Food, Diet and Obesity Committee Report

Baroness Freeman of Steventon Excerpts

Friday 28th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Freeman of Steventon (CB)]

My Lords, I listened to all the oral evidence to this inquiry while making it into a podcast. It was shocking, depressing and inspiring. We have already heard the shocking part: the statistics—the numbers of people suffering, the cost to the NHS and the cost to the economy of diet-related illnesses keeping people out of work. The depressing part of the evidence was hearing about our repeated failure to even slow down the train wreck.

The reason we have an obesity problem now compared with 40 years ago is that food has changed—not us, and not our willpower or our genetics. The challenge, then, is how we reduce the amount of unhealthy food and drink that we all consume. That is how we will eliminate these diet-related illnesses. However, the aims of the Government’s food strategy—noble Lords can read them—do not mention reducing unhealthy food in our diets at all, only making healthy foods more affordable and accessible. This in itself will not make the difference that we need to see.

It is pretty clear what healthy food and drink look like. People can try to split hairs and draw lines, but we all know it: whole foods, variety, minimal processing, less meat, and lower salt, fat and sugar. And we all know what unhealthy food looks like. Why are we not eating the good stuff, and instead eating the bad stuff? In most of our day-to-day lives, we do not have the time, money or resources to cook with fresh, whole-food ingredients for every meal of every day. The inquiry heard how kitchen equipment, the cost of heating an oven, and the space for food storage and preparation are prohibitive to many, as well as how quickly most fresh ingredients and freshly made foods go off, risking expense and waste.

The industrial food chain has grown into this space, producing ready-to-eat, long-life foods at affordable prices. However, these are not just convenient versions of traditional dishes; they are designed to be very tasty—we all know that—but they are also mostly very unhealthy. Their design is around palatability, not nutrition, and profitability. Being profitable, they are marketed to us aggressively. The more time-poor or financially poor that you are, the more they are marketed to you.

The impact of industrialised food on our health sits alongside the terrible impact on the environment, animal welfare and farmers’ livelihoods. Surely, then, the Government’s food strategy should be asking how we can efficiently produce and distribute freshly made meals, ideally from mainly British-grown ingredients, to replace as much as possible of the industrial stuff.

From listening to the evidence to the inquiry, I know where I would start. Where do a known number of people eat, every day, all in one place, allowing a relatively easy calculation of how much fresh food needs to be prepared, minimising wastage and transport? It is in schools—where this is very much needed. The committee heard not only that nearly one in four of our children are clinically obese by the age of 10 but that they are stunted by malnutrition—UK children are up to 9 centimetres shorter than their peers in northern and eastern Europe.

Here we come to where the committee evidence was inspiring. We heard about local schemes, where schools hosted kitchens that supplied freshly prepared, freshly cooked, healthy meals for all the children—100% attendance—as well as selling to parents and the local community, meaning that they could do all this within current authority finances. There is evidence that this reduces obesity. There are myriad other innovative ways to get fresh produce from our farms to our forks, with as little in between as possible. This is the sort of thinking and supply that small, local businesses and communities excel at. The committee heard about many.

However, last week, my depression returned. The Government announced the advisory board for its food strategy—the strategy that does not mention reducing unhealthy food. On the board is one solitary farmer; there is no one who cooks fresh food, no one who is an expert in school meal provision, and not even a biodiversity and conservation expert, even though one of the stated aims of the strategy is to work out how to reduce the impacts of our food system on the environment.

Another of the aims is economic growth. Economic growth could mean the encouragement of innovative local and community SMEs and family farms—British businesses that employ locally and supply locally. But no: the board is almost all made up of representatives of multinational industrial foodstuff manufacturers and retailers, as is its secretariat—the people whose businesses are the antithesis of what a healthy food strategy needs.

The strategy says that it aims to ensure that

“our largest manufacturing sector can realise its potential for economic growth”.

I emphasise “manufacturing”. That is how this Government see food: not in terms of growing, preparing, cooking, health or the environment, but manufacturing. That is the sort of thinking that has caused successive Governments to fail the citizens of the UK and fail to stop the ever-increasing illnesses from poor food.

I therefore have some questions for the Minister. Why does the government strategy not consider reducing unhealthy food in our diet a priority? If it does, why does it not state that? How were the members of the advisory group chosen? Why is there no representation in the group of those who specialise in cooking or supplying food made from fresh ingredients? Why is there no expert in biodiversity in the group, despite that being a stated priority? Will the minutes of its meetings be made publicly available? Will those contain agreements on key targets to be reached on reducing diet-related health problems, as well as on biodiversity, so that we can be sure that the strategy is focused on the outcomes that we all want to see?

I end with a plea: please listen back to the evidence given to this inquiry. Do not let all those inspiring people down by making the same mistakes that we have made, decade after decade, by not tackling the real problem: industrialised food.