I’m speaking at the Aspen Ideas Festival: Health. I’ll be interviewed by Helena Bottemiller Evich of FoodFix from 9:00 to 9:50 a.m.. Topic: “Making sense of nutrition science.”
by Marion Nestle
Nov
13
2024
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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