The UK Government must be “more courageous” in order to prevent obesity in future generations, said a group of MPs this week. Ministers were urged to stand up to food industry lobbying and place concerns of businesses over the cost of new regulations into context.
“We ask this government to be bold, not to fudge and delay food restrictions,” said Layla Moran, chair of the Health and Social Care Committee. “While we acknowledge the costs of policy changes to the food industry, these are marginal compared to the huge costs of inaction on obesity to society, the economy and the health service.”
The committee’s new report, Food and weight management: Fixing the food environment, calls for quick delivery of mandatory reporting and targets for all food companies on the amount of healthy food they sell, backed up with penalties for non-compliance. Some supermarkets have backed the reporting plans provided they cover foodservice and hospitality as well. Liz Fox, national sustainability director at Aldi, told MPs that “a single source of truth” would “level the playing field”.
Mandatory healthy sales reporting and targets formed a key part of the government’s flagship policy for addressing an obesogenic food environment in the 10 Year Health Plan launched in 2025. The committee said the rules for reporting should be launched “as soon as possible”, with targets set for supermarkets “within the next 12 months and for the wider food industry by the end of Parliament”.
The MPs also highlighted the need for new planning policies to stop fast food outlets opening close to schools. “Witnesses told us there needed to be a ‘stronger voice’ for public health in local planning policy,” they wrote.
Changes to the National Planning Policy Framework should encourage more local authorities to refuse applications for hot food takeaways and fast-food outlets where further provision would not benefit local population health. However, “vague definitions” risk undermining local authority attempts to create healthier environments by leaving them vulnerable to challenge from large corporations, according to the committee. MPs cited the example of KFC, which has successfully challenged more than half of 43 councils that tried to repeat the example set by Gateshead. The north east council has adopted planning policies to limit new fast-food outlets near schools and areas with high levels of childhood obesity, resulting in a 4.8% cut in the number of year six children recorded as overweight or obese.
The committee said the government must develop clearer definitions for the terms “hot food takeaway”, “fast-food outlet” and “reasonable walking distance”, and develop guidance and provide practical support for local authorities to identify areas with high volumes of unhealthy food outlets and develop plans to address these.
Throughout its inquiry the committee had seen “many examples where policies to improve the health of the population were delayed or diluted in the face of threats from the food industry about the impact on food prices, jobs or the economy. Previous governments have consistently chosen to put those interests ahead of health interests. This government cannot continue that pattern.”
NGOs and health experts welcomed the report. “The committee is right to recognise that obesity is not simply a matter of individual choice, but is shaped by a food system that too often makes unhealthy options the easiest and cheapest,” wrote Kate Howard from Sustain.
Some felt the recommendations could have gone further. “The report does not go far enough on extending the successful soft drinks industry levy model to key food categories high in fat, salt and sugar, strengthening promotion restrictions across the whole market to apply to all unhealthy food and drink, or making commercial baby food standards mandatory,” said Dr Kawther Hashem, head of research and impact at Action on Salt & Sugar.
The Food and Drink Federation, meanwhile, rejected the committee’s view that businesses selling unhealthy foods should be excluded from discussions over policy development. “Government needs advice from the people who make food to understand if new policies are workable in practice,” said chief scientific officer Kate Halliwell.
Small Bites
Flat white price rise
Drinkers across the UK were shocked when a pint in some London bars hit £10. But now a cup of coffee is facing a similar inflationary rate as flat whites reach £6.50 in some premium outlets, reports The Guardian. Lavazza chairman Giuseppe Lavazza said “volatility is the new constant”, adding: “The coffee market now shows fundamental changes compared with the past. We are living in an environment we don’t know very well.” Climate change has played a part in prices rising, as have higher energy, fertiliser and labour costs. The expected super El Niño later this year will bring more pain for growers. Independent shops are clinging on for dear life, taking a hit on margins to keep prices down (that £6.50 mark is the exception rather than the rule currently). Indeed, if there’s a policy story here, it’s not the price of coffee, explained food industry consultant Rob Kidd in a social media post: “It’s that labour costs, energy and tax now make up more of a £4.10 drink than the coffee does – and that’s a hospitality economics problem, not a commodity one. The industry urgently needs help from the government to sustain itself.” The recently-published Coffee Barometer 2026, prepared by a coalition of NGOs, exposed systemic flaws in the global coffee industry over the past two decades: “Producer incomes still fall below living income benchmarks, labour is poorly rewarded, climate vulnerability continues to deepen, and most value is captured downstream rather than in producing countries. Sustainability commitments have multiplied, yet systemic reform has not followed,” the analysis stated.
Upset at carbon insets
A coalition of farming and rural organisations has called on food businesses to ensure farmers and growers are treated fairly as pressure mounts to reduce scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions. An open letter to the supply chain and the governments of the UK warns that requirements linked to sustainability, regenerative farming and emissions reduction do not provide enough consideration of the costs, risks and practical implications for farming and producer businesses. Carbon insetting, where buyers claim carbon reductions delivered by their suppliers, is recognised as a way to support supply chain decarbonisation – the drive to deliver scope 3 emissions reductions under the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol. However, signatories to the letter, led by Scottish Land & Estates (SLE) and the Central Association for Agricultural Valuers (CAAV), stressed that it must be delivered in “a fair, transparent and high-integrity manner”. SLE senior policy advisor Eleanor Kay said “decarbonisation cannot be delivered by simply passing obligations down the chain without proper remuneration, consent or clarity”, and that insetting “must be done properly”. The letter says buyers must address four key issues when developing insetting arrangements with farmers and growers, including adequate payment for carbon outcomes (in addition to payment for the product itself); free, prior and informed consent; permanence, ensuring carbon removals meet recognised standards and monitoring requirements; and farm data and unsold carbon outcomes to remain the property of the supplier.
Early EPR data a mixed bag
Almost nine in 10 (89%) packaging producers continue to use non-recyclable, hard-to-recycle, or mixed-rating packaging under extended producer responsibility (EPR) laws, according to Defra data. The figures, from a Freedom of Information request by BagKraft, a producer of paper and fabric bags, and reported by Packaging Europe, showed 75% of obligated packaging producers in the UK use a mix of red, amber and green packaging. Under the packaging EPR laws, every unit of packaging is assigned a colour – red, amber or green – based on its recyclability under existing waste management processes. Green is easy to recycle and attracts lower fees, while red is hard to recycle and has higher fees attached. Packaging with an amber rating is recyclable but requires special infrastructure. Continued reliance on ‘red’ packaging brings not only financial but reputational risks. There was a different reading of the data from Esther Carter, chief strategy officer for pEPR administrator Pack UK. Speaking at a Packaging News summit this week, she said there were indications of a shift away from harder to recycle packaging. “It’s still very early days,” Carter explained. “We know a lot of producers are still familiarising themselves with the scheme, but it is interesting to start to see some of these shifts happening. We are seeing a general trend towards green, even based on the very, very early numbers.”
Chef’s Special
Nestlé’s move to use 51% regenerative wheat in the 1.5 billion KitKat bars it makes in York every year continues to be the subject of fervent debate. To recap: the wheat comes from Wildfarmed’s community of British farmers who “all follow a set of standards based on holistic farming practices aimed at reducing environmental impact and bringing life back to soil”. This is big news for the regenerative agriculture movement and has been welcomed by some as proof that ‘regen ag’ can go mainstream, but others are more circumspect. “My first reaction was a smile. My second, almost immediately, was a raised eyebrow,” noted independent adviser Ian Gould in his balanced analysis of the move. Others were left scratching their heads. “What is the point in improving the soil’s health to grow a nutritionally dense commodity to then make an unhealthy product?” wondered a reader in this week’s Farmers Weekly. Wildfarmed is certainly creating a stir with its regenerative ingredients. The business “has similarities to ethical and organic brands such as Yeo Valley and Tony’s Chocolonely”, noted FT business expert John Gapper. Franco Manca, Marks & Spencer, Ask Italian and East Pizzas are among its customers. The KitKat tie-up is arguably Wildfarmed’s biggest break to-date, but it has also dialled up the heat on the debate over whether it matters where ingredients produced in regenerative systems end up being deployed.
Last Orders
Prepare to be surprised. Boomers have registered “significant declines” in drinking rates and now have the lowest rate of any generation at 71%. According to drinks data expert IWSR’s twice yearly Bevtrac survey of consumer behaviour, the drinking rate among Gen Z legal drinking age consumers across fifteen key markets has stabilised at 74%. This rate, up from 66% three years ago, is now nearly identical to the total adult population drinking rate of 76%. Millennials reported the highest beverage alcohol participation rate of any generation at 81%, while Gen X ranked second highest with an average of 77%. “The narrative that Gen Z is the generation of moderation is now conclusively debunked,” explained IWSR president and MD Marten Lodewijks. Actively choosing to drink slightly less has become the default position for the majority of drinkers in every market surveyed (the only exception was China which saw only moderate gains). These latest results suggest this behaviour has become a structural rather than a cyclical change as lifestyle choice and health reasons become more important for more consumers, said IWSR.
Main image credit: sixpixx / Shutterstock.com
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