Inequity, obesity levels and affordability of healthy food top priorities, says report

The National Food Strategy, due out this month, needs to urgently address growing obesity levels, dietary inequality, and critically low levels of veg consumption in children and adults, says The Food Foundation.

The Broken Plate Report from The Food Foundation, and funded by the Nuffield Foundation, shows that the impact of our food system continues to be hugely unequal, with children from the poorest 10% of households being ten times more likely to be living with severe obesity than the richest 10% at age 11.

The report examines ten different areas and provides us with a ‘state of the nation’ view of how broken our current food system is, including:

• Amputations due to Diabetes have increased by 24% in the past 5 years. There are almost 10,000 diabetes-related amputations carried out on average per year.
• More healthy food is three times more expensive than less healthy food calorie for calorie. Foods high in sugar and fat are just 40% of the cost of fruit and veg per 1,000 calories.
• The poorest 5th of UK households would have to spend 40% of their disposable income on food to meet the Governments Eatwell Guide compared to just 7% for the richest fifth of households.

The report is published ahead of the National Food Strategy led by Henry Dimbleby, which is expected to contain strong and urgent recommendations to government.

Critical levels of obesity, dietary inequality, and an increasingly obesogenic food environment are amongst the many metrics highlighted in the report which has been produced in collaboration with Eating Better, Action on Sugar, Neilsen, The Resolution Foundation, CEDAR and Feat at the University of Cambridge, Food DB at the University of Oxford, and University of Leeds and funded by the Nuffield Foundation.

Anna Taylor, executive director at the Food Foundation said: “Bold action will be required if we are to safeguard the future health of our children – but is by no means impossible. This year’s Broken Plate report highlights that our current food environment is failing to deliver diets that are just, healthy or sustainable with this having very real health implications for millions of citizens.”

Katharine Jenner, campaign director at Action on Sugar and Action on Salt was more strident in her comments, saying that the new Secretary of State for Health and Social Care must confront food companies promoting and profiting from unhealthy processed food which she said can lead to obesity and the worse outcomes from Covid-19.

She said: “With ten children out of every class of thirty leaving primary school with overweight or obesity, and the overall cost of obesity to wider society estimated at £27 billion, food companies should be forced to provide healthier choices. Surely Mr Javid believes every child has the right to grow up healthy?”

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