Chief medical officer Chris Whitty has called on the new Labour government to introduce a sugar tax across a raft of food categories in a bid to tackle the obesity crisis.
Whitty’s annual report, published by the DHSC today, also calls for other measures recommended in Henry Dimbleby’s 2021 National Food Strategy, including mandatory reporting on the proportion of HFSS sales, as well as the proportion of food sold that is meat.
Whitty claims the increasingly obesogenic food environment, especially in deprived urban areas, was leading to children living “shorter and unhealthier lives”, blaming the lack of affordable, nutritious and varied food, and too much access to and marketing of cheaper HFSS products.
The report was published two days after the government launched its new National Food Strategy, calling for the industry to form a coalition with ministers across departments to change the nation’s diet.
Whitty’s report highlights the success of the soft drinks levy, calling it a “landmark public health intervention” which “demonstrated that industry can be incentivised to provide healthier products through fiscal measures without harming sales or profitability”.
He suggests possible solutions, including a broad upstream sugar and salt reformulation levy applied to all sugar and salt sold for use in HFSS food or in restaurants and catering, and paid by the manufacturers and importers of HFSS food.
An alternative would be a levy applied to certain categories only, targeting a selection of non-staple products that contribute significantly to excess sugar or salt consumption, to drive reformulation.
Whitty also moots the idea of an “excess profits levy” on retailers or producers of products with high sugar and salt content.
Today’s report goes on to encourage ministers to revive Dimbleby’s 2021 recommendation that all food companies with 250 staff or more should publish an annual report on the sales of HFSS food, also including a breakdown on sales of protein by type ( meat, dairy, fish, plant, or alternative protein) and origin.
“The introduction of healthy sales targets for food businesses could either be based on a binary HFSS classification or a continuous classification using the Nutrient Profiling Model,” says the report.
Whitty also admits the failure of the voluntary sugar and calorie reduction programme his department the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities took on from Public Health England.
“Past and present governments have recognised the importance of reformulating the recipes of food and drink options to reduce the amount of fat, salt and sugar in products,” says the report.
“However, failure to mandate this approach instead of voluntary action has failed to deliver meaningful progress, as exampled by the relative failure of recent sugar and calorie reduction programmes.”
The report comes with environment secretary Steve Reed unveiling plans on Tuesday for a new National Food Strategy, which would look to tackle the obesity crisis in partnership with the industry.
Defra has confirmed the government will look to build on Dimbleby’s proposals, as well as other existing measures such as the government’s promotions ban.
Dimbleby’s report recommended introducing taxes across all HFSS products, in a system to replace the soft drinks levy.
However, health secretary Wes Streeting has previously said the government does not want to introduce such taxes because of the possible impact on food prices for poorer families.
Chris Snowdon, the head of lifestyle economics at the Institute of Economic Affairs, told The Telegraph newspaper today: “Public sector fat cats like Chris Whitty are obsessed with taxing the poor.
“They have no answers to the structural problems affecting the horrendously inefficient NHS. Chris Whitty is yesterday’s man preaching yesterday’s solutions that have been shown to fail.”
However, Dr Kawther Hashem, head of research and impact at Action on Sugar said: ”This report from Chris Whitty illustrates the urgent need for both national and local governments to take decisive action to improve our food environment and reduce diet-related diseases. The stark health disparities it highlights demand stronger approaches to create meaningful change.
“Healthy food ‘deserts’ in cities, coupled with relentless unhealthy food advertising, are setting children up for shorter, unhealthier lives, disproportionately impacting poorer families.
“Tackling the root causes of unhealthy eating – such as the high availability of foods high in fat, sugar, and salt, and the stark cost difference between healthy and unhealthy options – must be a priority if we are to ensure every child has the chance to grow up healthy and thrive.”
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