There is much to welcome in today's Change4Life social marketing campaign; not least that it tries to avoid hectoring people about their weight.
The research that has shaped the campaign has found just how poor much of our food knowledge and culture is – something that politicians needed to know. The practical steps that Change4Life advocates will help people to improve their diet and health, for example, by swapping sugary foods like soft drinks for healthier alternatives, cutting down on portion sizes and limiting snacks.
But Change4Life could be fatally flawed from the start.
The government has been criticised for augmenting the campaign with what are euphemistically called "corporate partnerships" with companies like Nestle, PepsiCo and Mars.
It justifies this by claiming it wants a national movement with everyone working together to fight obesity. But is the involvement of the leading manufacturers of fatty, sugary and snack products really going to help reduce obesity? Just how enthusiastically are Coca-Cola and Pepsi going to try to help children swap away from sugary drinks?
These are the same companies that still target children with wall-to-wall marketing for unhealthy food; and have fought tooth-and-nail against any attempt to further protect children from this. Their marketing of junk food has become a ubiquitous part of our culture from massive TV advertising to football sponsorship to the latest in interactive technology.
In the main, industry has been glacially slow to reformulate their products to cut levels of fat, salt and sugar. And the same companies are currently cocking a highly calculated snook at the government's efforts to get them to use the most effective form of nutritional labelling of food: traffic lights.
I am amazed that the government has not attached any conditions to the involvement of industry in Change4Life, and so has lost a glorious opportunity to lever companies into really changing their behaviour. It seems industry has stared and the government has blinked.
There is very little independent evidence that social marketing is more effective than other methods of improving our health. Could the inclusion of marketing at the heart of the anti-obesity drive be a sop to a powerful industry which has been whinging about some minor new rules to curb its worst excesses? And how will the effectiveness of Change4Life be evaluated?
But the real tragedy is that in pursuing Change4Life government seems to have abandoned pursuing the steps needed to really tackle the obesity crisis.
The government's Foresight report, published last year, was clear about the urgent need to act to defuse the obesity timebomb. It predicted that almost nine out of ten adults and two-thirds of children will be overweight or obese by 2050 unless we act now. This will have catastrophic effects on our economy, the NHS and, ultimately, our society.
In its keenness to get corporate partners, though, the Department of Health now seems to be soft peddling on the measures that would really make a difference; protecting children from junk food marketing, forcing companies to use the most effective nutritional labelling or really driving the reformulation of our food.
Just how much actual change will Change4Life bring? I fear not as much as we need and at a very high price.
• Richard Watts is co-ordinator of the Children's Food Campaign
