UK Government urged by Lords committee to ‘fix our broken food system’

The House of Lords Food, Diet and Obesity Committee issue a new report calling on the Government to address the nation's obesity and unhealthy food crisis.

A new report calling for a comprehensive long-term strategy to fix England’s “broken food system” has been published by the House of Lords Food, Diet and Obesity Committee.

Titled ‘Recipe for health: a plan to fix our broken food system’, the report aims to address one of the largest public health emergencies: the rise in obesity and diet-related disease in the country.

The document describes the government’s intervention to tackle the obesity crisis in the country as “an utter failure”, following nearly 700 wide-ranging policy proposals between 1992 and 2020.

Yet, England still has one of the highest rates of obesity among high-income nations. With two-thirds of adults overweight and just under a third (29 percent) living with obesity, diet-related risks are now the second biggest contributor to years of life lost, behind tobacco.

According to the report, the annual societal cost of obesity is at least 1-2 percent of UK GDP.

A major factor is the price difference between healthier food and unhealthy alternatives. It has been estimated that, per calorie, healthier foods are more than twice as expensive as less healthy options, highlighting the need for change to ensure that healthier food is both accessible and affordable for everyone.

“Food should be a pleasure and contribute to our health and wellbeing, but it is making too many people ill,” said Baroness Walmsley, Chair of the Food, Diet and Obesity Committee.

“Something must be going wrong if almost two in five children are leaving primary school with overweight or obesity and so many people are finding it hard to feed healthy food to their families.

Baroness Walmsley called on both the Government and the food industry to “take responsibility for what has gone wrong” and take urgent steps to find a solution.

Proposed changes

As part of the new comprehensive strategy, the committee report suggests that the Government should:

• introduce a salt and sugar reformulation tax on food manufacturers, using revenue to make healthier food more affordable, especially for those facing food insecurity.
• ban all advertising of unhealthy food across all media by the end of this Parliament, following the planned 9pm watershed and the October 2025 online paid advertising ban.
• require large food businesses to report on the healthiness of their sales, excluding those with a high share of unhealthy products from policy discussions on food, diet and obesity prevention.
• give the Food Standards Agency (FSA) independent oversight of the food system.
• commission further research on the links between ultra-processed foods (UPFs) and health risks as well as update dietary guidelines based on the new evidence.
• develop a strategy for maternal and infant nutrition and improve compliance with school food standards to address childhood obesity.
• enable auto-enrolment for Healthy Start and free school meals and review the impact of increasing funding and widening eligibility to reduce diet-related inequalities.

Baroness Walmsley added, “We urge the Government to look favourably on our plan to fix our broken food system and accept that not only is it cost-effective, but that it would lead to a lot less human misery.”