UK House of Lords issues report on how to fix food systems
The House of Lords Food, Diet and Obesity Committee has a lengthy (179 pages) new report ‘Recipe for health: a plan to fix our broken food system’.
Key finding: Obesity and diet-related disease are public health emergencies costing society billions in healthcare costs and lost productivity.
Key recommendation: The Government should develop a comprehensive, integrated long-term new strategy to fix our food system, underpinned by a new legislative framework.
Key actions (selected):
- Require large food businesses to report on the healthfulness of their products
- Exclude businesses making unhealthful products from policy discussions on food, diet and obesity prevention.
- Tax products high in salt and sugar; use revenues to make healthy food cheaper.
- Ban the advertising of less healthy food across all media.
No recommendation on reducing intake of ultra-processed foods? Despite finding the link between ultra-processed foods and poor health outcome “alarming,” the report ducked the issue and recommended only to fund more research.
It also advised reviewing dietary guidelines with ultra-processed foods in mind.
Still, the recommendation to keep food businesses out of public policy discussions is a good one, not to mention taxes and advertising bans.
This, mind you, is the House of Lords. Impressive.
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