The government has come under fire one year into its Childhood Obesity Strategy, with critics continuing to argue that the policy does not go far enough.
At Food Matters Live in London, speakers praised the essence of the approach but complained that it did not do enough to combat Britain’s obesity epidemic among the young.
Louise Lam, childhood obesity officer at the British Diabetic Association, was first to speak up: “Obesity rates continue to rise, which highlights the enormity of the problem,” she said. “Government needs to take further action.”
Calling for a more holistic approach, Lam said the stigma of weight problems were often over-simplified and the condition of overweight or obese people often boiled down to biological, social and environmental factors. As a result such people often present with psychological as well as physical problems, and this requires help from a range of medical professionals.
“The government decision to cut public health budgets is short sighted,” Lim added.
Natacha Neumann, co-founder of Googly Fruit UK, described the Childhood Obesity Strategy as “a step in the right direction” and with “very meaningful goals” but added that more was needed. She wants to see restrictions on junk food advertising, the development of a relationship between children and fruit and veg, a focus beyond sugar onto saturated fats and salt, and the engagement of schools in the process. “The strategy comes up too short,” she concluded. “A lot more needs to be done, and not just in terms of policy makers, but from the industry too, as well as schools and families.”
Shadow health minister Jon Ashworth said Labour is “pleased the government is doing something” but wants to look at expanding the strategy to cover stricter bans on junk food advertising around primetime TV, as well as extending the sugar tax to cover such products as milkshakes. He also said more could be done around labelling.
Deputy chief medical officer Professor Gina Radford defended the government’s approach, however, arguing that the obesity problem had built up over decades and would therefore not be solved overnight. Insisting that the strategy was “the most comprehensive plan of any country in the world”, she pointed out that the soon-to-be-introduced soft drinks levy had already led to 40 per cent of targeted fizzy drinks being reformulated.
She also pointed out that significant legislation had been introduced this year which means that no food or drink high in fat, salt or sugar can be advertised against programmes or social media directed at under-12s, and that such products cannot feature cartoon characters in any of their advertising.
She said the next big challenge for reformulation is calorie reduction, but stressed there were a number of technical difficulties around reducing sugar content in some foods, such as cakes.
Responding to criticism that the Childhood Obesity Strategy did not go far enough, Radford said: “We are not ruling out taking further action. We are committed to reform across the board but you have to start somewhere.”
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