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The Broken Plate

Major Food Foundation report highlights the impact of Britain’s ‘food policy disaster’
Katie Hill - Editor-in-Chief, My Green Pod
Young boy and girl eating hamburgers

The influential 2022 Broken Plate report, published by The Food Foundation, reveals as never before the dangerous impact of negative trends in the nation’s diet and the urgent need for a major overhaul of our food system.

The report highlights the wide range of damaging effects caused by poor nutrition and the absence of a coherent UK food policy, leading to problems that include stunted growth in our children and record-breaking levels of amputations linked to the complications of obesity.

The Broken Plate presents the strongest arguments so far for a change in the nation’s food policies to give everyone in the UK access to a healthy diet that avoids further damage to global climate and environment.

Nutrition and obesity

The authoritative research behind the report presents a bleak picture of the consequences of our broken food system.

On current trends more than 80% of children born in 2022 who survive to the age of 65 will be overweight or obese. At least one in 20 of them will already have died.

Obesity in children has risen by 50% in the past year alone, and children with obesity are more likely to grow up to have diet-related disease. Obesity adversely affects ability to learn in school, self-esteem and physical and mental health.

Poor nutrition is causing stunted growth. British five-year-olds are shorter than five-year-old populations of our European neighbours with significant height variation between poor and wealthy areas within this country.

Life-limiting amputations caused by the complications of diabetes linked to obesity have reached record levels, tragically impacting the quality of life of affected individuals and placing a huge burden on our healthcare system and the wider economy.

‘This major Food Foundation report shows that our food system is completely broken. Unhealthy food is cheap, aggressively marketed and makes people sick. Although we have had almost 700 government obesity policies in England to date, very few have led to any action.  The government must stop this cycle and ensure it implements all policy proposals, including those put forward in the latest obesity strategy published in 2020.’

DR DOLLY THEIS MRC
Epidemiology Unit & Centre for Diet and Activity Research (CEDAR), Cambridge University

The cost of healthy diets

Healthy, nutritious food is nearly three times more expensive than obesogenic unhealthy products, with more healthy foods costing an average of £8.51 for 1,000 calories compared with just £3.25 for 1,000 calories of less healthy foods.

Between 2021 and 2022 healthier foods became even more expensive, increasing in price by an average of 5.1% compared with 2.5% for the least healthy foods.

Excess weight costs the UK approximately £74 billion every year in direct NHS costs, lost workforce productivity and reduced life expectancy. It is one of the main factors in the 20-year gap in healthy life expectancy between the richest and poorest members of society.

One in five households would have to spend almost half their disposable income on food to achieve the government-recommended healthy diet, leaving little money for energy and other household bills. By contrast, the wealthiest fifth of the population would need to spend just 11% of their disposable income.

‘This report provides the strongest evidence to date of the worsening crisis affecting our food system and the health of the UK population. It is vital that the incoming prime minister takes urgent action to address the issues raised by the National Food Strategy with the development of a new plan for primary legislation.’

ANNA TAYLOR
Executive director at The Food Foundation

Plant-based alternatives

Sustainable alternative milks, made from ingredients such as oats and soya, cost up to £1.79 per litre compared with £1 for cow’s milk. They are 60% more expensive than dairy milk even though they on average create less than a third of the greenhouse gas emissions of dairy milk and use little more than half the water to produce.

Sandwiches with plant-based fillings cost £3.25 on average compared with £3.00 for meat and £2.85 for fish.

‘As prices continue to rise nationally, there is an ever-growing nutritional gap between high- and low-income families. Healthy foods are nearly three times more expensive than less healthy foods per calorie. We call on the government to ensure that all members of our society, including the most vulnerable, have the means to access healthy affordable foods. We must act now to build a healthier and more sustainable future for our children.’

DR MAX DAVIE
Health improvement officer, Royal College of Paediatrics and Institute of Child Health

Health inequalities

About a third (32%) of all food and soft drink advertising is still invested in promoting unhealthy foods compared with 1% spent on fruit and vegetable promotion. A further 39% is spent on brand advertising, much of which is associated with less healthy products.

Fast food retailers gravitate to areas of poverty: 31% of food retailers in the most deprived areas are fast food outlets compared with 22% in the least deprived areas.

As fast-food consumption is closely linked with increased risk of obesity, it is likely that this higher availability of fast food is a contributing factor to socio-economic health inequalities.

Only one in four state schools in England is known to be meeting school food nutritional requirements, despite calls for the government to mandate an accreditation scheme so that compliance with standards can be more regularly checked in all schools.

Kids’ cereals and yoghurts

Childhood is a critical time for development and suboptimal nutrition can have irreversible lifelong implications.

Breakfast cereals and yoghurts are foods that parents often give their children in the belief they are relatively healthy, but only 7% of breakfast cereals and 4% of yogurts marketed for children are low in sugar.

Some breakfast cereals and yoghurts supply almost the entire recommended daily allowance (RDA) of sugar in one portion: Kellogg’s Froot Loops Marshmallows 17.0g (89% of a four- to six-year-old’s maximum recommended intake); Nestlé Smarties Vanilla Flavour Yogurt 16.5g (87% of a four- to six-year-old’s maximum recommended intake).

‘The nation’s health is worse than it’s been for generations and we’re now suffering the double whammy of the Covid impact plus massive inflation. We need action on unsafe food (like we had on cigarettes) to protect the whole population.  We cannot condemn the next generation to more stunted growth, diabetes or amputations.’

LAURA SANDYS CBE
Chair of trustees at The Food Foundation

Regulation and the food system

Unless there is action to halt the upward trend, emissions from the food system will be four times higher by 2050 than the level needed for the UK to meet its Net Zero target.
 
The Broken Plate report shows more clearly than ever the need for regulation to create structural change in our food system if we are going to provide a healthy future for our population.

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