How can we reduce obesity and improve diets?

Rising rates of obesity and other diet-related diseases are costly to people’s health and the NHS. Recommendations from the National Food Strategy set out a path to healthier – and less environmentally damaging – choices.

Diet-related disease is the biggest cause of avoidable illness and death in the UK. Type 2 diabetes, one of the diseases caused by bad diet, is projected to cost the NHS more than all cancers today by 2035.

Obesity is rising and its effects are expensive, costing the NHS around £6.5 billion each year. But rates of obesity are not equal across the country: they are more prevalent in more disadvantaged areas.

Children living in the most deprived regions of the UK are nearly twice as likely to be obese as those living in the least deprived parts of the country. Obesity and associated malnutrition can limit children’s future opportunities, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds. Indeed, researchers have estimated that the overall social costs of obesity in the UK are as much as 3% of UK GDP in 2020 (Bell and Deyes, 2022).

The food environment – the way we manufacture foods and how we make choices about what we eat – is making us sick. The food system is also a major cause of deforestation, drought, water pollution, loss of biodiversity and climate change.

It is difficult to get politicians to take action to tackle these major issues. Reform of regulation of land use and farming policy is a political minefield. What’s more, people sometimes react badly to what they perceive as the nanny state – choosing what to eat is an inherently individual decision.

Food is also an important part of most people's lives, not just because of the nutrients it provides, but also because it is the centrepiece for much of family life and our social interactions with others. Our preferences and the way we relate to food are formed early in life and often have strong cultural roots.

Why would we want the government telling us what we should and shouldn't eat?

What is the solution?

It has long been recognised that a broad range of policy reforms are necessary to tackle these issues. That was why, in 2019, the Conservative government commissioned Henry Dimbleby (co-founder of the Leon restaurant chain and the Sustainable Restaurant Association) to lead an independent review to help to formulate a wide-ranging National Food Strategy.

This ambitious strategy, delivered in 2021, comprised 14 specific recommendations aimed at creating incentives for firms to produce foods that are healthier and better for the environment. The proposals include taxes on sugar and salt, mandatory reporting requirements, the extension of a programme targeted at improving the diet of low-income households, free school meals, the healthy start scheme and related programmes.

The strategy also proposes a range of regulations to make the best use of our land, to target investment in innovation and to use procurement rules to encourage the production, sale and purchase of healthy and sustainable foods.

Importantly, these recommendations put addressing food poverty centre stage. In two earlier Economics Observatory articles, we discussed how policies might be expanded to reduce food poverty among children, and the reasons why we see many poorer households eating less nutritious diets.

As the second article states, ‘while the main determinant of food insecurity is low incomes, research suggests that the factors associated with it extend beyond'.Indeed, research shows that the poor are ‘less capable not because of inherent traits, but because the very context of poverty imposes load and impedes cognitive capacity’ to make healthier food choices (Mani et al, 2013).

‘The findings, in other words, are not about poor people, but about any people who find themselves poor’. Lifting people out of poverty will therefore lead directly to better decision-making.

Henry Dimbleby left his role at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) after publishing the National Food Strategy, in part so he could speak more freely. His recent book, Ravenous, takes a deeper (and more entertaining) dive into these issues, and offers a well-argued and optimistic blueprint for how we can build a better food system.