improve transparency on health.

Yet any suggestion that it would be the government getting all the flack was smashed early on in proceedings at today’s summit.

‘Tobacco-style tactics’

Former health minister James Bethell turned on the industry, which made up a large part of the room, launching a savage attack on a food machine he claimed was geared towards selling industrial levels of addictive junk food. He warned it is facing a backlash from the government similar to the current curbs being rolled out against social media before the next election, because of the harm it is causing to generations of children.

The former Tory under-secretary of state accused supermarkets and food manufacturers of using the same “deny, distract, and delay” tactics used by the tobacco industry, before governments finally cracked down on it with a series of sweeping marketing bans.

“There is a very strong chance going into the next election that the kind of public anger that was directed at Facebook and Google over things like pornography seen by children could be directed at food companies over things like targeting kids with additive foods,” he told the conference.

The FDF came out fighting, with chief scientific officer Kate Halliwell telling today’s event food companies were spending hundreds of millions on making products healthier. 

The message, she told the room, was that food manufacturers had demonstrated their commitment, and in just the past five years FDF members alone had cut salt, sugar and calories in their products by a fifth.

Progress, not perfection

Shortly afterwards, Sunna Van Kampen, author, health influencer and founder of vitamin brand Tonic Health, issued a rallying call to the industry to go much further to improve the nutritional credentials of its products. 

Van Kampen highlighted positive progress already made in categories such as bread, where ultra-processed products are being replaced by healthier alternatives like sourdough, as proof the food industry is capable of transforming a core, high-penetration category into something meaningfully healthier – provided consumers demand it, of course.

“You’ve made bread healthier and more affordable to the mass market, and it impacts everyone because everyone eats it,” he said. “It’s in nine out of 10 baskets, and it’s an incredibly affordable staple that the UK runs off.”

The day had opened with Sainsbury’s CEO Simon Roberts revealing talks were being held with the government just hours before today’s event, looking at how the food strategy could be geared towards tackling the competing challenges of the cost of living crisis, health and the threat to the resilience of the UK’s food supply chain.

How could more UK-based companies be supported to provide more local and healthy products on the shelves, he asked.

According to Roberts, supermarkets are dedicated to making food affordable and healthy, though he said that with such consequences at stake, there was no room for delay on areas such as the introduction of mandatory reporting.

There needed to be “progress over perfection”, the Sainsbury’s boss said. 

“The fact that we’re all here and The Grocer is covering this summit shows that this is the stuff that really matters.”

The industry must go further

However, the last word went to one of the industry’s most vocal critics, the ultra-processed foods campaigner Chris van Tulleken whose keynote address, as expected, pulled no punches.

“The Grocer’s summit has brought together a room of top-quality, passionate people who want to do good,” he told The Grocer.

“But at the end of the day you cannot say that commercial incentives for the food industry and public health are aligned.

“I agreed with every word Jim [Bethell] said earlier. How many people in this room can say they really want to change things for the better when they continually lobby against change?

“There is no evidence that they will do so voluntarily, as the evidence of food companies suing governments who try to take action shows.

“The fact is that big food is acting in exactly the same way as big tobacco, but if it carries on then it is going to end up facing the same fate in the form of regulation and litigation.

“We may see small shifts due to voluntary action, such as yesterday’s move on voluntary mandatory reporting, but I think the big shift will only come when we see the government take action.”

How long does he think that will take? Bethell suggests the next general election could be the key date, but van Tulleken – perhaps more realistically – believes it could be a much longer haul.

“For tobacco the journey from claims of harm to regulation was 60 years.”

Will the debates in the room still be going on in six decades? The action of the food industry and government will decide.

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