Sugary breakfast cereals must be treated in the same way as fizzy drinks to fight childhood obesity, warns the head of the NHS
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Sugary breakfast cereals must be treated in the same way as fizzy drinks to fight childhood obesity, warns the head of the NHS
Sugary breakfast cereals must be treated in the same way as fizzy drinks to fight childhood obesity, the head of the NHS has warned.
Simon Stevens said food manufacturers will have to reformulate the way they produce breakfast cereals if the Government’s obesity strategy is to succeed.
Giving evidence to the Commons Health and Social Care Committee, he said that it was very concerning that products marketed as healthy often contained large amounts of sugar.
‘On average children are having the equivalent of three sugar lumps at breakfast,’ he said.
‘For poorer children that is often much worse. That is obviously contributing a lot to the childhood obesity epidemic.’
Nearly a third of children and two in three adults in Britain are overweight or obese with experts saying it is the biggest health crisis of our time.
The Government’s childhood obesity plan published last month set out a range of measures including a ban on supermarket check-out promotions involving sweets and fatty snacks, intended to halve childhood obesity in England by 2030.
Mr Stevens told the committee that they also needed to look at the ingredients that went into products such as breakfast cereals.
‘Calorie labelling, traffic-lighting, changed promotional approaches in the retail sector – they have all got to play their part,’ he said.
‘But I think we are going to need to see much greater action on food reformulation over the next several years in the way that we have begun to see on sugar, sweet and beverages.’
Sugar is behind soaring A&E admissions for tooth decay, with a child having a rotten tooth removed every ten minutes in England’s hospitals.
A report by Public Health England last month found children are typically taking just five months to consume the amount of sugar they should be having in a year.
In that time, under-11s eat 17lbs of sugar – the equivalent of 1,952 cubes, or 13 every day.
While over the course of a year, they are gorging on the equivalent of nearly 5,000 sugar cubes, or more than 40lb.
The report revealed that breakfast cereals make up around eight per cent of children’s daily sugar consumption.
It also found four- to ten-year-olds were typically consuming 13 sugar cubes a day, or 52g.
Cakes, biscuits and fruit pies are responsible for about 10 per cent of the age group’s daily consumption. Sugary breakfast cereals (8 per cent), toast with spreads (9 per cent), washed down with a glass of fruit juice (11 per cent), mean that many children could be getting almost half of the recommended levels of sugar before leaving the house in the morning.
Although considered a healthy way to start the day, breakfast can unwittingly be the most sugar-laden meal of the day.
Sugar is behind soaring A&E admissions for tooth decay, with a child having a rotten tooth removed every ten minutes in England’s hospitals.
Tam Fry, who is the chairman of the National Obesity Forum, agreed that further sanctions on manufacturers are key to driving down childhood obesity.
He said that voluntary agreements with manufacturers have previously failed but that the sugar tax ‘put them on the back foot’.
‘I think cereals, milkshakes and all the drinks which have a superfluity of sugar are all now eligible for the levy,’ he said.
‘I wouldn’t have been saying this six months ago, but what happened with the levy was remarkable and it has driven real change.
‘I think any company now that puts excessive sugar, salts and fats in their products are ripe for the levy and that they should implement a sensible limit in future over which they can’t go.’
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