Nomad Foods has welcomed the House of Lords' food, diet and obesity committee's report urging the UK government to implement a comprehensive, integrated, and long-term strategy to overhaul the country's food system.
The report titled Recipe for Health: A Plan to Fix Our Broken Food System highlights the need for a legislative framework to support the proposed reforms.
The study also identified obesity and diet-related diseases as public health emergency that costs society billions each year in healthcare costs and lost productivity.
Stefan Descheemaeker, chief executive officer of Nomad Foods, stated, "We support measures requiring companies to report on the proportion of their sales that come from healthy products, which we have been doing for the last seven years.”
Recommendations
The report recommends that large food businesses should report on their sales of healthy products.
The committee has proposed to exclude businesses that earn a significant portion of their sales from less healthy products from discussions on food, diet, and obesity prevention policy.
It also advised for a salt and sugar reformulation tax on food manufacturers, building on the success of the Soft Drinks Industry Levy.
Descheemaeker added, "On tax, we believe this should be science-based in line with the UK government’s Nutrient Profiling Model, which determines whether a product is healthy or less healthy based on its overall nutritional profile, rather than focusing on the specific levels of individual nutrients.
"This model would then help incentivise companies to reformulate to create healthier products. We’d also like to see mandatory front-of-pack labelling, that would help consumers to make more informed food choices.”
Read More: Food Packaging Should Have Labels On Front About Health Impact, Says WHO
The government should consider how to use the revenue to make healthier food cheaper, particularly for people living with food insecurity, the report notes.
Other recommendations include a ban on the advertising of less healthy food across all media, further research into the impact of ultra-processed foods (UPFs) on health, and developing a strategy for maternal and infant nutrition, among others.
'Health And Wellbeing'
Baroness Walmsley, chair of the food, diet and obesity committee, stated, “Food should be a pleasure and contribute to our health and wellbeing, but it is making too many people ill.
“Over the last 30 years, successive governments have failed to reduce obesity rates, despite hundreds of policy initiatives. This failure is largely due to policies that focused on personal choice and responsibility out of misguided fears of the ‘nanny state’. Both the government and the food industry must take responsibility for what has gone wrong and take urgent steps to put it right.”
