Peers issue damning report on government's 'utter failure' to tackle our 'broken food system'
A new report (Recipe for health: a plan to fix our broken food system) from the House of Lords Food, Diet and Obesity Committee has demanded that government should develop a comprehensive food strategy to tackle the growing crisis of obesity and diet-related diseases.
Among their key recommendations is a call for policy interventions to reduce unhealthy foods and for a "shift away from voluntary measures to a system of mandatory regulation of the food industry."
Worryingly for industry, which will be a key participant in delivering on the Committee's goals, the report also calls for food businesses that derive "more than a proportion of sales (to be defined by the FSA) from less healthy products" to be excluded from food policy discussions. They add: "This should also apply to the industry associations that represent these businesses."
The big question is how unhealthy foods get defined. The report talks about ultra processed foods as being the main culprits of unhealthy diets which we'd agree with. But we must ensure that the fresh, minimally processed meat our members produce doesn't get caught up in this definition as a result of the many flawed scientific studies currently circulating like the Harvard School of Public Health study that we've highlighted in the past.