Food: Regulation and Guidance

Lord Patel Excerpts

Thursday 7th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Patel]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, for securing this timely debate. I was encouraged to hear the Minister say during Questions today that the public health function in future will come under the direct responsibility of the Secretary of State. My reasons for saying so will become obvious.

I should like to speak about two substances added to our food which have a significant adverse affect on our health. The first, which has already been mentioned, is sodium chloride, which in small quantities is essential for our diet and for making food tasteful. The second substance, trans fats or trans fatty acids, has no nutritional value and is not essential to our diet.

Sodium chloride, or salt, is essential in small quantities. The maximum amount of daily salt intake recommended is six grams a day for an adult—about a teaspoonful—much less for children and no greater than one gram per day for a baby. It is not easy—in fact it is very difficult—to know exactly how much salt you eat in a day without knowing the exact content of salt in each type of food and the amount of food you eat. About 75 per cent of the salt we eat is already in the food we buy—cereals, bread, biscuits, ready meals, sauces, pizzas, yoghurt; the list is endless. Many prepared foods have a very high content of salt.

Is six grams of salt a day essential? No, it is not—the less the better—particularly if you suffer from hypertension or certain other diseases. The majority of the population consume more salt than the daily recommended amount. There is a strong link between salt intake and hypertension, which increases the risk of cardiovascular disease, coronary heart disease and stroke. Scientific evidence has shown that salt intake can vary blood pressure by as much as 9 millimetres of mercury. Certain foods—fast foods, crisps and ready meals—have a much higher content of salt. It is food often eaten by children and certain groups of the population. The food industry has responded but not well enough. The Food Standards Agency’s target for salt reduction by 2012, in the view of many, does not go far enough. Labelling for food and salt content is often confusing. Salt is often labelled as sodium. To establish salt content from a label which gives sodium content, you have to multiply by two and a half times. How people would know that 0.6 grams of sodium per 100 grams in a packet of crisps or cereal is high salt content? Better labelling of foods and a reduction in salt content of prepared food are required.

The second substance that I referred to, hydrogenated fats or trans fats, which is added to many foods, is in some respects even more harmful. Hydrogenated fats, trans fats, or trans fatty acids, is found in a lot of our food, particularly food consumed by children and low-income families. Hydrogenation is a process for turning liquid oil into solid fat. During the process a type of fat—trans unsaturated fat—is formed. The process produces cheap fats, but also destroys labile omega 3 fatty acids. This reduces the propensity of fat to become rancid and therefore is useful to industry. It increases shelf life and helps deep frying. That is why industry likes it. It has no nutritional value and is not essential to our diet.

Consumption of trans fats raises cholesterol levels. It changes the ratio of good to bad cholesterol. Not surprisingly, trans fatty acid is associated with increased risk of coronary heart disease and stroke. Industrially produced trans fatty acids may also promote systemic inflammation in the vessels, endothelial dysfunction, resistance to insulin leading to diabetes, adiposity and cardiac arrhythmia. It is estimated that a reduction in their consumption by even 1 per cent of total energy intake would prevent 11,000 cases of heart disease and 7,000 deaths per year.

The risk to health from industrially produced trans fatty acids is far greater per calorie consumed than for any other dietary micronutrients, including saturated fats, which we are all told not to eat too much of. Risk occurs even at low consumption. Trans fats are found in deep-fried foods, prepared meals, biscuits, cakes, pastries, snacks, crisps and chocolate. Yesterday, I had a biscuit with my tea in the Peers’ Dining Room which undoubtedly had trans fats in it.

What has been the response? In 2007, Alan Johnson, the then Health Secretary, asked the Food Standards Agency to investigate trans fats. It concluded that no action was needed because, on average, consumption was half the recommended amount; that is, 2 per cent of all energy comes from trans fats. However, as the then president of the Faculty of Public Health, Professor Alan Maryon-Davis, rightly said—I declare an interest as a fellow of the faculty—there is no known safe level of consumption of trans fats. More recently, the current president of the faculty, Professor Lindsey Davies, accused the food industry of being profoundly irresponsible for adding unhealthy amounts of fat and salt to its products and proposed introducing legal minimum health standards if food producers and retailers do not take action to remove such products from foods. Professor Davies has had support from many, including the Royal College of General Practitioners, the Royal College of Physicians and many patient groups. I, too, certainly support her call. Both the faculty and the Royal Institute of Public Health, as part of a 12-step manifesto for better health, proposed that consumption of trans fatty acids should be eliminated in the UK by next year.

The Department of Health asked the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, NICE, to produce public health guidance on the prevention of cardiovascular disease at population level. It recommended accelerating the reduction in salt intake from a maximum intake of 6 grams per day by 2015 to 3 grams by 2025, ensuring that children’s intake does not exceed age-appropriate guidelines and establishing an independent system for monitoring salt levels in commonly consumed foods. For trans fats, it recommends eliminating the use of industrially produced trans fatty acids added to foods for human consumption, directing the bodies responsible for national surveys to measure and report on the consumption of industrially produced trans fatty acids by different population groups and considering using legislation to ensure universal implementation of the Food Standard Agency’s front-of-pack traffic light labelling system. That system is easily understood by the population.

Many countries have banned the use of trans fats in foods, including New York in the USA, Denmark and Austria. Australia is considering it, along with Canada and many other countries.

Yes, people should take responsibility for healthy eating, but so should government, regulators and the industry that sells the food. They should make sure that food is healthy, nutritious and certainly not harmful. I hope that the Minister will reassure the House that the Government will take steps to implement the far-reaching public health reform guidance from NICE, particularly in relation to levels of salt and trans fats in foods and food labelling.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Earl of Erroll]

My Lords, I join this debate to say a few words. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, who had a deep experience in Defra, for allowing us to have the debate.

I wanted to look at it from the point of view of whether regulation is effective and whether it is always right. I come from a tradition whereby I do not like being told what to do the whole time. I may well get it wrong, and if I die early as a result of overeating or overindulging in the wrong things, that puts a cost on the health service but will save a fortune in my dementia and old-age care and its provision on a very close though not quite one-to-one basis—

[Lord Patel]

My Lords, that is not necessarily so.

[The Earl of Erroll]

Well, I keep being told that I am bound to die if I eat too much chocolate and that I am a chocoholic. Is dark chocolate bad or good for you? We could debate that endlessly.