Prevention Green Paper Released - Advancing our health: prevention in the 2020s
The long-awaited prevention green paper - Advancing our health: prevention in the 2020s - was released last night, three months after its intended release date. We are pleased to see the consultation document, but we have concerns over how robust the plans will be - voluntary approaches fail if they are not strictly enforced.
On obesity and sugar, the paper states:
'We are publishing Chapter 3 of the Childhood Obesity Strategy, including bold action on: infant feeding, clear labelling, food reformulation improving the nutritional content of foods, and support for individuals to achieve and maintain a healthier weight. In addition, driving forward policies in Chapter 2, including ending the sale of energy drinks to children'
'Therefore, we can now announce that the government will end the sale of energy drinks to children under the age of 16. We will be setting out the full policy in our consultation response shortly.'
'As part of exploring this we will consult by the end of 2019 on how we can build on the successes of our current front-of-pack nutritional labelling scheme once we have left the European Union.'
'Therefore, if the evidence shows that industry has not made enough progress on reducing sugar, we may extend the SDIL to sugary milk drinks.'
Graham MacGregor, Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine and Chair of Action on Sugar, issued the following response regarding salt:
"While we are pleased to finally see new salt reduction actions in the prevention green paper, we have concerns over the robustness of these proposed plans which suggest that monitoring reports will not be released until 2024, four years following implementation of the new salt reduction targets. Research released last week exposed the disastrous lack of monitoring under the Public Health Responsibility Deal which stagnated progress on salt reduction, leading to thousands of preventable cases of stroke, heart failure and heart disease. If the new Prime Minister wants to show that he really is a strong negotiator and able to stand up to bullies, then he needs to be able to stand up to the U.K.’s food industry who have continuously put their profits over the health of those less well off in our society.
"It’s imperative the Secretary of State for Health introduces robust and independent target setting, monitoring and enforcement as public health has suffered enough."
