Diets: Fat

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Thursday 31st October 2024 Grand Committee

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interests. I am a member of the committee to which noble Lords have already referred and I have a problem in keeping my weight down, so it is a subject that has been of great interest to me and I am very grateful to my noble friend Lord McColl for introducing this debate.

One of the difficulties, perhaps the greatest difficulty, when we are discussing food and diet is the tendency now to use hyperbole and oversimplification in dealing with a very difficult, complex subject. Of course, the press loves hyperbole and simplification, because it increases sales, but it does not actually solve the problem of obesity.

From our report I take out two important factors. One is that obesity has overtaken tobacco as a risk factor for disability in England. The second is that the total cost of obesity is now calculated at £100 billion a year, equivalent to a tax rate of £400 per head. So, there is a lot to be gained by getting obesity under control.

When we talk about simplification, the word “fat” is an oversimplification. There are good fats and bad fats, as my noble friend Lord McColl said. Some fats are extremely important to us. They are a source of energy; they help vitamin absorption; and they provide fatty acids, particularly omega 3 and omega 6, which are essential for keeping our nervous and brain systems healthy. Indeed, fat can be used to help reduce the urgency for food. Sarah Berry, associate professor at the Department of Nutritional Sciences at King’s College, says:

“Fat makes us feel full for longer. It delays the rate at which our stomach empties food, which again helps us create that feeling of fullness. So, it also controls our blood sugar levels as well, so that we tend to consume less calories, potentially later in the day”.


The idea that one can solve this problem of obesity with weight-loss jabs and get people back to work, which the Prime Minister seems to think is a good idea, is very flawed. Trials of the drugs have shown that people need help as well as just taking the drug. Eligible people who will require support cannot access the support to achieve behavioural change. These drugs will not work for everyone; all the trials have shown that. I repeat that obesity is a complex issue and trying to solve it with an injection is a poor cure when prevention would be far better.

There is of course the question of obesity stigma in the workplace, which is a huge barrier to satisfactory employment and leads to poor well-being and burnout. On the barriers, it is not obesity alone that causes a person to be unemployed; there are many other problems.

When we talk about oversimplification, we must remember that diets and our bodies are very complex. New research is demonstrating the importance and relevance of our gut microbiome. It demonstrates that we need to eat over 30 different plants of different colours weekly, 30 grams of fibre a day and around 100 grams of protein a day. We need to stop eating foods that are high in fat, sugar and salt, especially those that are ultra processed. There are other issues. We need to eat within a certain timeframe. All our daily consumption should be within a 12-hour period.

To pick up the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, exercise is not the panacea. I was very sorry to hear Chris Whitty say that this was going to be the new solution to obesity; it is much more complex. Exercise can help on the fringes, but it is not the main solution. The main solution is eating a healthy, balanced, varied diet, but that is not what the Eatwell Guide tells us to do. I hope the Minister will look at our report where we analyse this very carefully, because we come up with some sensible solutions, including raising tax on people that produce the wrong food for us.