Major steps to reduce excessive calorie intake have been unveiled by Public Health England (PHE), as part of the government’s strategy to cut childhood and adult obesity.
PHE has challenged the food industry to reduce calories in products families consumer by 20% by 2024 and it has launched the One You campaign, encouraging adults to consume 400 calories at breakfast, and 600 for lunch and dinner.
The challenge to the food industry is set out in Calorie reduction: the scope and ambition for action, published on March 6 by PHE. The industry has three ways to reduce calories:
- change the recipe of products
- reduce portion size
- encourage consumers to purchase lower calorie products
Categories of food covered by the programme include pizzas, ready meals, ready-made sandwiches, meat products and savoury snacks.
If the 20% target is met within five years, more than 35,000 premature deaths could be prevented and around £9 billion in NHS healthcare and social care costs could be saved over a 25-year period.
Duncan Selbie, chief executive of PHE, said: “The simple truth is on average we need to eat less. Children and adults routinely eat too many calories and it’s why so many are overweight or obese.
Industry can help families by finding innovative ways to lower the calories in the food we all enjoy and promoting UK business leadership on the world stage in tackling obesity.
Dr Alison Tedstone, chief nutritionist at PHE, said: It’s hard for people to make healthy food choices, whether for themselves or their families. That’s why we are challenging the food industry to take 20% of the calories out of everyday foods, building on their good work on salt and promising announcements on sugar.
The next step in the programme involves engagement with the whole food industry such as retailers, manufacturers, major restaurant, café, takeaway, and delivery companies, and health and charity sectors, to develop category guidelines. These will be published in mid-2019.
