"Our food system is broken"

“Our food system is broken” – this is the conclusion of the House of Lords’ Food, Diet and Obesity Committee in their report ‘A plan to fix our broken food system’, published in October. Here we share our thoughts on the report and its main recommendations.

If you’re as passionate as we are about food, health and wellness, then you’ll be as unsurprised but nonetheless saddened by the report as we are. We’ve known our country’s food system is broken for a long time.

It’s well known our NHS is buckling under the sheer numbers of people our doctors and nurses are treating, and this demand is driven to a large extent by growing levels of obesity and diabetes which themselves can cause multiple health conditions.

The House of Lords report exposes the startling reality of the crisis

More than 20% of children start primary school overweight or obese, rising to 37% by the time they leave.
Two-thirds of adults are overweight or obese, and 29% are living with obesity.
England has one of the highest rates of obesity among high-income nations.
Diet-related risks pose the second biggest threat to years of life lost, second only to tobacco.
The annual societal cost of obesity is at least 1-2% of UK GPD – that’s over £30 billion per year!

The report makes it clear that obesity and diet-related disease are a public health emergency and that unhealthy diets are the primary driver of obesity and preventable diet-related diseases across all income groups in society.

The cause of the crisis, say the House of Lords, is that unhealthy, highly processed foods have become widely accessible, heavily marketed and often cheaper than healthier alternatives. ‘There has been an utter failure to tackle this crisis’, they say. Between 1992 and 2020, successive governments have proposed nearly 700 wide-ranging policies tackling obesity in England, to minimal effect.

At the heart of this failure has been a misplaced focus on individual responsibility, and this approach has not worked. Instead, the lack of regulation has led to consumers being inundated with advertisements and promotions for unhealthy, ultra-processed foods and drinks, which has fuelled growth in obesity and diabetes.

To tackle the emergency, which the House of Lords warns could take decades to fix, the report recommends a systemic response and a new legislative framework. It recommends mandatory regulation of food businesses, including the multinational companies that dominate our food system.

Other recommendations from the House of Lords include

Introduce a sugar and salt reformulation tax as soon as possible.
Ban the advertising of all HFSS (High in Fat, Sugar and Salt) food and drink across all print and digital media.
Ban volume price promotions on HFSS by October 2025, and ban the use of brand and licensed characters, cartoons and health claims on packaging of HFSS food and drink.
The Government should fundamentally reshape the incentives for the food industry… to drive production and sales of healthier foods.

At DR.VEGAN^® we have long believed that the national healthcare system has become over-medicalised and fails to address the root cause of the nation’s health. As one example, the new government recently announced it was considering proposals to give people who are unemployed and obese weight loss jabs to get them back to work. If governments prioritised tackling our broken food system and the root causes of obesity, we wouldn’t have the obesity crisis in the first place.

One reason DR.VEGAN^® exists is that we are intent on inspiring and educating people in food, nutrition and diet, whatever type of diet they follow. But we are a very small cog in a much bigger wheel, and the House of Lord’s report may just be the start of real change that is desperately needed.

The government is due to respond to the report in early 2025, and we will share an update once we hear from them. In the meantime, do make sure you complete or update your Diet Profile, and keep an eye out on the latest articles from our nutritionists to see how you can support your health proactively.

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