The government should ban all junk food advertising and tax firms that add too much sugar and salt to their products, a House of Lords report says.
The Food, Diet and Obesity Committee is calling on ministers to fix the ‘broken food system’ and turn the tide on the ‘obesity public health emergency’.
Colleagues say relying on fat jabs to trim the nation’s waistlines would put ‘significant’ pressure on the NHS and fail to tackle the underlying cause of the problem.
They say it could cost £16.5 billion a year to halve adult obesity by 2030 using drugs and suggest this money would be better spent on improving diets.
The ‘Recipe for Health’ report notes that two-thirds of adults are overweight and the average UK tax bill is around £400 per person per year more than if everyone were a healthy weight.
Labor has been urged to solve the UK’s ‘obesity public health emergency’ by banning all junk food advertising (stock image)
The Food, Diet and Obesity Committee calls on ministers to fix the ‘broken food system’ (stock image)
It estimates the total annual cost of overweight and obesity at £98 billion, including costs to the NHS and social care, lost productivity, workforce inactivity and benefits.
The report warns of a ‘total inability’ to tackle the crisis and emphasizes that the industry must be mandated to make changes as voluntary measures have not gone far enough and the rise in obesity rates is also have not stopped.
Other recommendations include having major food companies report on the healthiness of their sales and using revenue from expanded sugar and salt taxes to subsidize health foods for poor people.
Baroness Walmsley, chair of the Food, Diet and Obesity Committee, said: ‘Food should be a pleasure and contribute to our health and wellbeing, but it is making too many people sick.
‘Both the government and the food industry must take responsibility for what went wrong and take urgent steps to put it right.’
Karen Betts, chief executive of trade body The Food and Drink Federation, said: ‘Our industry takes the issue of obesity and poor nutrition very seriously, and we know we have a key role to play in tackling this.’