Healthy food revolution to tackle obesity epidemic

Food retailers and manufacturers will ‘make the healthy choice the easy choice’ in a world-first partnership between government and industry to tackle the obesity epidemic and ease pressure on the NHS as part of the Plan for Change. 

As part of the forthcoming 10 Year Health Plan, large retailers including supermarkets will be set a new standard to make the average shopping basket of goods sold slightly healthier. 

Businesses will be given the freedom to meet the standard in whichever way works best for them, whether that’s reformulating products and tweaking recipes, changing shop layouts, offering discounts on healthy foods or changing loyalty schemes to promote healthier options. 

Obesity rates have doubled since the 1990s, including among children. A forthcoming report by the Chief Medical Officer will show that more than 1 in 5 children are living with obesity by the time they leave primary school, rising to almost 1 in 3 in areas with higher levels of poverty and deprivation. 

It follows the government setting out recently a number of measures to tackle rapidly growing health inequalities, including investing more in working class communities where health disparities are greatest and rapid action on the maternal mortality gaps in Black, Asian and working class communities. 

Health and Social Care Secretary, Wes Streeting, said: “Obesity has doubled since the 1990s and costs our NHS £11 billion a year, triple the budget for ambulance services. Unless we curb the rising tide of cost and demand, the NHS risks becoming unsustainable.

“This government’s ambition for kids today is for them to be part of the healthiest generation of children ever. That is within our grasp. With the smart steps we’re taking today, we can give every child a healthy start to life.  Through our new healthy food standard, we will make the healthy choice the easy choice, because prevention is better than cure.”

The policy will see all big food businesses report on healthy food sales. This will set full transparency and accountability around the food that businesses are selling and encourage healthier products. 

The government will then set targets to increase the healthiness of sales in communities across the UK and work with the Food Strategy Advisory Board on the sequencing of this policy.  

Major investment firms have already signalled that they would be keen to invest more in healthier products, if they were given due prominence and promotion by food retailers. 

Many supermarkets want to do more to make the average shopping basket healthier, but they risk changes hitting their bottom lines if their competitors don’t act at the same time. The new standard will introduce a level playing field, so there isn’t a first mover disadvantage. 

The changes are part of the government’s 10 Year Health Plan, due to be published shortly. The plan will radically reform the health service and improve the health of the nation, to make the NHS sustainable and fit for the future. 

Ken Murphy, Tesco Group CEO, said:  “All food businesses have a critical part to play in providing good-quality, affordable and healthy food. At Tesco, we have measured and published our own healthier food sales for a number of years now - we believe it is key to more evidence-led policy and better-targeted health interventions. That’s why we have called for mandatory reporting for all supermarkets and major food businesses and why we welcome the government’s announcement on this. We look forward to working with them on the detail of the Healthy Food Standard and its implementation by all relevant food businesses.”