Q&A with Mhairi Brown

21 July 2020

Why did you write to the Prime Minister this week?

Action on Salt, Action on Sugar and 47 other leading health charities and researchers wrote to the Prime Minister on Wednesday to implore him to implement the Government’s obesity prevention strategy – the Childhood Obesity Plan – which was released back in 2016. Since then, two further chapters have been released in 2018 and 2019 but so far we’ve seen far more lengthy consultation processes than we have action.

We sent the letter with our Scorecard 2020: The road to prevention, which tracks the Government’s progress against the commitments they made in their obesity prevention strategy. For the measures where there has been no progress made, or progress has been halted, we’ve coloured those red. For measures where some progress has been made (e.g. a consultation has taken place or initial research has been published), we coloured them amber. And for the few measures where we have seen progress, we’ve coloured those green.

Of course, there’s always more that can be done and so we also made recommendations for action for each policy area.

 

Can you tell us more about the Childhood Obesity Plan?

This is the government’s roadmap to halving childhood obesity and reducing the gap in obesity between children from the most and least deprived areas in the UK by 2030. The three chapters of the plan contain a raft of measures, including

• A Soft Drinks Industry Levy – a levy applied to manufacturers of sugary drinks at a rate of 18p per litre for sugar levels above 8%, or 5p per litre for drinks with 5% sugar (and no levy for lower sugar levels) to encourage manufacturers to reduce levels of sugar in their products
• Restrictions on price and location promotions of products high in salt, fat or sugar to help ensure that price deals are applied to healthier products and that these healthier products are given the prime locations in supermarkets such as aisle ends
• A programme to reduce excess calories in every day foods so that families can continue to buy their favourite products but they will gradually get healthier
• A 9pm watershed to remove all advertising and marketing of food and drink that’s high in fat salt and sugar, across TV, radio, online, billboards, even in cinemas. This would protect children and families from the flood of adverts for pizza, ice cream and burgers and instead allow them to see more of what is good for them

 

Why are you asking for action now, if the strategy was released in 2016?

We are aware that the Prime Minister is keen to address obesity levels in the UK, particularly after his experience with coronavirus. Data shows that obesity is an independent risk factor for both susceptibility to the virus and worse outcomes as a result of catching the virus. While we welcome the Government taking action, as our Scorecard shows, they have yet to implement many of the measures they have previously proposed.  Any new initiative to treat and prevent obesity cannot happen without first, as a minimum, implementing the three chapters of the Childhood Obesity Plan.

 

Which of the measures would have the biggest impact?

The plan was designed to address our environment – the world around us, to make the foods we buy in the supermarket a bit healthier, to help us see more of the food that is good for us, to make healthier food a bit cheaper to buy, to help ensure babies, young children and school children have access to the best quality food that will support their development and to ensure that healthcare professionals all know the many causes of obesity and can have appropriate conversations. Most of the measures focus on prevention, to help ensure people don’t become obese in the first place, and they are all designed to complement each other. As we hear so often,  there is no ‘silver bullet’ to address obesity. But that doesn’t mean we sit back and do nothing – it means we take steps to improve our lives and make society more equitable.

 

Are all of these measures likely to be approved?

We are hopeful that the Government is planning comprehensive action. However, we have heard that it’s likely the 9pm watershed will be dropped.

Marketing and advertising is designed to influence choice, and companies put millions of pounds towards their marketing and advertising budgets each year. Therefore the policy may be dropped due to concerns from food and drink brands, who might feel that the 9pm watershed would lead to a loss of sales. However, Cancer Research UK have found that of the brands who advertise during prime-time TV, around 80% of them have healthier products in their portfolio they could promote instead. The policy wouldn’t prevent all advertising, it would just mean that advertising would need to be moved to healthier products instead.

When initial restrictions were brought in for children’s TV, many brands reformulated their products – which means they reduced the levels of salt, sugar or fat to make the products healthier – to make sure they could continue to advertise. They can do the same for a 9pm watershed.

We also have concerns that the Soft Drinks Industry Levy (SDIL) will not be extended to other types of sugary drinks, such as milk-based drinks, as originally intended. The SDIL is one of the few measures that has been put in place so far, and it’s been hugely successful with around half of sugary soft drink manufacturers reducing sugar in their drinks to avoid paying the levy. Failing to capitalise on this success would be a misguided move.

 

But why are these measures even needed – doesn’t everyone know not to eat or drink unhealthy products?

It’s much more complex than that. Around one in three adults in the UK are living with obesity and many more are overweight. Not only does obesity increase your risk of catching coronavirus, it increases your likelihood of developing many chronic diseases, such as type 2 diabetes, several cancers and heart disease. There’s also a huge impact on mental health, with obesity leading to stigma. Nobody intends to become obese, and with a third of adults living with obesity, it’s clear that this is more than a simple lack of willpower. While there is some element of personal responsibility in both the treatment and prevention of obesity, this can only be achieved if everyone has access to a healthy environment that enables healthy choices. That currently isn’t the case. 

That’s why the Government proposed their Childhood Obesity Plan – they knew that obesity was the result of so much more than just eating too much and moving too little and they saw the need to address pricing, promotions, advertising, infant and young child feeding, physical activity, schools, in addition to excess calories.  

 

Even so – will the public accept being told what to do?

It’s not just the experts and the researchers that are saying that these measures would make a difference. It’s the public that want to see this action as well. Several opinion polls show the public support these measures, they support the government in taking more of a leading role, they support the government  preventing the food industry from profiting from unhealthy food and ill health.

We also can’t ignore the inequalities aspect here. The Food Foundation estimate that unhealthy foods are three times cheaper than healthy foods, calorie for calorie. Furthermore, fast food outlets cluster in more deprived areas and many in the UK live in what’s termed a ‘food desert’ – an area with limited access to affordable, nutritious food. It would be unfair to simply say that ‘people should know better’ when it comes to their diet, if they lack the resources and access needed to eat healthily. Any measure that will make our food environments more equitable is a welcome one!

 

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