Food, Diet and Obesity Committee Report

Lord Krebs Excerpts

Friday 28th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Krebs (CB)]

My Lords, I join other noble Lords in thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, for being an excellent chair of this Select Committee inquiry and for her outstanding introduction to this debate. I also express thanks to our specialist adviser, Professor Martin White from Cambridge University, who kept us on the straight and narrow, as well as our clerk and policy analyst.

I declare two interests. First, I am the chair of the World Cancer Research Fund’s global expert panel, which reviews the scientific evidence for links between diet, obesity and cancer risk. Secondly, I am a scientific adviser to Marks & Spencer.

Like the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, I am puzzled. The Government agree with our diagnosis of the problem. They say in their response to our report that people are eating too much calorie-dense, highly palatable food, commonly known as HFSS—high in fat, salt and sugar, or junk food for short—and, as a result, obesity rates have rocketed in recent decades. They go on to say that this rise in obesity has adverse effects on health, well-being and the economy. They also say there is a need to reshape the food environment, which has been an important causal factor for the rise in obesity.

Having read these introductory paragraphs of the Government’s response, I was ready to enjoy learning that, having agreed with our diagnosis, they also agree with our proposed solutions. These solutions were based on many months of hard graft and more than 1,000 pages of written evidence from experts. Instead, the Government, as we have already heard, rejected nearly all our recommendations, as indeed they rejected the recommendations of the inquiry I chaired a few years ago on food poverty, health and the environment. There were—as the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, mentioned—some honourable exceptions. These included the policies inherited from the previous Government on restrictions on the promotion and advertising of junk food, as well as the welcome uprating of the soft drinks industry levy announced in the Autumn Budget. Apart from those two, we got some rather vague hand-waving about the health mission of prevention instead of treatment and the new Defra-led food strategy.

For nearly all our recommendations, we got answers such as, “It’s all terribly complicated. We will review, consider and consult. We have to carefully consider the balance between voluntary and mandatory measures”. This is, to say the least, disappointing. There has been plenty of review, including in our inquiry, and there is no need for further paralysis by analysis. There is no need to further consider the balance of voluntary and mandatory measures. Simply read paragraph 62 of our report, where we refer to research from Cambridge University showing that about 700 policies to tackle obesity have failed because they were based on individual responsibility and voluntary measures. Does the Minister disagree with the conclusions of this Cambridge University research? If so, why?

Perhaps the Government might look at the lessons learned from smoking. In the middle of the last century, over 80% of adult males and over 40% of adult females smoked. Today, under 12% of adults smoke. This dramatic shift has not been driven by voluntary measures and individual responsibility; it has come about through a combination of legislation, taxation and education. The Tobacco and Vapes Bill, announced this week, will further tighten the regulatory screw. I know there are important differences between smoking and overeating, but both have major impacts on public health, so why not apply a similar logic to both problems? Given that they have not accepted our recipe for change, what is the Government’s plan? I could go on at great length, but a simple, straightforward answer to this question would be most welcome.

However, before I finish, I want to say a few words about ultra-processed food. As the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe, mentioned, there were some disagreements in our committee, and our chair handled those disagreements very skilfully. One of them was about whether UPF—ultra-processed food—is dangerous, or whether it is largely a red herring. The committee was divided on this, and I was on the red herring end of the spectrum. Why? There are three reasons. First, as Chris van Tulleken and others told us, UPF is not suitable as a policy tool, not least because experts often disagree when they try to apply it to individual foods. In one study we were referred to, a panel of experts agreed on only four out of 231 foods they were asked to classify as UPF or not. Secondly, there is no convincing scientific evidence to show that processing, as opposed to the content of food, is harmful to human health—of course, that evidence base may change. Thirdly, most UPF is also HFSS. The foods that are deemed to be UPF but not HFSS, according to some experts, include things such as oat milk, vegan sausages, wholemeal bread from the supermarket and pre-packed cooked vegetables. Do we really want to suggest to the public that these foods are dangerous to eat? No, let us concentrate on HFSS, where the evidence for harm is robust and the definition is already used in regulation.