In nine years as a Defra minister, you learn everything is more complicated than campaign groups would have you believe – and that extends to the vexed debate about obesity.
There are truths we can all agree on. It would be preferable if the average diet contained more fruit, vegetables and fish, and fewer calories. In an era of sedentary lifestyles, the average person is consuming around 400 calories per day more than they need. A culture of healthier eating, more exercise and smaller portion sizes is the principal solution to obesity.
In recent years, the idea that ‘ultra-processed foods’ are to blame has become prevalent. It is not a new concern and was first advanced in the 1930s. The valid intellectual case is less about obesity but, rather, whether processed foods can support a healthy microbiome in the human gut. On that point, clear evidence either way has remained elusive.
I once received a briefing from public health officials containing a graph that showed a sharp rise in the consumption of crisps and breakfast cereals. This was advanced as circumstantial evidence that they were to blame for obesity.
However, what their graph actually showed was that crisp and breakfast cereal consumption grew rapidly during the 1970s and 1980s, peaking in 1995, but then falling by around 15% in the years after. So, whatever is causing obesity, it isn’t crisps or cereals.
In 2016, public health officials insisted sugary Soft Drinks were the primary cause of childhood obesity. It was argued that if we could take sugar out of these drinks, it would be a game-changer. Ministers acted on this advice with the soft drinks levy, and some of the best food scientists in the world got to work on reformulation.
At one level, the policy was a phenomenal success. Around 80% of sugar has been removed from soft drinks. But there is an awkward problem: it wasn’t the game-changer public health officials predicted. The obesity trend among children has continued unabated in the six years since its introduction.
It is sometimes argued that ‘ultra-processed foods’ are calorie-dense and do not sate appetites in the way that freshly prepared food does, so people consume too much. There is some merit to this argument, but it is a generalisation.
Some processed foods, principally confectionery and other sweet treats, are calorie-dense, but not all processed foods are. For example, at the opposite end of the spectrum, noodles are very low in calories but do sate the appetite. Indeed, many of the fasting diets that have become fashionable in recent years rely on processed dried noodles to replace certain meals.
Bizarrely, bread has now started to be blamed by some. Really? Britain is blessed with the most technically proficient bread industry in the world. The three big brands – Hovis, Kingsmill and Warburtons – would each be world-beating and all three are here in the UK.
Public health officials know where to go when they want to fortify the national diet with folic acid, calcium or vitamins, and the flour fortification regulations are something the Department for Health vociferously guards. In recent years, bread manufacturers have also single-handedly delivered a significant increase in unprocessed seeds in the national diet through the advent of ‘seeded’ product lines.
Everyone agrees changing our culture and relationship with food is important. Encouraging people to prepare fresh meals in the home is a positive for all sorts of reasons. But if someone prepares a wholesome Sunday roast for the family, they will reach for the Bisto gravy granules; if they prepare a hearty winter stew, they might look for the Oxo cubes; and if they want a healthy stir fry they might well pick up a Blue Dragon sauce. All of these prepared culinary ingredients are processed, but all of them support a positive culture of home cooking that should be welcomed.
To tackle obesity, the government must do three things. Firstly it must recognise the complexity of the phenomenon and reject simplistic remedies. Secondly, it should recognise the success of the responsibility deals where business and government worked together. Our food industry has already made huge strides removing salt and sugar from their products.
Thirdly, it should build on that success. The problem with responsibility deals is that they tend to fizzle out over time since they are voluntary. Shortly before I left government, I was working on an alternative to pernickety, Covid-era regulations on shop layouts and advertising bans. The idea was to underpin the responsibility deal concept with a loose statutory obligation for businesses to contribute to healthy diets in a way that worked for them. For some that would be reformulation, for others it might be reducing portion size, and for the remainder it might be to make a contribution to healthy diet advertising campaigns.
Groups like Veg Power, with its ‘Eat Them to Defeat Them’ campaign aimed at children, have shown what can be done on a small budget. Imagine what we could achieve if such projects were funded at scale.
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