Obesity: Food and Diet

Richard Foord Excerpts

Monday 20th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Richard Foord (Honiton and Sidmouth) (LD)]

I commend the hon. Member for Stroud (Dr Opher) for securing the debate and for putting himself out there by calling for a sugar and salt reformulation tax. I will add that it is not just through penalties that we will tackle diets in this country; it is also through incentives. Today I want to talk about some incentives being used in East Devon, where I represent Honiton and Sidmouth.

It was recognised a long time ago that ultra-processed foods were not only linked to obesity, but were contributing to malnutrition and poor dental health. I want to highlight the brilliant work of the charity Project Food, which is dedicated to improving diets, promoting healthier lifestyles and reducing the burden of preventable disease in the community. Project Food is linked slightly to a restaurant called River Cottage. One of the trustees, Stewart Dodd, invited me to see Project Food in October. It operates out of Axminster’s community hospital, and that is entirely fitting because the work it does is very much around public health.

Project Food is a shining example of grassroots public health action. Through free cooking demonstrations, hands-on sessions, one-to-one support and online classes, it empowers people to move away from ultra-processed food. Yet it finds it very difficult to keep up with the growing demand for its services in Devon. More families than ever are turning to Project Food for help because of the high cost of nutritious food, contrasted with the relative affordability of foods packed with sugar and palm oil.

Alarmingly, a report by the Food Foundation revealed that low-income households now need to spend up to 50% of their disposable income on food if they are to meet Government recommendations on what is a healthy diet. Over 11% of UK households experience food insecurity and, as we all know, millions are turning to food banks, as well as to ultra-processed foods, just to survive.

While the debate is principally about diet and food, we should think about some of the co-benefits of reducing sugar intake. I will point to dentistry. Fewer than half of the children in Devon saw a dentist last year. Promoting healthy eating habits could reduce the strain not only on the wider NHS and secondary care, but on dentistry. We know that tooth decay is the leading cause of hospital admissions for children aged between five and nine, so this is plainly an area where working on the reformulation of food could help save money on dentistry too.

The hon. Member for Chelsea and Fulham (Ben Coleman) referred earlier to Natasha’s law, which was about how allergens are illustrated on food packaging. That was extended through the calorie labelling regulations that came into effect in 2022. Those regulations have helped to prevent obesity by ensuring that when people go into a café or restaurant, they can see what it is they are eating and the calories associated with the meal they might choose.

We should also recognise that this can have a negative effect. I had a constituent come to me to talk about the calorie labelling regulations in 2022 and the effect they had had on her daughter, who suffers from anorexia. The requirement on large businesses to put calorie counts on menus had made it extremely difficult for her to go out to eat with her daughter. Her daughter would take one look at the menu and simply refuse to eat anything, and it led to the family simply not going out to eat at all. One way the Minister might consider building on those calorie labelling regulations is by requiring those same restaurants and cafés to have menus with no calorie counts on them, so that families can dine out without the fear of stressing out somebody who has an eating disorder.

To return to Project Food and how we can better support some of the community assets we have to help tackle obesity and improve diet, we should be thinking about the use of community hospitals. We have spare space in community hospitals at Axminster and Ottery Saint Mary, from where Project Food operates. I suggest that the work being carried out by Project Food would be suitable for social prescribing. It is definitely having a positive effect on the people I saw who are working with that charity. It has done some excellent work, and I suggest that its work could be scaled and implemented across the country. With that spare capacity, we could see hubs for nutrition programmes and other public health measures that support healthier communities, which would be very much in line with what the Government have been talking about in response to the Darzi report. By addressing poor nutrition head-on in the community, we can reduce inequality, improve lives and alleviate the immense pressure on our health service.