I was dismayed to read that the new government could jettison a raft of anti-obesity policies at a time when the UK’s childhood obesity crisis is spiralling out of control (Liz Truss could scrap anti-obesity strategy in drive to cut red tape, 13 September).
Shocking data from the National Child Measurement Programme for 2020/21 shows that of every 1,000 year 6 pupils in England, 255 are obese and a further 154 are overweight, while Diabetes UK reports that the number of children receiving treatment for type 2 diabetes in paediatric diabetes units in England and Wales has increased by over 50% in the last five years.
Rather than engaging in a red-tape-cutting drive, the government should stick with proven approaches, such as junk food advertising bans and the sugar tax. But it must go further than this – oversupply of sugar through domestic production and imports means that every year the UK market is flooded with three times as much in free sugars as the World Health Organization’s recommended intake for the whole of the country’s population.
This is all the more shocking as we are using some of our prime agricultural soils to cultivate sugar beet even though we don’t grow enough healthy crops such as fruit and vegetables to meet demand.
The devastating obesity crisis demands that the new government address the root causes of our children’s ill health by tackling the harmful oversupply of sugar in the market that is making us sick.
Natasha Hurley
Head of campaigns, Feedback Global
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