Junk Food Advertising and Childhood Obesity

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Tuesday 16th January 2018 Westminster Hall

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

I congratulate colleagues on their excellent speeches so far. As has been said, we have a childhood obesity epidemic in this country. One in three children is overweight or obese by the time they leave primary school. That makes them five times more likely to become obese adults, putting them at risk of the biggest preventable cause of cancer after smoking. This debate was triggered by calls from the Obesity Health Alliance in relation to the campaign linking obesity with cancer, but as we know, type 2 diabetes, heart disease and many other conditions are related to being overweight.

Some interesting research was done a while ago—I did not have time to dig it out—on what happened when young offenders in young offenders institutions were switched from junk food and fast food diets to healthy eating. The change that had for their mental health and behavioural conditions such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and aggression certainly needs to be part of the Government’s considerations. A comprehensive 10-year study of children from 100 different countries looked at the links between fast food, asthma and allergies in childhood. I asked the Government whether the public health responsibility deal partners could be part of a discussion on that study, but I was told that the focus at that time was on salt. They were dealing with the low-hanging fruit; it is quite easy to address salty food, but addressing people’s addiction to fast food is far more difficult.

Marketing has a critical influence on children’s behaviour. As Public Health England has said, it constantly influences preference and food choice. Food companies promoting crisps, confectionary and sugary drinks spent £143 million on advertising in 2016. By comparison, the Government spent just over £5 million on their anti-obesity Change4Life social marketing campaign. Those figures show what we are up against and the power of the junk food advertising industry.

It is a decade since Ofcom’s broadcast restrictions on junk food advertising to children came into effect, and they do not go far enough. As has been said, children’s viewing habits have changed dramatically. They do not just watch children’s TV; they also watch family shows, particularly such things as “The Voice” or “Strictly”, or reality shows, where they are regularly exposed to junk food advertising. Research commissioned by the Obesity Health Alliance found that children see as many as 12 adverts for junk food an hour while watching family television shows. I support the calls for a ban on junk food advertising until after the 9 pm watershed. That is supported by 76% of the public and 71% of MPs according to the Obesity Health Alliance. The issue does not need legislation—the Health Secretary could instruct Ofcom to act now, and I am interested to hear what the Minister has to say on that.

As the hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) flagged up in his excellent speech, it is not just advertising that creates an obesogenic environment for children. Walking past outlets selling high-fat, high-salt, high-sugar foods every day can set back efforts to encourage healthy eating. There is no point having all these programmes in schools to encourage children to be more active and to teach them what a healthy diet looks like if they are walking past a McDonald’s on their way to and from school and probably during lunchtime as well, if they are able to pop out.

[Andrew Selous]

The hon. Lady is making an excellent speech with some very good points. She has given credit to McDonald’s for the healthy food it produces. There is no reason why fast food cannot be fast, healthy, delicious and nutritious, is there?

[Kerry McCarthy]

I do not think that I did pay tribute to McDonald’s; I was highlighting McDonald’s as a cause for concern. I am sure that its representatives will be in touch after the debate to tell me that it offers salads, but I am not sure how many secondary school children pop into McDonald’s after school for a salad. I think there was an experiment in Hulme in Manchester where they thought that teaching people about cooking, buying local food and sourcing it in their local community was too large a first step. In a bid to encourage people to eat more healthily, they therefore set up a fast food outlet that was devoted to healthy food. I do not know how that has gone—I think it was a year or two ago—but it shows that it can be done.

Data provided to The Guardian by the Centre for Diet and Activity Research at the University of Cambridge showed that more than 400 schools across England have 20 or more fast food takeaways within a 400-metre radius, while a further 1,400 have between 10 and 19 outlets within the same distance. In my constituency—I apologise; I am going to have a bit of a go at McDonald’s again—we had an application for a new 24-hour drive-through McDonald’s within 800 metres of three schools, and only just over 400 metres from another. As a council, we tried to reject that planning application, partly because of the traffic, litter and noise concerns associated with a 24-hour drive-through. The application also went against advice issued by Public Health England in its March 2014 briefing, titled “Obesity and the environment: regulating the growth of fast food outlets”, which stated that an important function of local authorities is

“to modify the environment so that it does not promote sedentary behaviour or provide easy access to energy-dense food.”

Despite that, the Government’s Planning Inspectorate overruled the council and granted permission for the drive-through to go ahead.

About 20 English councils, including Bristol, have rules banning new fast food outlets from opening within 400 metres or 800 metres of schools—in Bristol it is 400 metres. The Mayor of London recently announced a total ban on new fast food outlets within 400 metres of schools across the capital. However, I agree with the likes of Brighton and Hove City Council that 800 metres, which I think is only a 10-minute walk or so, would be better. It is not in the childhood obesity plan, and the Government need to do more to encourage that.

The sugar tax has been discussed. Children in the UK consume up to three times the maximum amount of sugar that they should, and fizzy drinks are their No. 1 source. We know that there was a real battle to get the levy to where it is now, and it took a long time to get it introduced. It is good that it is forcing manufacturers to reformulate their drinks to come in below the sugar tax threshold, but I am concerned about what will happen to the £10 million that was pledged from the levy to fund school breakfast clubs. It is good that companies are responding, but it is really important that we support our breakfast clubs as well, and I would like to hear from the Minister on that.

I want to say a little about school food standards. For many children from low-income families, school meals provide their main source of nutrition for the day. I would not be surprised if the Labour spokesperson, my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson), has something to say about that. She has recently run an excellent campaign about changes to universal credit that would have an impact on the number of children receiving free school meals—their main source of healthy food. Legislation introduced by the last Labour Government required all schools to comply with specific food-based and nutrient-based standards, which resulted in significant improvements in the nutritional quality of school food, as shown by research from the Children’s Food Trust.

The July 2013 school food plan sets out 17 actions to transform what children eat in schools and how they learn about food. That has helped, and the new school food standards were widely welcomed when they came into force in January 2015. I was concerned that those standards do not apply to academies and free schools that opened between September 2010 and June 2014, but I received a response to a written parliamentary question yesterday, which said that more than 1,400 academies founded during that period are voluntarily following the standards. I am not sure how many are therefore not following those standards, which I think should apply across all schools.

I would like to ask the Minister about something that I have been doing on an ongoing basis. The Government have the “eatwell plate”, which is meant to set out guidance for what a healthy diet looks like, with certain proportions according to dietary needs. Rather than just being a paper exercise which can be found on the Government’s website, that ought to be used as the norm for how we publicly provide food, in not just schools, but hospitals, prisons and other facilities. Now is neither the time nor the place to go into other issues about cancer-causing foods, but given the proven link between processed meat and cancers such as bowel cancer, for example, the fact that at the moment schools are told to provide red meat three times a week and processed meat once a week needs to be looked at.

In conclusion, it is all very well talking about trying to change people’s behaviour and responses to the stimuli around them, but the Government could do more to remove temptation from their path. The Government should extend existing regulations to ban junk food advertising until the 9 pm watershed. They should support local authorities, and ideally have a standard approach across the country to tackling the proliferation of fast food outlets near schools—ideally the enforcement of an 800-metre limit. They should also do more to encourage schools to provide healthy food to students.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Steve Brine)]

Child obesity remains one of the top public health challenges on my desk and for the Government. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Erewash (Maggie Throup) on securing this debate through the offices of the Backbench Business Committee. I also thank the Health Committee for its ongoing inquiry into child obesity. Its Chair is not able to be here today, but she has a great personal interest in this subject. Ministers always say that debates are wide-ranging, useful and interesting, but this one certainly has been—it has been much wider than the title of the debate. We have learned a number of things, not least the shadow Minister’s new year activities. She has learned about the work of the pop band the Editors and advergames in the last week alone, and it sounds like one of her new year’s resolutions is to look into Candy Crush—the things you learn here!

As colleagues who are still here will be aware, the latest figures continue to show that our childhood obesity rates remain too high. About a third of children leaving school are overweight or obese. I and the Government will not accept that. In addition, evidence shows that the deprivation gap in obesity prevalence between children in the most and least deprived areas continues to widen. Again, I definitely will not accept that. My hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) made that point well. When she first came to office, the Prime Minister spoke on the steps of Downing Street about the burning injustices she sees in this country. This is undoubtedly one of the pillars of burning injustice in Britain today.

The gap continues into adulthood: obese children are much more likely to become obese adults, which increases their risk of developing serious diseases, as we have heard, such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease and, of particular interest to me as the cancer Minister, more than 13 types of cancer—I suspect that is underplaying it—including bowel and breast cancer. The shadow Minister and I share a great interest in that subject, having chaired the all-party group on breast cancer for many years together. Obesity is also a major risk factor for non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, as a number of hon. Members said. I see this as a huge challenge to individuals’ health and wellbeing, and a huge cost to the NHS and the country. Obesity-related ill health is estimated to cost the NHS some £5 billion a year—again, I suspect that that underplays it.

There is no denying that obesity is a complex, far-reaching problem. It will sadly not be solved by one action alone, as pretty much all hon. Members said—my hon. Friend the Member for Erewash said that in opening the debate. Neither will it be solved overnight. It is a tanker to be turned around. We launched our childhood obesity plan in August 2016, informed by the latest evidence and research in the area. It challenges us all—the national Government, local government, businesses, the NHS, schools and families—to play our role in reducing childhood obesity levels. There are many parts of the jigsaw, and many players we need to tackle, including the healthiness of the food we are eating, how much we are eating—portion size—how active we are and the environment we live in. Of course, marketing plays an important part.

As part of the plan, we introduced two key measures to challenge the food and drink industry to improve the healthiness of the food children eat every day, and those policies are already showing positive signs. The soft drinks industry levy, which is set to become law in April, has already seen almost half of the soft drink market reformulate its sugary soft drinks to include less sugar. Companies such as the maker of Lucozade and Ribena —I will be visiting it later this week to see more detail—and Tesco have led the way by removing millions of tonnes of sugar. That is a crucial step forward in improving our children’s health, as the data shows us that sugary soft drinks are the main contributor of sugar in our children’s diets.

[Kerry McCarthy]

This is slightly off-topic, but Lucozade has been named public villain No. 2 after Pringles, in terms of its plastic packaging. The plastic sleeves around the outsides of the bottles mean that they are impossible to recycle. Lucozade and Ribena are particularly bad. Will the Minister mention that too when he is having a go at the company about sugar?

[Ms Nadine Dorries (in the Chair)]

Order. I will allow that, Ms McCarthy, but that is the only off-issue topic.