Search results: food strategy

The UK government has just published its long-awaited food strategy to almost universal disappointment.

But first, some background. Nearly a year ago, I wrote about the UK’s strategy proposals.  These had been commissioned from Henry Dimbleby, a restaurateur with a deep interest in food policy (the British version of Jose Andres?).

To summarize what I said in July 2021.

Henry Dimbleby described the UK’s National Food Strategy as  a “bit of a labour of love.”  It came a slide deck of 175 items.

A separate document. summarizes the report’s 14 recommendations.  Most of the recommendations dealt with school feeding and feeding programs for the poor.  Others:

Recommendation 1. Introduce a sugar and salt reformulation tax.  This came with a separate report on the impact of such a tax; it recommended using revenues to help get fresh fruit and vegetables to low income families.

Recommendation 11. Invest £1 billion in innovation to create a better food system.

Recommendation 13. Strengthen government procurement rules to ensure that taxpayer money is spent on healthy and sustainable food.

So, does the strategy do any of these things?  I have to confess finding the report unreadable.  It is extremely wordy and imprecise, talks a lot about objectives, but says almost nothing specific.  Here is just one example:

The strategy comes at a time of significant increases in food prices, largely because of energy prices and exacerbated by events in Ukraine, which is very challenging for people across the country. We are engaging closely with the food industry to understand price impacts and any mitigating measures, including through our Food Industry Resilience Forum and UK Agricultural Market Monitoring Group. We are also working closely with third sector organisations to understand challenges related to food access.

One section gives action items (I have edited these for clarity):

• Keep producing domestic food at current levels
• Promote job training for the agri-food industry.
• Reduce childhood obesity by half by 2030; reduce diet-related disease; increase healthier food
• Reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and the environmental impacts of the food system
• Export £1 trillion of food annually by 2030
• Maintain high standards for food consumed in the UK

How?  It doesn’t really say.  The one action item I could locate is to create a Food Data Transparency Partnership.

The partnership will champion consumer interests, providing people with the information they need to make more sustainable, ethical, and healthier food choices, and incentivise industry to produce healthier and more ethical and sustainable food….This partnership will join up with existing work across government to promote healthier food choices, so that government can speak with one voice to industry. It will also support further measures to strengthen incentives to reformulate food, promote healthier food and turn the trend on the overconsumption of calories to tackle obesity.

Unsurprisingly, reactions have been fierce: not a strategy, disappointing, nothing concrete about obesity , health, or reducing meat as a means to address climate change.  If those things are there, I couldn’t find them.

I also couldn’t find The Guardian’s most amusing criticism of the report:

Among its few policy proposals are the suggestion there could be more fish farming, which is environmentally controversial, and an increase in the use of “responsibly sourced wild venison”.

Is that in the report?  I can’t find any reference to venison or deer, however sourced.

Other critiques in The Guardian are here and here.

This is a lost opportunity, and a big one.  Disappointing, indeed.

Yesterday’s post was about the UK’s efforts to restrict the marketing of junk foods to children.  This is part of a larger effort to establish a rational framework for improving the entire food system.

In 2020, the government published Part One of the Food Strategy Report it had commissioned from Henry Dimbleby.  The report comes with a 3-minute film explaining what it is about.

The Part One report announced a forthcoming Part Two to evaluate the current system and set recommendations, and explained its philosophical basis:

Should nanny tell us what to eat?

The already complex job of working out how to help different people in different circumstances is complicated by one of the fundamental questions of political philosophy: what role should the state play in the private lives of its citizens? Libertarians and public health campaigners have fought a running battle for years over this question. But when it comes to diet, even fierce opponents of the “nanny state” now recognize that the problem is serious enough to warrant greater state intervention….The vast majority of those we spoke to (and almost every parent) said they were fed up with being bombarded by junk food marketing and thought the state should intervene.

Henry Dimbleby’s Part Two report is now out (he described it to me in an e-mail as a “bit of a labour of love”).  Here it is: The UK’s National Food Strategy

His report is based on evidence summarized in a slide deck of 175 items.

The report’s 14 recommendations are summarized, with rationale and references, in a separate document.  Most of the recommendations deal with school feeding and and feeding programs for the poor.  Some are likely to get focused attention:

• Recommendation 1. Introduce a sugar and salt reformulation tax. Use some of the revenue to help get fresh fruit and vegetables to low income families.
• Recommendation 11. Invest £1 billion in innovation to create a better food system.
• Recommendation 13. Strengthen government procurement rules to ensure that taxpayer money is spent on healthy and sustainable food.

The first recommendation comes with its own, separate report on the impact of a tax on added sugar and salt.

The responses:

From The Guardian

The government-commissioned National Food Strategy, drawn up by the restaurateur Henry Dimbleby, says the UK population’s “malfunctioning” appetites and poor diets – fuelled by consumer and manufacturer’s reliance on processed food – place an unsustainable burden on the NHS and contribute to 64,000 deaths each year.

Its most eye-catching recommendation is a levy of £3 a kilo on sugar and £6 a kilo on salt sold wholesale for use in processed food, restaurants and catering, which it says would be a world first. This would raise up to £3.4bn a year, some of which should fund an expansion of free schools meals to an extra 1.1 million children and an overhaul of itain’s food and cooking culture… Dimbleby believes the tax would incentivise manufacturers to reduce salt and sugar levels by reformulating products.

From FoodNavigator.com: From taxing salt and sugar to reducing animal proteins: The controversial proposals in the UK’s National Food Strategy paper.  In 2019 the UK government commissioned a review of the country’s food system. Today, the results are in – and the far-reaching paper includes some controversial recommendations…. Read more  [note: This has a good summary of the 14 recommendations].

From FoodManufacture.com

• National Food Strategy Part 2: sugar and salt tax plans: The National Food Strategy Part 2 has been published, revealing proposals for a sugar and salt tax on all processed products, except ingredients for home cooking, and on foods sold through foodservice channels…. Read more
• National Food Strategy Part 2: reactions: The National Food Strategy Part 2 has provoked mixed reactions, with big grocery retailers backing calls for mandatory reporting of key information, while others have criticised sugar and salt tax proposals…. Read more

And for a broad look at what’s happening in UK food policy, see: Testing Times for UK Food Policy: Nine principles and Tests, by Tim Lang, Erik Millstone, Terry Marsden.  This deals with holding governments accountable.

The Discussion Paper examines the state of post-EU UK food security and policy. It applies a multi-criteria approach, seeing food not as a matter that can be reduced to one overarching goal – cheapness, say, or supermarket availability – but as an issue on which public policy has to weigh up and include several equally worthy and evidence-based concerns. The report offers an approach to ensuring UK food security in the years ahead. It offers nine public-interest Principles which should guide future food policy. These propose that it is possible to capture a consensus on the need for change and what it entails. Each Principle leads to a Test that the UK public and policy-makers could apply to any policy proposals for the food system that emanate from Government in coming months.

Tim Lang’s book, Feeding Britain, is essential reading to understand what’s happening—and not happening—in the UK.

The UK government is thinking and acting on food policy issues.  If only ours did too.

Food policy clinics at the Harvard and Vermont law schools have issued a new report—interactive no less.

The report argues that

our food system often works at cross-purposes, providing abundance while creating inefficiencies, and imposing unnecessary burdens on our economy, environment, and overall health. Many federal policies, laws, and regulations guide and structure our food system. However, these laws are fragmented and sometimes inconsistent, hindering food system improvements. To promote a healthy, economically viable, equitable, and resilient food system, the United States needs a coordinated federal approach to food and agricultural law and policy – that is, a national food strategy.

The strategy needs to focus on :

• Coordination: Create a lead office and an interagency working group, and engage local governments.
• Participation: Create an advisory council, develop methods for participation, feedback, and response.
• Transparency and accountability: Create a strategy document,  publish progress reports.
• Durability: Ensure updating, implement procedures.

Yes, it’s wonky, but if you download the pdf you get to weigh in on all this.

Last month, the UK government announced guidance for the food industry on compliance with its new policies on dealing with foods High in Fat, Sugar, or Salt (HFSS): Restricting promotions of products high in fat, sugar or salt by location and by volume price: implementation guidance.  

The food industry is not happy about these policies.

Kellogg has launched a legal challenge.

Kellogg has launched a legal challenge against the Government’s upcoming restrictions on retail promotions for food and drink high in fat, salt and sugar (HFSS), claiming the rules unfairly represented breakfast cereals.

On what basis?

The manufacturer argued that the formula used tomeasure the nutritional value of food was wrong when it came to breakfast cereals, as the Nutrient Profiling Model (NPM) only accounted for portions of dry cereals and not for a bowl of cereal and milk…Breakfast cereals are dehydrated foods, that are intended to absorb milk to make the food more palatable and give the food its intended flavour and texture.  Hardly anyone sits down to a bowl of dry breakfast cereals in the morning – cereals are almost always eaten with milk.

What’s really at stake?

From October this year, new legislation will restrict retail promotion of HFSS products. The changes could lead to a reported loss of 1.1bn per year.

The food industry is also arguing that the new regulations will cause a consumer backlash.

These restrictions might escape public scrutiny, but consumers will get a horrible shock when they wake up one day and find their favourite brands have been ruined by regulation and cost more.  Unless manufacturers fight back, be it in the courts or out in the public square, it’ll be too late to do anything about it.

And that the HFSS regulations won’t do any good.

The soft drink industry, however, sees the regulations as no problem: “The soft drinks category will be affected by new HFSS legislation coming into force in England. But having already done plenty of work in reformulating and innovating for the UK sugar tax, the sector is well placed to turn a challenge into an opportunity.”

What’s all this about?  Here’s a quick review of the HFSS history:

2018: In Chapter 2 of the Childhood Obesity Plan,  the UK government set out its intention to end the promotion of high fat, sugar and salt (HFSS) products by location and by price.  It committed to consult on how this should be implemented.  This was based on evidence that food retail price promotions are widespread and effective at influencing food preferences and purchases (particularly for children), and on previous reports recommending reducing and rebalancing promotions towards healthier food and drink to help prevent obesity in children.

2019: The consultation on restricting the promotion of HFSS products was held.

2020:  The government theld a consultation on technical enforcement of the restrictions.  It announced in Tackling obesity: empowering adults and children to live healthier lives, that it would legislate to end promotion of HFSS products by volume (for example, “buy one get one free”) and location both online and in store in England.  It published a formal consultation response.

2021: The government introduced legislation to restrict the promotion of HFSS products by volume price both online and in store in England., based on the nutrient profiling technical guidance 2011.) These regulations will come into force on 1 October 2022.

2022: The new restrictions on HFAA promotion. 

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.

LINKS

• Full report
• News story
• Shorthand version of the report
• Video
• Audio (Baroness Walmsley)

The Global Health Advocacy Incubator (GHAI) has issued this new report.  It’s well worth a look.

By now, soda taxes are well established to decrease consumption and raise revenues that can be used for social purposes.  As you might imagine, the soda industry does not like such taxes.  As the report explains,

Recently, Big Soda has adapted their [the cigarette industry’s] playbook and shifted their approach from outrightly opposing SB [sugary beverage] taxes to favoring weaker SB tax standards. This report highlights different actions and narratives employed by the industry and demonstrates how these strategies follow a global playbook, including:

1. Proposing weaker taxes tailored to favor industry interests at the risk of public health.

2. Threatening and challenging governments that have passed an SB tax.

3.  Delegitimizing evidence to distort perceptions about SB taxes.

4.  Stigmatizing SB taxes through economic arguments.

5.  Taking advantage of and using vulnerable populations and environmental concerns to avoid the SB tax.

Under Strategy #5, for example, the report provides this information:

The report offers advice about how to counter industry measures by “(1) protecting the tax design to ensure it will have an optimal public health outcome, (2) safeguarding the policy decision-making process from undue influence and (3) leveraging opportunities for civil society to defend SB taxes.

For example, to safeguard policy decisions, it advises:

Avoid participating in public-private partnerships, especially those claiming to mitigate the “economic damages” of the SB tax through false solutions. This is the entry point for corporations to take a seat at the policy-making table and meddle with the design and implementation of the tax.

Soda taxes are up for renewal in Berkeley and are under consideration in Santa Cruz.  Stay tuned.

Lately, I have been asked repeatedly to explain just how the food industry exerts influence to protect and promote product sales.  This week’s posts address that question, starting with the usual Monday industry-funded study of the week, in this case an opinion piece sponsored by the potato industry.

Potato trade associations work hard to overcome concerns about this food’s rapidly absorbable starch content.

I received an email from the Alliance for Potato Research & Education telling me that if I don’t eat potatoes, I might become nutritionally deficient.

New publication alert: swapping out starchy vegetables may lead to unintended nutrition consequences.

A new perspective paper published in Frontiers in Nutrition underscores starchy vegetables are more than just carbs – they’re a vital vehicle for essential nutrients. Yet, as confusion around “good versus bad carbs” persists among consumers, there is a risk of starchy vegetable avoidance in favor of other carbohydrate foods perceived as equally or more nutritious – or even carbohydrate avoidance all together.

The press release cited a paper with this conclusion:

Replacing starchy vegetables with grain-based alternatives, including whole-grain foods, for one day led to a 21% decrease in potassium, a 17% decrease in vitamin B6, an 11% drop in vitamin C and a 10% reduction in fiber.

This called for a look at the actual paper.

The paper: Carbohydrate confusion and dietary patterns: unintended public health consequences of “food swapping.”   Ayoob, K.  Front. Nutr., 28 September 2023. Volume 10 – 2023 |

Rationale: “Nutrient-dense dietary patterns include both grain foods and starchy vegetables. These food groups are currently considered separately [by the Dietary Guidelines for Americana], and they must remain separate to ensure people are encouraged to consume complementary nutrients from each of these food groups.”

Conclusion: “Using complex carbohydrate foods, specifically starchy vegetables (e.g., potatoes) and grains, interchangeably is at best, not a useful strategy, but at worst, may increase the risk of micronutrient inadequacy and/or dietary imbalances.”

Funding: “The author(s) declare financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. Funding for this perspective was provided by Potatoes USA.”

Conflict of interest: “This study received funding from Potatoes USA. The funder had the following involvement with the study: composition and data analysis of the menu modeling. KA was compensated by Potatoes USA for preparation and revision of the manuscript.  The author(s) declared that they were an editorial board member of Frontiers, at the time of submission. This had no impact on the peer review process and the final decision.”

Comment: I like potatoes, think they have nutritional value (especially when baked rather than fried), and do not view them as poison.  But: this paper is an opinion piece commissioned, developed, and paid for by a potato trade association.  And sent to me in a press release.

I thought this 2023 report was well worth a look.

Microbial diseases of animals can be transmitted to humans, and vice versa (witness COVID-19 in mink and zoo animals).  Some of these have led to serious epidemics.  Lots of people are worried that Confined Animal Feeding Operations could easily become the source of new and deadly forms of influenza.

But what interested me in this report is that industrial farm animal production is one of a great many sources of potential infectious disease transmission.

A few of the many examples, some well known to have caused Salmonella infections:

• Pets
• Hunted animals
• Production of bat guano and coyote urine (who knew?)
• Backyard chickens
• Crocodile farming
• Petting zoos
• Research animals

The report is cautious on the topic of the origin of COVID-19:

At the time of this writing, scientists continue to debate the precise origins of the virus but there is no question as to the impact it has had. Indeed, few aspects of daily life in the United States remain untouched.

The implication is clear.  We need much better monitoring of animal markets for pathogens.

The United States has no comprehensive strategy in place to address the threat of zoonotic disease. There are serious regulatory deficiencies across almost every animal industry. Large information gaps exist, and disease can seep between these cracks.

Lots to learn here and think about here.