News

The government has this morning revealed its childhood obesity strategy, which aims to significantly reduce England’s rate of childhood obesity within the next ten years.

In 'Childhood Obesity: A Plan for Action' a soft drinks industry levy, as previously announced in the March budget, heads the plan and through the revenue raised will invest £10 million a year into school breakfast clubs and programmes to reduce obesity and encourage physical activity.

Also detailed in the plan is a sugar reduction programme. All sectors of the food and drinks industry, including restaurants, cafes and takeaways, will need to reduce overall sugar across a range of products by at least 20% by 2020, including a 5% reduction in year one.

The School Food Plan will be updated to include new advice on sugar and nutrition as part of the plan to make school food healthier. There is also a commitment from the government to encourage all academies, which are currently not subject to the School Food Standards, to make a commitment to the standards.

Plans have also been outlined to ‘harness the true potential’ of the public sector, which spends over £2 billion on food and catering services annually according to the government. It states that every public sector setting should have a food environment designed so the easy choices are also the healthy ones.

The Children’s Food Trust has been commissioned by Public Health England to develop revised menus for early years settings by December 2016. These will be incorporated into voluntary guidelines for early years settings to help them meet current government dietary recommendations.

In its closing remarks, the government states that the launch of the plan represents the start of a conversation, rather than the final word and over the coming year it will monitor progress and take further action where it is needed.

Other points in the plan:

• Supporting innovation to help businesses to make their products healthier
• Develop a new framework by updating the nutrient profile model
• Re-committing to the Healthy Start scheme
• Helping all children to enjoy an hour of physical activity a day
• Improving the coordination of quality sport and physical activity programmes for schools
• Creating a new healthy rating scheme for primary schools
• Clearer food labelling
• Harnessing technology to support healthier choices
• Enabling health professional to support families

To view the plan, click here.