Health campaigners fear that the government’s childhood obesity strategy, expected this week, has been watered down under relentless pressure from the food and drinks industry and will prove ineffective in changing the habits of an overweight nation.
The strategy is supposed to be based on recommendations from Public Health England after an investigation into the measures that would work best. A third of children are overweight or obese by the time they leave primary school.
PHE urged curbs on buy-one-get-one-free and multipack price promotions on crisps, sweets and other junk foods in supermarkets, and came out in favour of tackling junk food advertising to children. It supported a tax on sugary drinks, although it said the other measures would work better.
Health groups fear industry lobbying may have prevailed and that the measures have at least been diluted, although the levy on sugary drinks – announced in George Osborne’s last budget in March – is expected to go ahead. Details of the tax are expected to be announced by the Treasury in a consultation document to be published this week alongside the childhood obesity strategy.
Critics are concerned about the timing of the launch. David Cameron made childhood obesity a personal issue and the strategy was being put together inside No 10. However, it is now expected to appear while Theresa May is on holiday in Switzerland, suggesting she will not champion it in the same way.
The Children’s Food Campaign, a member of the Obesity Health Alliance, which includes charities and health organisations such as the royal colleges, is concerned by suggestions that the tough action they wanted on cut-price junk food and TV advertising will not happen.
Leaks suggest there will be no ban on multi-buy promotions in supermarkets. “Price promotions were one of the big issues that Public Health England majored on,” said Malcolm Clark, of the campaign. “It looks like the government is failing to listen to its own public health experts.
“Industry likes to paint us as nanny-statists, but PHE is not a campaigning organisation. They have done a very thorough literature review of peer-reviewed evidence and come up with a recommendation on that.”
The Children’s Food Campaign has lobbied hard for a ban on adverts for foods high in salt, fat and sugar during family TV programmes. A ban on such ads on children’s TV is not enough, they say, because of the huge numbers of children who watch family programmes such as Britain’s Got Talent and The X Factor. They have called for a 9pm watershed, at which time viewing figures for under-15s drop.
The food and drink industry has been strongly opposed to a ban on such adverts before 9pm because it would cover programmes watched by millions of viewers.
Tam Fry, patron of the Child Growth Foundation and spokesperson for the National Obesity Forum, said that if the hoped-for measures did not come about, “it will spell disaster for obesity. It will not be the game-changing document promised by [the health secretary] Jeremy Hunt with draconian measures to tackle the epidemic, but a limp repetition of the flawed responsibility deal.
“The government’s own senior health advisers have called obesity a national risk, requiring a Cobra-style crisis management response. Apart from the government appearing to be resolute about a sugar levy, its intentions are light years away from what is needed.”
