Targeting fat towns

Parks with outdoor gyms where people can work out for free. Centres for training and sport education. Streets lined with keen cyclists and walking enthusiasts. This healthy living utopia may sound like a training camp for London 2012, but come next summer it may just as well describe Dudley in the West Midlands.

Why Dudley? Well, it is one of nine towns recently awarded Healthy Town status under the new Government initiative. The towns, ranging from Middlesbrough to Portsmouth, will share a pot of £30m that will go on local projects devoted to improving the health of their residents.

Healthy Towns is the first step in the Government’s Change4Life strategy to tackle obesity. With the motto ‘Eat well, move more, live longer’, Change4Life hopes to move away from the ‘blame culture’ all too commonly associated with obesity and draw together retailers, food and drink producers, charities and state organisations to unite behind a single cause.

But with an economy plunging into recession and consumers more preoccupied with wallets than waistlines, is now the time for the food industry to get involved in yet another Government-led health initiative?

The Government says action is necessary to change eating behaviour and has committed £75m to marketing Change4Life, on top of the £30m going to the nine Healthy Towns. The campaign was launched earlier this month by Secretary of State for Health Alan Johnson, who told Parliament: “Under the banner Change4Life, the Government is aiming to galvanise support from everyone in the country, from grass-roots organisations to leading supermarkets and charities.”

And the food industry appears to have answered the call. Thirty-three corporate partners have already signed up. These include Tesco, Asda and PepsiCo, each having made its own commitment to promoting a healthier lifestyle. In addition, Business4Life, a consortium of corporate members, has pledged to provide an extra £200m of advertising and marketing support over the next four years. Spearheaded by the Advertising Association, the consortium includes the likes of Cadbury, Kraft, Nestlé, Mars and Coca-Cola.

Under the terms of the initiative, corporate partners must agree to push for a change in behaviour by promoting healthier diets and exercise. This promotion must include ‘incremental activity’ to support the message. Companies will also be encouraged to use the Change4Life logo to complement products that are already healthy or those that can be consumed in a healthier way – for example, by suggesting eggs are boiled rather than fried.

Smaller businesses can get involved as well. For instance, the Government is seeking local partners to support the Healthy Towns initiative.

Dudley aside, events planned under this programme include a fast-food outlet health-rating scheme in Tower Hamlets and a loyalty scheme in Manchester to reward people with activities or healthy food when they exercise (see box, over).

The Food & Drink Federation is liaising with the Change4Life team and says it welcomes the project as a move away from recent Government criticism of food companies. “We feel this is the reverse of that approach,” says a spokesperson. “We are impressed by the efforts of the Department of Health to forge a partnership with industry, grassroots groups and charities to create a social marketing platform in which meaningful activity can take place to help the health of the nation.”

Change4Life is forging a better relationship between Government and the food industry, showing that the corporate world can help make positive changes, adds Peta Buscombe, chief executive of the Advertising Association. “We want to demonstrate that collectively industry can really make a difference in terms of behavioural change and help the Government face some of its challenges,” she says.

But the programme is not without its critics. Which? is seeking a meeting with the DoH and corporate members to discuss how the likes of Cadbury, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo will be able to promote healthy eating. “We want to see companies take action across the board by making it easier to make healthier choices,” a spokesman says.

Buscombe admits some of the non-Government groups within the Business4Life consortium have criticised the involvement of some sponsors, but remains confident all parties can work to a set agenda. “The more we work together, the more we hope industry can make a real difference. As we’re all working in the same movement, it will be harder for individual parties to be criticised.”

The Advertising Association is keen to ensure the Change4Life brand is protected by being used in the right way by companies, says Buscombe, and rules of engagement are still being agreed. However, she says makers of sugary, fatty foods should not be excluded from the programme. “Companies such as Pepsi have an amazing reach among the kind of target group we want to speak to about health and we think these brands can help.”

Norman Lamb, the Liberal Democrat Shadow Health Spokesman, takes a similar viewpoint. “It is better to have these companies on board than excluded,” he says. “There has to be a sense of responsibility from companies and parents, and we all have a role to play.”

Change4Life has presented a different set of hurdles for retailers. The BRC wasn’t consulted when Change4Life was first launched, it claims, meaning members have failed to establish how their existing healthy-lifestyle initiatives might come under the Change4Life banner.

Sainsbury's has decided against joining the coalition because it may confuse the other healthy messages it has been trying to give out.

“We feel we have got so many other popular healthy-living lifestyle programmes going on and we would like to stick with those,” a spokesperson says.

These retailers have been backed by industry insiders and consumer groups, who have also expressed reservations about the scheme, saying it could muddle consumers further when they are already struggling to cope with the plethora of healthy-living schemes, initiatives, logos and guidelines that exist.

Other commentators see Change4Life as yet another attempt by the ‘nanny state’ to tell families what they should eat and drink. Many have dismissed the Government’s investment as a faddy PR exercise unlikely to tackle the deep-rooted problems that link poverty and obesity.

Healthy Towns has all the hallmarks of the Government’s short-sighted approach to tackling public health issues, claims Conservative Shadow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley.

In response, the Government and food industry groups say this latest initiative is an attempt to move away from criticism of families and food companies towards an inclusive approach that can inspire people to change their behaviour. The Government partly blames the media for the way it portrays grossly overweight people.

“The media discusses the subject in a way that appears to blame the parents in overweight families,” says a DoH spokesman. This leads to consumers failing to recognise they have a problem, or rejecting the issue as being a criticism of their parenting and lifestyle, the spokesman adds.

Those most at risk, according to Labour, are poor families with little disposable income, little time to develop healthy living habits and few skills in cooking and active leisure activity.

And there lies the crux of the Healthy Towns and Change4Life debate. On one hand it’s targeting those most in need, but on the other it is attempting to rouse a section of society too preoccupied with their economic circumstances to put health and well-being at the top of their concerns.

The argument will become more acute as the recession begins to bite, and those in the food industry yet undecided will be forced to take sides.