Andrew Lansley made an announcement that Britain needs to cut 5 billion calories a day from its diet to curb obesity. Lansley urged individuals to eat less and eat more wisely, and promised to talk to the food industry about voluntary cuts in the calorie content of processed food and drinks. The health secretary and the chief medical officer, Sally Davies also issued a “call to action” on diet, pointing out that alcohol contributed 10% to our calorie intake.
Lansley termed this new plan as a “national ambition” rather than a strategy but it has drawn criticism from food campaigners and doctors. Jane Ogden, an obesity expert at the University of Surrey, was doubtful whether the government's new strategy would succeed and called for more proactive measures to limit bad food options. “It doesn't work to tell people to eat less,” she said. “At the end of the day, people don't make good choices.”
The health secretary said he would now be asking the industry to voluntarily reduce the calories in their products. A 3-5% reduction in the calorie content in an average shopping basket would cut obesity without the consumer even noticing any change in the food they ate, Lansley claimed. “We have already seen how we can move further, faster through the responsibility deal and I am now challenging business to help us make even greater progress,” he said. “Reducing the number of calories we consume is essential.”
About 60% of UK adults and a third of children are overweight or obese. Strokes and heart problems are rising, diabetes is rocketing and overweight people run increased risks of cancers and infertility.
Terence Stephenson, president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, said the 5bn calorie target “may grab headlines but is actually peanuts – 16 dry-roasted peanuts per person, per day, to be precise”. He said, “The plan has no clear measures on how the food and drink industry will be made to be more responsible in their aggressive marketing of unhealthy food.” Unchecked, obesity could be costing the NHS £10bn a year by 2050, said Stephenson, adding, “Suggesting that children in particular can be 'nudged' into making healthy choices, especially when faced with a food landscape which is persuading them to do the precise opposite, suggests this would be best described as a call to inaction.”
Lansley said his “national ambition”, which he compared to Michelle Obama's campaign in the US, could reverse the upward trend by 2020. He said he planned to invest in the anti-obesity campaign, Change 4 Life, but its annual budget has been cut from £25m to £14m in 2011-12.
On average, a man should not eat more than 2,605 calories and a woman 2,079 calories a day, according to new guidance from the scientific advisory committee on nutrition, released with Lansley's plan. This is about 100 calories higher than the last figures in 1991. British officials say the new numbers are based on a better understanding of current activity levels and that an individual's ideal calorie count varies depending on factors like how much they exercise and their body mass index. Previous calorie recommendations underestimated the impact of physical activity, even though people are now more sedentary than two decades ago. “This is not a license to eat more,” said Alan Jackson, head of the scientific group that came up with the new recommendations.
Susan B. Roberts, a professor at the Friedman School of Nutrition at Tufts University, said the new calorie advice seemed reasonable. “The old numbers were simply bad numbers because methodology was too basic in the old days,” she said. “If you are telling somebody to eat 10 percent less, that is 10 percent less than they personally ate before,” she said.
Davies said that, on average, people were consuming 10% more calories than they should to remain at a stable healthy weight and that people did not tell the truth about their eating habits. “We need to start being honest with ourselves about what we eat and drink,” she said.
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