A major new report from the House of Lords Committee on Food, Diet and Obesity says that urgent action to fix the UK’s “broken food system” must start now. 

The report, which follows a 10-month enquiry, condemns what it calls an “utter failure” to tackle a “public health emergency of obesity and diet related disease”. 

At the heart of this failure, the Committee says, lies a misplaced focus on individual responsibility. Misguided fears over to so-called ‘nanny state’ policies (and sometimes ideological opposition to them) have placed too much of an emphasis on personal choice rather than tackling the underlying drivers of unhealthy diets, it argues.  

The Lords report calls for a “radically new approach to the food industry”.  It says industry is strongly incentivised to produce and sell the highly profitable unhealthy products that are driving record levels of obesity and preventable diet-related disease. Voluntary measures have failed because they have not tackled these incentives. 

The report says the crisis requires a sustained focus and a “systemic response to a systemic challenge”. It highlights the food industry’s continued domination by a small number of very large companies, who exert a powerful influence in political and food-policy circles through their lobbying and infiltration of advisory groups. 

Demanding action now, the Lords Committee says the government “must publish a comprehensive and integrated food strategy, led at the highest level, setting targets for a healthy food system and plans to achieve them”. It adds that “businesses that fail to meet healthy sales targets must be excluded from any discussions on the formation of policy on food, diet and obesity prevention”. And it calls for a “total ban across all media by the end of parliament on appetising both of HFSS food and drink and buy businesses that fail to reach healthy sales targets”. 

“businesses that fail to meet healthy sales targets must be excluded from any discussions on the formation of policy on food, diet and obesity prevention”

Baroness Walmsley, chair of the Food, Diet and Obesity Committee said: “Food should be a pleasure and contribute to our health and wellbeing, but it is making too many people ill. Something must be going wrong if almost two in five children are leaving primary school with overweight or obesity and so many people are finding it hard to feed healthy food to their families. That is why we took a root and branch look at the food system and analysed what had gone wrong over the past few decades. 

“Over the last 30 years successive governments have failed to reduce obesity rates, despite hundreds of policy initiatives. This failure is largely due to policies that focused on personal choice and responsibility out of misguided fears of the ‘nanny state’. Both the Government and the food industry must take responsibility for what has gone wrong and take urgent steps to put it right.

“We hope, given the recent comments from the Prime Minister, Lord Darzi and the Secretary of State for Health, that there is now an appetite to shift towards prevention of ill health. We urge the Government to look favourably on our plan to fix our broken food system and accept that not only is it cost-effective, but that it would lead to a lot less human misery.”

Key recommendations set out in the 180-page report Recipe for health: a plan to fix our broken food system include:  

• Making large food businesses report on the healthiness of their sales and excluding businesses that derive more than a defined share of sales from less healthy products from any discussions on the formation of policy on food, diet and obesity prevention.

• Giving the Food Standards Agency (FSA) independent oversight of the food system.

• Introducing a salt and sugar reformulation tax on food manufacturers, building on the success of the Soft Drinks Industry Levy. The Government should consider how to use the revenue to make healthier food cheaper, particularly for people living with food insecurity.

• Banning the advertising of less healthy food across all media by the end of this Parliament, following the planned 9pm watershed and ban on paid-for online advertising in October 2025.

• Commissioning further research into the links between ultra-processed foods (UPFs) and adverse health outcomes and reviewing dietary guidelines to reflect any new evidence. Rapidly growing epidemiological evidence showing a correlation between consumption of UPFs and poor health outcomes is alarming. Beyond energy and nutrient content, causal links between other properties of UPFs and poor health outcomes have not at the present time been clearly demonstrated.

• Immediately developing an ambitious strategy for maternal and infant nutrition and driving up compliance with the school food standards, to help break the vicious cycle by which children living with obesity are five times more likely to become adults with obesity.

• Enabling auto-enrolment for Healthy Start and free school meals and reviewing the costs and benefits to public health of increasing funding and widening eligibility for both schemes, to help families in poverty afford healthier food.