Summary of conclusions and recommendations
Chapter 1: Introduction
Central recommendation
1.Obesity and its consequences constitute a public health emergency that represents a ticking time bomb for the nation’s health, wellbeing and finances. This emergency is primarily driven by over-consumption of unhealthy foods.
In light of this, our central recommendation is that the Government must as a matter of urgency adopt a new, comprehensive and integrated food strategy to address the wide-ranging consequences of the food system failures identified in this report. Implementation of such a strategy will only be successful on the basis of strong and accountable leadership at the highest level of government.
It is in the context of the need for urgent and bold action that we make this report for debate. (Paragraph 36)
The ‘Hungry for change’ report
2.The evidence we received not only confirmed the recommendations of the Food, Poverty, Health and the Environment Committee ‘Hungry for change’ report relevant to our remit, but also demonstrated that the situation has become markedly worse since it was published. It is deeply regrettable and a mark of its failure that the then Government did not accept so many of the Committee’s recommendations, and acted on so very few of them. It is evident that the previous Government failed to grasp the enormity of the problem.
We endorse the recommendations of the ‘Hungry for change’ report and call on the Government to act on them, taking account of policy developments and trends in food, diet and obesity since it was published. (Paragraph 16)
Chapter 2: Government strategy
A new comprehensive, integrated food strategy
3.Over the last 30 years, successive governments have proposed around 700 policies to tackle obesity. Yet in spite of all these initiatives, the obesity crisis has intensified during that period. At the heart of this failure of government policy are:
- A continued focus on failed policies founded on individual responsibility and voluntary regulation arising from an unjustified fear of the so-called ‘nanny state’;
- A lack of a coherent strategy to tackle obesity across the life course and embracing all dimensions of the food system;
- A lack of leadership and direction at the centre of government, resulting in inadequate coordination across key government departments; and
- A lack of a long-term strategic approach to oversight and regulation of the food system.
We recommend:
(a)The Government should introduce a new overarching legislative framework for a healthier food system.
(b)This legislation should require that the Government publish a new, comprehensive and integrated long-term food strategy, setting out targets for the food system and the Government’s plans to introduce, implement and enforce policy interventions to achieve those targets.
(c)As part of this new legislative framework, the Food Standards Agency (FSA) should be given oversight of the food system. This oversight role should be transparent and independent of industry. It should include monitoring and reporting annually to Parliament against targets for sales of healthier and less healthy foods, on the overall healthiness of diets, on related national health outcomes, and on progress against Government strategy.
(d)The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care should be accountable to Parliament for progress made against these objectives, at the apex of an effective cross-departmental governance structure (including a dedicated Cabinet Committee) on food policy, supported by a properly resourced Office for Health Improvement and Disparities.
(e)The Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer should play key leadership roles in enforcing and delivering this programme.
(f)An obligation should be placed on the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care to lay before Parliament a Government response to Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition (SACN) recommendations within two months of their publication. (Paragraphs 62–65)
Chapter 3: The role of industry
4. The food industry bears major responsibility for the obesity public health emergency:
- The junk food cycle incentivises the food industry to develop and market unhealthy products through increasingly sophisticated techniques.
- This has created an obesogenic food environment, with devastating implications for dietary patterns and health outcomes.
- The food industry should be expected to take action to break this negative cycle. Yet, notwithstanding some examples of positive action, the profit incentives in the system have been too strong for any such action to have had a substantive effect. There is now a case for making the food industry bear a fair share of the cost of tackling this crisis through new taxation and regulation. Given this, the food industry must take responsibility for the costs of compliance with future regulation.
- One symptom of the problem is the way that the food industry seeks through sophisticated lobbying strategies to influence both Government policymaking and academic research for its own ends. Evidence suggests that such lobbying has been influential.
- This underlines the need for more scientific research independent of industry on food, diet and health, and on food and health policy, and to ensure that there are effective funding mechanisms in place for such research to be undertaken.
- There is a clear conflict of interest in Government engagement with industry during the policy development process. While it may be appropriate to engage with industry regarding the practical application of food industry regulation once it has been decided upon, this must be subject to full transparency and clear rules of engagement.
The Government must:
(a)Now make a decisive shift away from voluntary measures to a system of mandatory regulation of the food industry.
(b)Fundamentally reshape the incentives for the food industry through a coherent and integrated set of policy interventions to reduce the production and consumption of less healthy foods, and drive production and sales of healthier foods.
(c)Exclude food businesses that derive more than a proportion of sales (to be defined by the Food Standards Agency) from less healthy products from any discussions on the formation of policy on food, diet and obesity prevention. This should also apply to the industry associations that represent these businesses.
(d)Devise and publish by the end of 2025 a code of conduct on ministerial and officials’ meetings (whether in-person or virtually) with food businesses, to be employed consistently across all government departments. The minutes of all such meetings should be published. (Paragraphs 125–129)
Chapter 4: Ultra-processed foods
Overview/ research on UPFs
5. The concept of ultra-processed foods (UPFs) is a matter of intensive public discussion and scientific debate. The evidence we have heard suggests:
- The concept of UPFs (based on the NOVA classification) can be a useful tool for describing the way in which the food system incentivises the production and marketing of cheaply produced, highly palatable, energy dense and nutritionally poor foods, and drives unhealthy diets and obesity.
- However, it is widely considered that the NOVA classification of UPFs lacks sufficient precision to be suitable for the characterisation or regulation of individual foods. There therefore remains debate over the extent to which it should be used in policymaking.
- Notwithstanding these limitations, the rapidly growing epidemiological evidence showing a correlation between consumption of UPFs defined using the NOVA classification and poor health outcomes is alarming. There is a significant overlap between UPFs and foods high in calories, saturated fat, salt and sugar and low in fruit, vegetables, nuts, fibre and protein (HFSS). Many UPFs are therefore already considered less healthy under the UK’s dietary guidelines and the regulations they underpin.
- Beyond energy and nutrient content, causal links between other properties of UPFs and poor health outcomes have not thus far been clearly demonstrated and the existence of such links remains scientifically uncertain.
- There are also strong views on both sides of the argument over whether industry has influenced the scientific research on UPFs.
We welcome the commitment of the scientific community in the UK and beyond to undertake further research into the links between UPFs and poor diet and health. Working with bodies such as UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), the Government must commission further research independent of industry into these links, and in particular to explore:
- Potential mechanisms of causation linking UPFs and poor health outcomes;
- The health benefits of consumption of products with no or minimal processing on both overall dietary patterns and on health outcomes;
- The impact of the hyperpalatability and energy density of foods on dietary consumption;
- The long-term health effects of consumption of specific additives and combinations of additives; and
- The cost-effectiveness of interventions that can reduce consumption of less healthy, often highly processed foods, and increase the availability and affordability of healthier foods.
The Government and SACN must monitor and respond urgently to any emerging evidence. (Paragraphs 251–253)
Action on UPFs
6. The need for further research into ultra-processed foods must not be an excuse for inaction:
(a)The food industry must be held to account now for the rise in unhealthy diets and obesity. The Government has already taken some steps to regulate HFSS products, many of which are also UPFs. It must now go much further.
(b)Furthermore, the Government should commit as part of its new comprehensive food strategy to tackling the over-consumption of such less healthy foods, and increasing consumption of healthier, largely unprocessed and minimally processed foods, ensuring a healthy and affordable diet for all.
(c)This will not be easy. Since less healthy, highly processed foods often represent the affordable and convenient option at present, they can crowd out healthier options from the diet, particularly for those facing food insecurity. Given that many households have neither the time, skills nor facilities to prepare meals from scratch, it is important that the products they are offered by the food industry are healthier. The Government should therefore take action to make healthier, largely unprocessed and minimally processed foods more accessible and affordable. It should also explore how best to enable the preparation of meals and snacks at home from scratch as often as personal circumstances allow.
(d)In addition, the Government must within two months publish a detailed response to the July 2023 SACN statement on processed foods and health, and any subsequent findings published by SACN. This should set out the Government’s current position on UPFs, and in particular: whether and how national dietary guidelines should reflect the need for caution about eating a diet containing a high proportion of UPFs; and the current evidence on their impact on public health. Any guidance on consumption of UPFs should be accompanied by an operational definition for individual foods that is robust and easily useable both by consumers and by the food industry.
(e)The Eatwell Guide published in 2016 should be reviewed to ensure it reflects updated evidence and advice, and further reviewed as required in the future if further evidence on the public health impact of UPFs emerges. The Government should review and implement the most cost-effective ways of making the Eatwell Guide useful and accessible to consumers (for instance via interactive digital platforms).
(f)The Government must implement the 2018 Nutrient Profiling Model without further delay. Going forward, the NPM must also be regularly reviewed to ensure it reflects emerging scientific evidence and dietary guidelines, including any emerging research evidence on the potential harms of UPFs or their properties, and used to identify both healthier and less healthy foods for the purposes of regulation. (Paragraphs 254–259)
Chapter 5: Making food environments healthier
Holding the food industry to account
7. An effective model of regulation of the food industry under a new comprehensive food strategy needs to establish a level playing field, creating certainty for businesses and reducing the risk that they will be undercut by competitors offering less healthy products. As far as is practicable, regulation needs to apply to the in-home and out-of-home sectors and to small and large businesses alike, with smaller businesses supported to comply.
Large food businesses must be held to account for selling unhealthy food and drink. The Government must ask the Food Data Transparency Partnership Health Working Group to finish its work no later than the end of September 2025. Following this, the Government should legislate to make reporting on healthiness of food sales (defined by the Nutrient Profiling Model) mandatory for all businesses with more than 250 employees, in a programme overseen by the Food Standards Agency. The Government should bring in targets to achieve healthier food sales and should review progress before the end of this Parliament and regularly thereafter, introducing penalties for non-compliance if progress is insufficient. The Government should determine how such reporting could be made practicable for smaller businesses, and deliver what support, if any, those businesses would need. (Paragraphs 274–275)
Reformulation, taxes and subsidies
8. Reformulation programmes can form part of the solution to improving nutrition. However, voluntary reformulation programmes have largely failed. There are opportunities to build on the success of the Soft Drinks Industry Levy to drive reformulation. The salt and sugar reformulation tax proposed by the 2021 National Food Strategy would offer industry a powerful incentive to produce and sell healthier food. Although such a tax may increase the cost of less healthy foods, this would disincentivise consumption, bringing additional health benefits. However, industry should not increase the prices of healthier foods in order to recoup the costs of the tax or reformulation. The tax would generate substantial revenues, freeing up funding to support smaller businesses to produce and sell healthier food and to make healthier food more affordable for people on low incomes.
The Government should:
(a)Legislate as soon as possible to make targets with dates for reduction of salt, sugar and calories mandatory for large businesses and require those businesses to report on progress. Progress should be monitored by the Food Standards Agency and reported to Parliament. Fines for failure to comply should be introduced by the end of the Parliament.
(b)Announce as soon as possible that it intends to uprate the Soft Drinks Industry Levy (SDIL) to keep pace with consumer price inflation since it was introduced and review the rate of the SDIL annually from now on. The Government should also reduce the current thresholds for the levy from 5g and 8g per 100ml to 4g and 7g per 100ml and bring sugary milk-based drinks into scope. The changes should be applied by April 2026 at the latest.
(c)Announce an intention to introduce a salt and sugar reformulation tax and apply it as soon as possible, and within two years at most.
(d)Introduce measures to make healthier food more affordable. To this end, the Government should urgently commission a comprehensive review of the evidence on the most cost-effective interventions to drive businesses to produce and market healthier, often unprocessed or minimally processed fruits and vegetables, legumes, nuts, seeds and whole grains and to drive up consumption of those foods. This should include consideration both of universal subsidies and of targeted measures to support people on low incomes. (Paragraphs 285, 288, 294, 300)
Advertising of unhealthy food
9. The food industry faces strong commercial incentives to advertise and promote less healthy foods. This drives over-consumption and obesity.
The Government should:
(a)Legislate to ban the advertising of HFSS food and drink across all physical and digital media, as well as advertising by businesses that fail to reach mandatory health targets. This should be initiated no later than October 2026, culminating in a total ban by the end of this Parliament. As part of this, the Government should ban the sponsorship of sports events by and celebrity endorsements of large food businesses that fail to reach mandatory health targets.
(b)Develop a toolkit to support and accelerate local authority efforts to restrict outdoor HFSS advertising and encourage the spreading of good practice in advance of the comprehensive ban on advertising of HFSS food and drink coming into effect. (Paragraphs 311, 321)
Healthier high streets
10. Restricting the promotion of less healthy food and drink has the potential to make sales and consumption patterns healthier. However, implementation of the ban on location promotions has been patchy at best. We welcome the Government’s commitment to give local authorities more powers to block the development of fast food outlets.
The Government must:
(a)Swiftly introduce measures to give local authorities more planning and licensing powers to protect public health and reduce the proliferation of businesses that rely on sales of less healthy food.
(b)Bring forward the planned review of restrictions on retail location promotions, ensuring loopholes are closed and local authorities are adequately resourced to enforce the ban by the end of 2025;
(c)Implement the ban on HFSS volume price promotions no later than 1 October 2025 and restrict other forms of HFSS price promotion in retail settings, including ‘meal deals’.
(d)Ban location and price promotions of HFSS food and drink by out-of-home businesses with more than 50 employees, and for smaller out-of-home businesses and franchise premises if practicable;
(e)Ban location and price promotions of HFSS food and drink across online delivery platforms and aggregators, including digital messages and promotional notifications;
(f)Act swiftly to ban the use of brand and licensed characters, cartoons and nutrition and health claims on the packaging of HFSS food and drink. The Government should also ban these forms of promotion of HFSS products in retail and the out-of-home sectors as soon as possible; and
(g)Legislate as soon as possible to implement its promised ban on the sale of energy drinks to children, ensuring the ban is comprehensive and providing adequate resources for it to be enforced. (Paragraphs 330, 337, 342, 347, 351, 354)
Food labelling
11. While our focus is system-wide change, effective nutrition labelling can help consumers make healthier choices and stimulate reformulation.
The Government should:
(a)Introduce mandatory front-of-pack nutrition labelling that clearly distinguishes healthier and less healthy products, in a form determined by independent, publicly funded research with UK consumers in real-world situations. A variety of labelling systems with evidence of success in other countries should be trialled. Labels must be prominent and of a clearly readable size.
(b)Make prominent nutrition labelling mandatory for all businesses in the out-of-home sector by the end of this Parliament, in a comparable form to labelling in the in-home sector. To help smaller businesses comply, the Government should make available a tool to help businesses assess the nutritional content of their products. (Paragraphs 364, 367)
Chapter 6: Infants, children and young people
Pregnancy, infancy and early years
12. It is critical to act early to reduce the risk of obesity and diet-related disease, at pre-conception and during pregnancy and infancy. The marketing of follow-on, toddler and growing up milks is contrary to government dietary advice for infants, and may risk discouraging breastfeeding and healthy infant feeding practices at a critical point in child development. Commercial infant foods are routinely high in sugar and marketed misleadingly. Early years settings can play an important role in shaping taste preference and establishing healthy dietary patterns.
The Government must:
(a)Set goals for improving maternal and infant nutrition to prevent childhood obesity, develop a comprehensive and integrated strategy by the end of 2025 to meet those goals drawing on evidence from existing initiatives, and report on progress to Parliament annually thereafter.
(b)Act immediately to strengthen regulation on the composition and marketing of follow-on, toddler and growing up milks, banning the promotion of such products.
(c)Legislate by the end of 2025 to set strong mandatory compositional and marketing standards for commercial infant foods. The policy must be determined independent of industry input.
(d)Immediately review food standards for early years settings, making them mandatory, supporting early years settings to meet them and establishing a performance framework. (Paragraphs 380, 385, 395, 400)
Healthy meals for school-aged children
13. Too few children are getting healthy, nutritious school food. The planned expansion of primary school breakfast clubs is welcome, but schools must be supported in offering healthy breakfast food.
The Government should:
(a)Immediately review and update the school food standards: bringing them into line with SACN’s advice on dietary intakes of free sugars and fibre; setting out that schools should always make drinking water freely available and should offer no drinks except water and milk; and providing guidance on how the standards apply to school breakfasts as they are rolled out.
(b)Introduce a system by the end of 2025 for monitoring compliance with the school food standards. The results of compliance checks should be published online. Compliance checks should be introduced for early years settings by the end of this Parliament.
(c)Immediately take forward reforms to the Government Buying Standards for Food and Catering Services to ensure that schools as well as other public sector organisations must procure healthier food. In the meantime, the Government should introduce guidance on best practice for procuring healthy catering services for schools and local authorities. (Paragraphs 414, 425, 432)
Chapter 7: Making healthy food affordable and accessible
The cost of a healthy diet
14. Since our predecessor committee concluded in 2020 that a healthy diet was not affordable for many on low incomes, the cost has risen sharply.
The Government should immediately commence publication of quarterly estimates of the costs of a weekly healthy food basket. Findings should be reported to Parliament alongside progress towards targets on population nutrition and public health. (Paragraph 445)
Healthy Start
15. Failure to increase the value of Healthy Start payments since 2021 risks undermining the scheme’s benefits for nutrition and health. Too many families on low incomes may be missing out on Healthy Start payments.
The Government should:
(a)Immediately review the costs and benefits to nutrition and public health of increasing the value of Healthy Start payments to reflect increases in the prices of fruit, vegetables and milk;
(b)Enable auto-enrolment for Healthy Start over the course of this Parliament and in the meantime review evidence on and implement effective ways of encouraging eligible households to take up the scheme;
(c)Immediately review the costs and benefits to public health of extending eligibility for the Healthy Start scheme to all families earning under £20,000 per year. (Paragraphs 454, 457, 460)
Affordable school meals
16. We were appalled that free school meals allowances do not always cover the cost of a nutritious meal. Too many eligible families are missing out on free school meals, and children in low-income families above the free school meals eligibility cap are vulnerable to food insecurity and poor nutrition. School holiday provision offers vital nutritional support to families eligible for free school meals.
The Government should:
(a)Immediately review the costs and benefits to public health of increasing the per-meal free school meals funding rate to account for food price inflation since 2014–15;
(b)Immediately review the costs and benefits to public health of extending free or subsidised school meal provision, including extending eligibility for free school meals to children in all families with an income of £20,000 per year or less.
(c)Remove technical barriers to auto-enrolment for free school meals over the course of this Parliament. In the meantime, the Government should disseminate good practice on auto-enrolment for local authorities.
(d)Ensure that families eligible for free school meals receive holiday food support at no less than the value of free school meals following the end of the current funding settlement for the Holiday Activities and Food programme. (Paragraphs 465, 471, 475, 480)