There has been plenty of speculation about tensions between health secretary Wes Streeting and the prime minister of late, but few would have predicted that a major clash would centre on the future of a complex formula used to calculate the healthiness of different foods.

But the DHSC’s plans to push ahead with a new, tougher version of the nutrient profiling model could put Streeting on a collision course with Keir Starmer and Chancellor Rachel Reeves.

The proposals, confirmed by The Grocer yesterday, could bring thousands more products into scope of the government’s HFSS definitions. Food bosses are already pushing for crisis talks with the government, warning of a “disastrous” impact on brands, marketing and, ultimately, prices. And we should be in no doubt; food inflation, and the PM’s determination to tackle the cost of living crisis, will be the first arguments deployed by those lobbying government to back down on the plans.

Sugar in the spotlight

The food industry cannot say it didn’t realise this move was coming. Although the now-wound-up Public Health England’s 2018 review of the NPM was kicked into the long grass by the Tories, it has been firmly back in the industry psyche since Streeting signalled his intentions in the 10-year plan for the NHS last summer.

The new model means that, unlike the ageing 2004 model, the free sugars naturally present in syrups, honey, and unsweetened fruit and vegetable juices, smoothies, purées and pastes will now count towards products being labelled as less healthy. Streeting has said the government, in particular, is going after products such as sweetened breakfast cereals, fruit-flavoured yoghurts and others that are marketed to children.

Yet the tightening of the NPM signals bad news for a raft of products that have already undergone massively expensive reformulation. The Grocer has already revealed a string of high-profile products that would come under the new model, with manufacturers furious that the investment has been thrown back in their faces.

While the news is grim for food giants like PepsiCo, Danone and Kellogg’s, it is even more of a disaster for companies with smaller budgets, for whom promoting in stores and before 9pm on television is in danger of becoming impossible.

It is, they say, rubbing salt (and fat and sugar…) in the wounds for the proposals to emerge just weeks after the “world-leading” crackdown on junk food advertising on TV and online came into force.

Companies and trade bodies are already busy doing the maths on the economic impact of the changes, with frustration likely to be directed at the Treasury as well as the DHSC, in the weeks ahead.

As well as the economic threat, companies will also argue that the technical challenges posed by the new NPM mean that the rollout timeframe is massively optimistic.

On the issue of free sugars alone there are huge technical and labelling issues at stake, with the IGD among those pointing out that there is currently no official measure on what a free sugar actually is, with estimates and subjective interpretations commonly featuring on ingredient lists. Many businesses don’t currently capture the data at all.

And that is just one element of the model.

Drawing battle lines

The government is also launching a further consultation this spring on how the new model will be applied to its landmark HFSS legislation, with DHSC sources insisting that no final decisions have yet been made.

Yet ministers say they intend to bring the new NPM into force by the end of this Parliament. That comes on top of its other plans for mandatory health reporting and subsequent targets for major food companies – which will all presumably have to be based around the new 2018 model.

With an election required by August 2029 at the latest, that is a monumental task for Streeting and co, even before the Treasury starts asking questions about the impact on food prices.

However, while the industry is circling the wagons to go into battle against the NPM proposals, a long list of health NGOs and academics are urging Streeting on. They argue that, without industry lobbying, the proposals would have been acted on eight years ago.

And with the government’s own impact assessment suggesting that tightening advertising and promotion restrictions using the new NPM could cut calorie intake by up to 30% and reduce cases of childhood obesity by up to 170,000, the food industry is not the only side going into this argument with a powerful economic argument. The battle lines for the coming weeks and months have been clearly drawn.

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