Was it the silly, interfering food police gone mad or an overdue assault on the UK's addiction to unhealthy food? Last week the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice), who advise the government on what action will help to reduce sickness, recommended a number of measures to improve the quality of food, educate consumers about what they're eating and curb some of the food industry's excesses. This was tough stuff, and much more radical than the "fat taxes" considered, but rejected, by Downing Street during Tony Blair's premiership, as food producers' howls of protest underlined.
Nice urged ministers to ensure that food manufacturers undertook an unprecedented reformulation of their products. In other words, the great British public would get a healthier diet, whether they chose it or not. Producers should strip out large amounts of the salt they add, remove much of the saturated fats and get rid of trans fats, chemically altered vegetable oils, according to the institute's panel of experts, who said that unhealthy foods wreak "a terrible toll of ill health". It also wants low-salt and low-fat alternatives to be sold more cheaply, traffic light front-of-pack labelling to become standard, and TV adverts for junk food to be banned before the 9pm children's viewing watershed – a move backed by health, education and children's organisations, but previously rejected by broadcasting regulator Ofcom and by Labour.
Nice described its proposals as "small changes across the whole population [which] will translate into very big improvements in health overall". Professor Mike Kelly, its public health director, explained that the action could prevent an estimated 40,000 deaths a year from heart disease and strokes and so save the NHS a lot of money. "This isn't about telling individuals to choose salad instead of chips – it's about making sure that the chips we all enjoy occasionally are as healthy as possible." He praised companies that have already made their products healthier in recent years – M&S took all trans fats out of its own-label products in 2006, for example – but demanded much more action.
The Food and Drink Federation (FDF), which represents both manufacturers and retailers, derided Nice's guidance as "out of touch" and insisted that "the food industry is leading the world when it comes to voluntarily changing the recipes of popular food brands so that they are lower in salt, fat or sugar".
More surprisingly, the Department of Health rejected Nice's ideas outright. Convention dictates that it welcomes the institute's proposals. But not this time. Nice's demands were "not practical to implement" and not "methodologically robust" or "fully workable", it said – Whitehall-speak for "rubbish".
Last week's putdown of Nice bodes ill for the coalition's attitude to public health issues that involve government intervention and/or taking on wealthy vested interests. Before the election the Conservatives promised to push ahead on public health if they got into office, and even pledged to rename the Department of Health to reflect the new emphasis.
It struck many as an improbable, and counter-intuitive priority for a party so long hostile to "nanny-state" measures. Remember that ministers have already flatly rejected another recent Nice call for bold action to introduce a minimum price per unit of alcohol. The medical establishment agrees; the drinks industry is fiercely opposed.
Public opinion seems to be turning in favour of action to curb unhealthy food. Growing numbers of councils refuse fast-food premises permission to open. Ice cream vans are banned near some schools. More and more head teachers lock pupils in at lunchtime to stop them buying lunch in local takeaways. Some 60% of parents want junk food ads on TV restricted, according to an opinion poll by Manchester-based health campaigners Our Life found.
Labour had to be persuaded to introduce a public smoking ban everyone now agrees was needed. Burgers may soon prove to be the new cigarettes.
