UK: junk food vs.healthcare

The British Heart Foundation (BHF) and the Children’s Food Campaign (CFC) released the report  highlighting what it calls the ‘manipulative tactics’ used by junk food manufacturers [1]. The report notes that the advertisements for a lot of these products aren’t allowed during children’s television programmes because they fail the Food Standards Agency and Ofcom nutrient profiling test. However, due to what it refers to as a ‘loophole in advertising regulations’, companies are allowed to market these products and brands freely online [2].

On the back of report, the NHF launched a rather sardonic online tool which sought to expose how junk food manufacturers are ‘preying’ on children online (see the image above).

Apparently, in the lack of real drivers to go for harder actions, a satire remains the only available tactics. Where are those who are supposed to react?

The same question was raised by Richard Horton (editor of The Lancet) in his article "McPolicy: bringing you the Big Mac society" [3].

If you were a UK Health Secretary faced with soaring rates of obesity, alcohol misuse, and diet-related diseases, what would you do? Were you to take an evidence-based approach, you might consider minimum pricing per unit of alcohol and restrictions on its availability. You might look at toughening the regulation of how the least healthy foods are marketed to children. You could even demand that manufacturers reformulate their least healthy products to meet minimum nutritional standards.

Having started with the right questions, he either couldn't resist ending with a satire:

Or you could, if your name was Andrew Lansley, dismiss all of the above and instead invite representatives of McDonald's, PepsiCo, and the drinks giant Diageo among others, to submit their policy suggestions on how best to deal with the UK's public-health crises for a forthcoming governmental white paper. 

After the initial surprise, it can still take a while for the bizarre reality to sink in—that the companies who have profited the most from the epidemics of obesity and alcohol misuse should now be responsible for setting the agenda on public health simply beggars belief.

The Lancetian rhetoric was answered by the UK's Secretary of State for Health, Andrew Lansley, himself, who claimed [4]:

"The government cannot improve the public's health alone through central, top-down diktats. Health improvement is everyone's business. Commercial organisations have influence and can reach consumers in ways that government cannot. Their decisions affect how healthy our food is, how we shop, and how easy it is to access opportunities to be more physically active."

As the classics gave it: By "demagoguery" I mean demagoguery [5].

Evidently this confrontation between government and food industry requires (and deserves) more harsh actions than a demagoguery, even blanketed in satire. And people with a backbone like Mr.Justice Royce, who jailed a British Muslim extremist for 12 years with the matchless words [6]:

'You purport to be a British citizen, but what you stand for is totally alien to what we stand for in our country. You became a viper in our midst willing to go to as far as possible to strike at the heart of our system'.

Could you imagine such words directed towards the food & drinks manufacturers?