The government should ban all junk food advertising and tax companies that add too much sugar and salt to their products, a House of Lords report says.
The Food, Diet and Obesity Committee is calling on ministers to fix the “broken food system” and turn the tide on the “obesity public health emergency”.
Peers say relying on big shots to trim the nation’s waistline would put “considerable” pressure on the NHS and would not address the underlying cause of the problem.
They say it could cost £16.5 billion a year to halve adult obesity by 2030 using drugs and suggest this money would be better spent on improving diets.
The ‘Prescription for Health’ report points out that two-thirds of adults are too fat and says the average tax bill in the UK is around £400 per person per year more than it would be if everyone was a healthy weight.
Labor has been urged to solve Britain’s “obesity public health emergency” by banning all junk food advertising (file image)
Food, Diet and Obesity Committee calls on ministers to fix ‘broken food system’ (file image)
It puts the total annual cost of overweight and obesity at £98 billion, including costs to the NHS and social care, lost productivity, work inactivity and social care payments.
The report warns there has been a “complete failure” to address the crisis and insists the industry must be forced to make changes as voluntary measures have not gone far enough, nor stopped the rise in obesity.
Other recommendations include making big food companies report on the healthiness of their sales and using revenue from expanded sugar and salt taxes to subsidize healthy foods for the poor.
Baroness Walmsley, chair of the Food, Diet and Obesity Committee, said: “Food should be a pleasure and contribute to our health and wellbeing, but it is making too many people sick.”
“Both the Government and the food industry must take responsibility for what went wrong and take urgent action to correct it.”
Karen Betts, chief executive of trade body The Food and Drink Federation, said: “Our industry takes the issue of obesity and poor diets very seriously, and we know we have a key role to play in tackling this.”
