A focus on policies that emphasise individual responsibility has led to the failure of successive governments to meet their obesity targets, according to a new report.
The Institute for Government (IfG) found that despite three decades of strategies, policies and institutional reforms, obesity in the UK has continued to rise and every government target has been missed.
The think tank called for the development of a long-term obesity strategy, backed up by robust analysis and targets, as part of a series of recommendations to turn the tide on diet-related ill health.
The report is the first in a series focusing on what the IfG described as “chronic policy issues that successive UK governments have failed to tackle”. The UK has the third highest level of obesity in Europe, behind only Malta and Turkey. It is also third highest in the G7, behind only Canada and the US. In 1970 one in ten British adults was living with obesity; now it is almost one in three.
The report found that during the past three decades, strategies by political parties of all stripes have overwhelmingly focused on individual responsibility, centring on schemes that involve, for example, education, food labelling and information campaigns.
It highlighted a small number of exceptions, including the Blair government’s move to ban advertising of unhealthy food on children’s TV, the 2016 soft drinks industry levy, and the 2020 obesity strategy policies on advertising and food promotions, most of which have subsequently been delayed.
Experts the IfG spoke to for the report agreed that there is little evidence that individualist policies, in isolation, have much impact when set against a “tide of pressures”, that include huge changes in food systems that have led to a “super-abundance” of food that is high in fat, sugar and salt, and of ultra-processed foods.
UK efforts to tackle obesity have suffered from a combination of difficult politics, including concern among politicians about the perception of ‘nanny-statism’, and low priority in government.
Policy design has also been hindered by the poor relationship between the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and food and drink companies as well as a lack of coordination over obesity and other food policies across government departments.
In addition to the creation of a long-term strategy for obesity, the IfG called for the creation of a new food and health policy unit, jointly owned by Defra and DHSC, responsible for developing the strategy and driving progress.
It also wants to see the government commit to an annual review of the state of the nation’s food system, diet and health to boost its profile in parliament and increase accountability for inaction by requiring secretaries of state for health and the environment to respond to the report.
