UK’s childhood obesity strategy widely criticised as inadequate
The UK government’s action plan on childhood obesity has been criticised by doctors, health charities, campaigners including Jamie Oliver, and two former health ministers, Dr Dan Poulter and Norman Lamb. Poulter has called for the sugar tax to be extended to all high sugar foods, not just soft drinks. He also condemned the reliance on voluntary efforts by the food industry. Professor Neena Modi, the leader of the UK’s paediatricians, expressed disappointment that measures such as taxing unhealthy foods, advertising bans, and restricting the presence of fast food outlets near schools, had not been implemented.

Two former health ministers have heavily criticised the government’s plan to tackle childhood obesity, while Jamie Oliver has called it “underwhelming” because “so much is missing”.

Dr Dan Poulter and Norman Lamb, who both served in the last coalition government, have spoken out amid a growing row over what doctors and health charities claim is a major letdown that does not respond effectively to the growing crisis of children becoming dangerously overweight.

“I’m in shock,” said Oliver, the celebrity chef whose Jamie’s School Dinners TV series in 2005 led to improvements in school food. “The long-awaited childhood obesity strategy from Theresa May’s new government is far from robust, and I don’t know why it was shared during recess. It contains a few nice ideas, but so much is missing.

“Where are the actions on the irresponsible advertising targeted at our children, and the restrictions on junk food promotions? With this disappointing and, frankly, underwhelming strategy, the health of our future generations remains at stake,” Oliver added.

Jamie Oliver said the strategy was ‘far from robust’. Photograph: Amer Ghazzal/Rex/Shutterstock

Poulter, a Conservative, and Lamb, the Lib Dems’ health spokesman, told the Guardian that the 10-page document had failed to live up to a promise by the health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, that the government’s strategy would be necessarily “draconian” and interventionist in order to respond properly to what he last year called the “national disgrace” of childhood obesity. Hunt pledged as recently as February to deliver “a gamechanging moment, a robust strategy”.

Poulter, an NHS psychiatrist, said: “This is certainly not the ‘gamechanging’ plan for reducing childhood obesity that it had been built up to be. This policy has over-promised, but I fear that the reality will be under-delivery.”

The sugar tax should be extended to all heavily sugared foods, not just soft drinks, he said. “A sugar tax should be broadly welcomed, but it remains unclear how this will be implemented, why it will be limited just to soft drinks and not include sugary foods, and how it will avoid becoming a tax that unintentionally penalises fruit juice, and as a result farmers and food producers,” said Poulter.

He said measures to boost school sport “sound good, particularly during the Olympics. But there is a worrying lack of practical measures about how we can turn warm words into reality. There is also an urgent need for more joined-up government thinking to ensure that regular physical activity as well as personal and social education, which includes important public health messages, becomes mandatory in all schools.”

Lamb, like Poulter a health minister alongside Hunt until May 2015, described the action plan as “a massive damp squib”. He said: “Given Jeremy Hunt’s rhetoric we were entitled to expect something a bit more dramatic and effective than what we got. Is this really the best response to a ‘growing public health catastrophe’, or ‘national emergency’? Can it really be described as a ‘game-changing moment’?”

Poulter sharply criticised the plan’s continued reliance on voluntary action by the food industry to tackle children’s expanding waistlines. Food and soft drink producers could not be trusted to take action to boost health, he said. Health charities believe that the “responsibility deal” begun by then health secretary, Andrew Lansley, in 2010, under which manufacturers and sellers pledged to improve their practices to reduce obesity and alcohol misuse, has failed.

“Looking more closely at some of these plans, I have concerns, because when we draw on learned experience of corporate behaviour, we know that the continuation of a policy of hoping that sugary drinks and junk food manufacturers will want to start working with government to drastically reduce unhealthy sugar content is unlikely to be successful,” Poulter said.

“The responsibility deal has failed to deliver and has revealed a woeful lack of corporate responsibility. Junk food and sugary drink manufacturers have shown that they can be no more trusted to help help tackle childhood obesity than drinks companies can be to play their part in reducing irresponsible drinking habits.”

Poulter said ministers should recognise that evidence showed increasing the price of products that can harm health decreased both demand and consumption. “So we need strong legislation, for example through increases in VAT, that will increase the price of junk food,” he said.

Meanwhile, the leader of Britain’s paediatricians has accused ministers of letting children down and risking the public’s health by discarding plans that would have made the UK a world leader in tackling obesity.

“What is deeply saddening, because they can’t exercise personal responsibility, is the failure of the state to protect infants and children,” said Prof Neena Modi, president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. She was extremely disappointed that the government’s “weak” plan had eschewed necessarily “tough policies”, such as taxing unhealthy foods, limiting the number of fast food outlets near schools and banning the advertising of foods high in fat, salt or sugar.

“Had measures such as these been put forward, the UK would have a strategy of which to be proud. Instead, infants and children have been let down, and because the overwhelming majority of obese children will become obese adults, government is placing the health of the entire nation in grave jeopardy,” Modi said.



Prof John Middleton, president of the Faculty of Public Health (FPH), the UK professional body for public health specialists, said the plan “let down a generation of children by not going far enough to tackle childhood obesity”.

He said: “FPH remains fully supportive of a duty on sugary drinks a part of a wider strategy to tackle childhood obesity, and is very disappointed that the necessary, evidence-based measures to make the duty a success are not included in this report. These include tougher regulations of junk food marketing to children, particularly online, where there are far fewer restrictions.

Anna Taylor, executive director of the Food Foundation, said: “This represents a gear change, but is nowhere near the “game-change” promised by Jeremy Hunt. It’s good to see better commitments on reformulation but there is so much missing!

“Children and their parents are being systematically targeted with adverts, promotions and brand awareness of unhealthy foods – they can’t escape. Any parent waking up this morning in the hope that the government would help them protect their child from obesity will be bitterly disappointed.”

A Coca-Cola Great Britain spokesperson said: “We agree with the government that obesity rates are too high, but we do not believe a tax on only some soft drinks with sugar will reduce them. What it will do is hit consumers in the pocket and damage a range of businesses up and down the country.



“By reformulating 28 of our drinks since 2005, giving consumers even clearer nutritional information on our packs and investing more in marketing our no-sugar options, we have contributed to a significant reduction in sugar consumption from soft drinks over the last decade – and a 16% reduction in the last four years alone.

“During this time there has been no corresponding decline in obesity rates. A policy focused on a single nutrient in narrow range of products – that provide an average of just 5% of the total calories in a British teenager’s diet – is not the right response.”

