Obesity: Food and Diet

Caroline Johnson Excerpts

Monday 20th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

I should declare an interest as a children’s doctor and a farmer’s wife.

We all want to live healthy lives. It gives us a healthy life expectancy, reduces illness burden and gives us more happy years to spend with those whom we love. However, beginning in the second half of the 20th century and continuing today, the developed world has seen an unprecedented rise in obesity levels. The growth of high-calorie processed food and sugary drinks, along with our more sedentary lifestyles, has undoubtedly played a key role. In the UK, two thirds of adults are classified as overweight or obese. According to the recent House of Lords report, over a fifth of children are overweight or obese before they even start school, and by the time they leave school, that number has doubled.

As a children’s doctor, I have seen children with significant medical complications from obesity, including a child of 12 who weighed over 120 kg and a child of nine who weighed over 95 kg. As the hon. Member for Stroud (Dr Opher) said, doctors and other clinicians have a responsibility to let people know of the harms of obesity, but they do not always do so. That is partly because of time constraints and because there is not necessarily a clear path to point the individual towards. Such messages can also be received with hostility, which is another deterrent.

As hon. Members have said, obesity leads to health problems. The excess body fat disrupts the normal bodily functions, amplifying the risk of heart disease, diabetes, cancer and arthritis while weakening the body’s ability to fight infections. During the pandemic, an obese person had a 40% higher chance of dying from covid-19 than their peers of a healthy weight. The hon. Member for Ilford South (Jas Athwal) spoke of the human consequences. An obese mother is more likely to suffer from complications during pregnancy. She is more likely to miss out on important life events as the child grows up, and when her grandchildren are born, she will have a lower chance of being there to enjoy them.

What is causing this obesity? At its most fundamental level, overweight and obesity are the storage of fat as surplus energy—energy consumed as food that was extra to requirements—but the reasons may be more complex. Many hon. Members have discussed the lack of affordable food, but they did not recognise or heed support for those growing our food and our fruit and veg. Instead, this Government have so far attacked our farmers with high taxes during their lifetime and at death. That will only increase the price of fruit and veg. Lincolnshire grows 20% of the country’s vegetables, but the Labour Government seek to carpet our beautiful farmland with miles and miles of solar panels, reducing the area available for growing healthy fruit and veg, increasing imports and prices.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Chester South and Eddisbury (Aphra Brandreth) said, time is key. For families in which both parents are working, finding time to collect children, prepare wholesome meals from scratch, help with homework and get children to bed on time can lead to pressure to grab quick food or use packet sauces. A YouGov survey from 2022 found that a third of British people feel that they need a recipe to produce food from scratch, and one in six feel uncomfortable even with a recipe, so confidence in the kitchen needs to be improved. It is also worth remarking that genetics play a part, as can medications and medical conditions. Hormonal responses to food restriction also play a part, so once someone has gained weight once, it is not necessarily as easy as just saying, “Eat less”.

I have spent a great deal of my time in Parliament sitting on the Health and Social Care Committee, where the need for greater focus on prevention was continually raised. Nowhere better is that illustrated than on the issue of obesity. For example, Public Health England’s laudable Better Health diet campaign that ran from 2020-21 cost only 0.05% of what the NHS spends on obesity and overweight treatment annually. Healthy eating begins with education. People should know how to create healthy nutritious meals on a budget, as the hon. Member for Blackpool South (Chris Webb) said. I appreciate the work done by the previous Government to expand nutritional education in state schools, and I would like to mention Washingborough academy and its headteacher Jason O’Rourke, who have won awards for locally produced healthy school foods.

People also need to know what is in their food so they can make informed choices when they eat on the go. The Conservatives took action to display calorie information on menus, so that people can make informed decisions. That can also influence portion sizes. The previous Government introduced the soft drinks levy in 2018, and in 2022 we restricted promotions on foods high in salt, sugar and fat. Recent data from the NHS health survey shows that obesity rates among adults have stabilised over the past five years, and the number of overweight or obese children is now at its lowest level since 2000—although I note that those figures have continued to rise in Scotland and Wales.

Let me turn to advertising. Does advertising work? Of course it does. If I say, “The red car and the blue car had a race,” I am sure that Members of a similar age to me would know which sweet that line advertised. If I asked them which sweet would be “Just enough to give your kids a treat,” they would know exactly which one I meant. [Interruption.] The Minister is nodding—as are you, Madam Deputy Speaker. But is the problem the adverts, or is it what they are advertising? Is what they are advertising the same as or different from what they were advertising 20 years ago?

At the moment, the Government’s approach to advertising seems a little wrong-headed. Their plans to restrict the advertising of junk food before 9 pm paints with a very broad brush, and muesli, porridge and rice cakes are included under the ban. However, the NHS website says that porridge is a healthy breakfast. Does the Minister disagree with the NHS? Do the Government intend to implement a similar policy to that of Transport for London under the Mayor of London, which allows the advertising of fried chicken burgers but not of strawberries and cream? The Minister needs to think carefully about what he wants to promote as a healthy and diet and then work from there.

Before the general election, the previous Health Secretary asked the National Institute for Health and Care Research to gather evidence on the impact of ultra-processed foods on health. Have the Government developed a strategy to address the prevalence of ultra-processed foods in our diet? The hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Sorcha Eastwood) mentioned that many such foods contain artificial ingredients. One of my concerns is that a ban or tax on high fat, salt and sugar foods causes reformulation, but not necessarily to take sugar out and make an item less sweet, for example; it can be to add sweeteners and other chemical substitutes that may also trigger addictive eating behaviours. That may be more harmful and retains the sweetness, so it does not change people’s need for that sort of food.

Members have mentioned the prospect of new pharmaceuticals such as Ozempic in tackling obesity. The Government have expressed an interest in exploring that further, and we welcome the new partnership with life science companies to consider the potential of pharmaceuticals in tackling some of the challenges facing the country. My right hon. Friend the Member for Wetherby and Easingwold (Sir Alec Shelbrooke) talked powerfully of his use of Wegovy to lose 5 stone, and I congratulate him on his success in doing so. One important point that he made about that class of drugs is that they are not by themselves a silver bullet; they require willpower and people need to work with not against them, as he said. They are not without potentially severe side effects, and as they might only work when an individual is using them, they may require lifelong use. We need a judicious use of intervention with pharmaceuticals, combined with the necessary education and lifestyle changes for weight loss to be sustainable in the long term.

This debate has focused on the issue of nanny state versus the freedom to choose. This is a Labour Government, so of course they are very keen for widespread state intervention, but what we need is not a list of bans and taxes but a coherent policy based on a clear understanding of what they mean by “healthy diet”; a strategy for food security that includes more home-grown food; education on diet and cooking; the removal of the stigma associated with being overweight or obese, which many Members mentioned; the avoidance of bans and taxes leading to reformulation with additives and processing; and, as obesity is such a difficult condition to reverse, the judicious use of medication. Most importantly, prevention is better than cure, so let us focus on the children.