The UK is heading into a season of discontent. Prices are spiraling, potential power outages are looming, utilities are falling apart, and soon there will be no more three-for-two deals on Quality Street.
Restrictions on multiple-buy promotions of unhealthy foods will begin in England within a year, as part of a series of anti-obesity measures pushed by former Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Scotland and Wales plan their own versions. However, the Johnson government had already delayed the English reforms by a year from 2022 and his short-lived successor, Liz Truss, floated the idea that they could be completely scrapped.
As the economy falters, with particular pressure on low-income households, measures to reduce promotions and advertising of foods high in fat, salt and sugar are easily portrayed as Scrooge-like. A new administration dealing with double digit inflation you may be tempted to push them back or delay them indefinitely. That would be a mistake.
The new rules include limits introduced this year on where unhealthy food can be placed in stores, as well as planned restrictions on television and digital advertising, multi-buy offers and soft drink refills. The food industry sees them as a gratuitous attack on the cost of living, as well as their own profits.
The companies highlight, for example, data prepared for Public Health England indicating that without supermarket promotions, a typical household would have to pay £634 more a year for the same meal. Restrictions on placing unhealthy foods near store entrances, checkouts and aisle ends will also cut into manufacturers’ profits, reducing the discounts they can offer across their ranges, executives argue.
However, activists highlight how food marketing currently drives shoppers towards junk food. Cancer Research UK found that promotions are skewed towards unhealthy categories, while shoppers who take advantage of them suffer from poor nutrition.
Henry Dimbleby, who conducted a food review for the government, argued that the human tendency to seek out quick calories has combined with the profit motive to produce a “junk food cycle.” Companies looking to please consumer palates invest in developing and marketing high-calorie foods on a large scale, which drives down costs compared to more nutritious fare. The households most vulnerable to excessive consumption of these products are those with low incomes.
Food manufacturers say the planned changes will have little impact on obesity. True, the government’s impact assessment for each of its anti-obesity measures predicted average daily calorie reductions for people in the single digits.
However, these figures do not take into account the disproportionate effect of both obesity and measures to combat it on specific and vulnerable segments of society. Nor do they take into account future effects on children whose eating habits may be established early.
Pressure from governments and investors has already led food companies to come out with healthier products. Brands from Mr Kipling cakes to Walkers potato chips launched lines with less fat, salt and sugar as junk food restrictions loomed. New products from major brands use cutting-edge technology and are being closely watched globally, said Anthony Fletcher, founder of Urban Legend, a maker of low-sugar donuts.
Chocolate is more complicated. Until now, attempts to produce chocolate with less sugar have proved almost as short-lived as Liz Truss’s mandate. But the regulation will encourage the development of healthier packaged foods and push companies to promote them. The excess of sweets at bargain prices will not solve an embarrassing and growing problem of malnutrition.
Government measures to reduce the amount of salt in food, combined with the threat of enforcement, dramatically reduced the salt in bread in the early 2000s. The change in taste was too gradual for people’s palates to appreciate. will notice, and research found thousands of lives were saved.
Now, moving away from junk food is crucial to fighting obesity, which is already costing the health service an estimated £6.5bn a year and causing ever-increasing human misery. A government reluctant to take “nanny state” measures will be forced to pay even more health costs.
As low-income households grapple with a steep drop in living standards, a few relatively healthy offerings are the least the new administration can offer them. Food brands may complain, but they are up to the challenge.
