Children’s Health: Ultra-processed Foods

Lord Markham Excerpts

Wednesday 25th October 2023 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord Markham) (Con)]

I too add my thanks to my noble friend Lady Jenkin for bringing this debate forward, and I thank all noble Lords who have contributed to what I feel has been a very interesting debate. We have seen a wide range of different views, which shows that this is a highly complex area. I know we all agree that there are many bad things about ultra-processed foods, but there are many things we do not agree on, such as whether ultra-processed food per se is bad. As brought up by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, there is plenty of evidence that it is not the ultra-processed element that is bad; it is the fact that many of the things inside the foods are bad, namely high levels of fat, sugar and salt. At the same time, some of the things we are putting forward in the Eatwell Guide, such as some breakfast cereals and wholemeal bread, would also be caught under the definition of ultra-processed food.

The real problem is that I have not yet heard—and I am very happy to discuss this—how we could find a workable definition here so we can take the sort of action that we take in other places. What do you try to do when something is bad? You try to tax it, as we did with the sugary drinks levy. You try to restrict product placement and advertising and you try to educate and label—but you can do that only if you have a definition that everyone understands.

The problem is that if on the one hand there are some ultra-processed foods that you are saying you are going to tax so people will eat less of them but on the other hand there are some that you are trying to promote in the Eatwell Guide, I do not see how that is a manageable system or something that people can understand. What we all totally agree on is the need for education, so that people understand what we are trying to encourage and discourage. What I would like to concentrate on, which is something that we all agree on and that my noble friend Lord Dundee said we need action on, is those foods that are high in fat, sugar and salt, many of which are ultra-processed.

As my noble friend Lord Effingham said, this starts with education. We have got some good examples there. I hope this will answer some of the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Bird, on our schools. Our free school meals are at the highest levels ever, which we know not only addresses food poverty but makes sure that those children are receiving a balanced diet. The fact that all infant school children now receive this is a huge step forward and, as I say, the level of roughly a third of all children receiving free school meals is huge as well.

The other initiatives, such as Healthy Start, helping kids get their five-a-day, are very important to this. Equally, in terms of education, I remember being taught years and years ago at school how to make shepherd’s pie and apple crumble. The advice on teaching children to cook six healthy meals is far more useful than a lot of things we receive in our education; it was definitely far more useful than my very poor efforts at woodwork and metalwork at the time. So I totally back those.

I would also like to talk about the action that we have taken on the bad elements of foods, such as those high in salt, sugar and fat, which really is working. Noble Lords will have heard me mention the sugary drinks levy, which has reduced average sugar levels in these drinks by 46%. Just this weekend, going out to eat Sunday lunch, I swapped from eating a chicken pie, which looked pretty tasty and had more than 2,000 calories in it, and saw that the roast beef had only 1,400—and I did not eat the Yorkshire pudding, so I had even less than that. So, again, these are useful ways forward that help to educate people.

The product placement and positioning steps that we are taking are really tackling 94% of the estimated reduction in calorific intake, and 78% of people are in favour of them. It is early days, because the measures have not been in for long, but what we have seen in early data is that foods that are not high in fat, sugar and salt have gone up by 16% and foods that are high in sugar, salt and fat have gone down by 5.7%. These are early signs, but those product placement steps are working. Those are the things that are impacting 94% of the data. The noble Baroness, Lady Merron, asked about what we were doing about other things such as “buy one get one free”. We all talk about evidence and data: the modelling showed that this would account for less than 5% of our estimated reduction in calorific intake. And there is more to boot, because we are working with industry on this and Sainsbury’s and Tesco have already agreed to do that voluntarily. That means that it accounts for even less. Surely that shows that what we are about is trying to tackle the big things that make a difference.

Mostly importantly of all, as some noble Lords have said, the real prize of course is the reformulation of food. We know that companies are starting to change this. I apologise because I have mentioned this before, and noble Lords will probably hear me say it again in answer to tomorrow’s Question on ultra-processed food, but Mars, Galaxy and Snickers have all changed their formulation. Mr Kipling’s “exceedingly good” cakes are now compliant in their formulation. All these things are making a difference at the industry level.

However, I agree with the helpful suggestion from the noble Lord, Lord Allan, that we need to be data driven. I hope that, by sharing some of the statistics, I have shown that we are focusing on the 94% of things that really hit the reduction and that we are data driven. I definitely want to take his suggestion further; perhaps we could meet after the debate. Many people know that Steve Rowe, a former CEO of M&S, has been giving the department some advice. I hope he will help us to convene a round table with relevant CEOs so that we can talk about what might be manageable, because we should be data driven.

I also agree with the noble Lord, Lord Bird: we need to look at this holistically and bring all the elements together. The best example I have seen through my work in different departments was the troubled families work I saw early on when I was a non-exec director at what is now DLUHC. It looked at what really had an impact on troubled families—be it something they could do or something in the social, education, health or police space—and tried to look at things across the board. We have to consider some of those ways. So, although I am not quite sure and need to understand more about the work of the Minister with responsibility for poverty, I agree that we need to work in a joined-up fashion.

As ever, if there are any questions I did not manage to answer, I will try to follow up on them in a more detailed letter. I look forward to seeing tomorrow most of the noble Lords who are here today—probably asking me similar questions on ultra-processed food. We are all violently in agreement on the objective: stopping the consumption of unhealthy food. We need to do a bit more work between us on making sure that we really know what we are trying to stop, and the definitions, so that we ensure that any action is evidence-based and makes a difference. At this point, I thank everyone for their input.