Food, Diet and Obesity Committee Report

Baroness Goudie Excerpts

Friday 28th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goudie (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Walmsley on the way she chaired the meeting and kept us together, including making us do a lot of extra homework. It was tremendous, and I so enjoyed working with all our colleagues on the committee. I thank the clerks, Stuart and Lucy, and our special adviser. They found fantastic witnesses and ensured that all of them turned up and that, where they could not come, we got great evidence. It made such a difference to the report.

I am pleased to join the debate as a member of the committee and to discuss our report, Recipe for Health: A Plan to Fix Our Broken Food System. I welcome the opportunity to reflect on the urgent need for reform in how we produce, market and consume food in the United Kingdom. We should consider this in terms of how children and children who are not born yet will have to live in this society, with the high number of obese people we have, and remember that, if a mother is obese, the child has a high likelihood of being obese as well. We must look at that and encourage mothers, through maternal health and in every way, to try to change how they eat. However, we must assist them, including by changing something in the planning system that we learned about in the committee, which is that a lot of flats are now being built or converted where there is no kitchen, so the only thing in the let is a microwave. That is something we must try to alter. It is not for this report, and it is not for the Food Minister, but it is something to be passed down with change in planning laws.

Our food system is broken. Over 60% of UK adults are overweight or obese, and diet-related illnesses consume our national health billions each year. However, let us be clear, it is not merely a matter of personal choice; this is a systematic failure driven by a food industry dominated by multinational giants—companies such as Nestlé, PepsiCo and fast-food chains, as we found out in Blackpool, that flood our shelves and high streets with ultra-processed foods. These products, packed with sugar, salt and unhealthy fats, make up over half of the average British diet—one of the highest rates in Europe. Why? It is because they are cheap to produce and have long shelf lives. How long have they been on the shelves or in the warehouses by the time they get to anybody’s home? They are engineered to keep us coming back for more. This is not an accident; it is the business model. Through relentless lobbying, they have stalled or diluted policies meant to protect public health. Let us take the HFSS advertising restrictions—rules designed to limit junk food ads aimed at children. The report highlights how industry pushback delayed those measures, with groups such as the Food and Drink Federation decrying the impact on “innovation” and “jobs”. The result is a generation hooked before it can make informed choices.

Supermarkets are complicit too. A handful of chains control most of our grocery markets, determining what consumers see and buy. The report points out how shelf space is auctioned off to the highest bidders, processed food brands—as we notice when we go to the supermarket—while fresh local produce is sidelined. In low-income areas, cheap own-brand ultra-processed foods dominate, making healthy eating a luxury that many cannot afford. Products labelled “low fat” or “high protein” are still loaded with additives and sugar. This confusion, the committee warns, drowns out clear nutritional advice.

Profit is the driving force behind this crisis. Reformulating products to cut sugar or salt risks losing that addictive edge and, with it, sales. Voluntary pledges such as the failed public health responsibility deal have proven ineffective. Without a legal framework and enforcement, the industry will not change. The report cites a £6 billion annual burden on the National Health Service due to obesity—money that could fund schools and school meals; as we know, school meals are not made in schools any more but in different places and then brought to schools. They are not good food. Further, school budgets are now run by schools and, sometimes, if they need money for other issues in the school, they cut school meals—it is an easy cut, without anybody noticing. We have to be quite tough about school meals and what children are fed at school.

The Recipe for Health report offers a bold plan to fix this mess, and it starts with breaking corporate strangleholds. First, we need tougher regulation. The committee calls for mandatory reformulation targets forcing companies to cut sugar, salt and fat, with penalties for non-compliance. The soft drinks industry levy cut sugar in sodas by 44%; imagine that success applied across the food categories. Secondly, we must ban all junk food marketing everywhere. Our children deserve the chance to grow up free from corporate manipulation. Thirdly, we must level the playing field. The report urges subsidies for healthy foods—making fruit, vegetables and whole grains cheaper than a Happy Meal. We should tax ultra-processed foods harder and use the revenue to fund community kitchens or school meal programmes that teach children to love real food. We also should consider going back to teaching cooking meals in schools.