A salt and sugar tax might help, but it won’t get to the root of why so many of us are overweight

The question is not whether the aims of the National Food Strategy are admirable or not. It is whether this is the most effective way to tackle what we should all acknowledge is a serious problem, writes Hamish McRae

‘It is not clear that diet is the whole problem, though it is part of it’ (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

Most Britons are undoubtedly a bit too tubby, and we do not eat as healthily as we should. But does this mean that we follow the lead of a government led by a less-than-svelte prime minister and a commission headed by a former fast-food restaurateur who acknowledges that his weight “oscillates between the high end of healthy weight and the low end of obese”?

Before you dismiss the latest report of the National Food Strategy, calling for a salt and sugar tax as one more example of grandees calling for people to “do as I say, not as I do”, stand back and acknowledge that there is a problem. Almost the entire developed world is not eating as healthily as it should, or indeed as it did half a century ago. While the UK is not alone in facing problems of public health as a result of its citizens’ dietary choices, it is towards the podgy end of the pack. So, what’s to be done?

The National Food Strategy has some answers. The report has been headed by Henry Dimbleby, co-founder of the Leon Restaurant Group which was sold for a reported £100m earlier this year. There are 71 pages of recommendations, including footnotes.

Here are some highlights. There should be a salt and sugar tax, an “eat and learn” initiative for schools, and free school meals should be extended. The government should trial a “community eatwell” programme; it should create a “rural land use framework”, invest in a “better food system”, and have a “national food system data programme”. And finally it “should set a long-term statutory target to improve diet-related health, and create a new governance structure for food policy, through a Good Food Bill”.

There is nothing wrong with any of this, though the more carnivorous end of the community might bristle at the idea that people should eat less meat. The suggestion by Mr Dimbleby is that we should cut meat consumption by 30 per cent, though he comes out against a meat tax to push us to do so. And certainly, if you look at the online menus of Leon Restaurants there is a lot of stuff about how their burgers and fries are carbon neutral and that “the future of fast food is better for the planet”.

The question is not whether the aims of the National Food Strategy are admirable or not. It is whether this is the most effective way to tackle what we should all acknowledge is a serious problem. Governments have “initiatives”, and “government structures” and “statutory targets” about all sorts of things.

Sometimes they are nuts: remember how they made us all buy diesel cars? Sometimes they work well: rolling out the vaccines. But most of the time no one pays much notice. We do things because we want to, not because some government commission tells us to.

Besides, it is not clear that diet is the whole problem, though it is part of it. There may be some relationship between rising obesity and hotter homes. A study at Maastricht University suggested that higher temperatures indoors may make us more comfortable but mean that we burn fewer calories to keep warm. A thermostat set at 19C should be high enough, it said. The UK government used to recommend 21C but has now dropped it to 18C. No wonder we are confused.

And what about exercise? That too must be part of the problem. A small proportion of the community exercise like mad, but too many of us don’t at all, whereas a generation ago we had to walk much more. For most people now the average steps per day seem to be about 3,000-4,000. Yet the magic target is supposedly 10,000 steps. But maybe 6,000, which is about three miles, or an hour’s walking, is enough.

Finally, insofar as the problem is one of diet, the crunch point is less what we are eating and more that we cook less and go out (or buy takeaways) more. If you cook for yourself, you know what is going into the meal. If it is delivered to your door, you don’t.

Italy pioneered the slow food revolution in the 1980s, with the “aim to defend regional traditions, good food, gastronomic pleasure and a slow pace of life”. Slow food is still a niche idea, but since one of the side effects of the lockdowns has been to encourage us to cook more for ourselves, we can expect it to become more mainstream.

Look, on balance we should welcome Henry Dimbleby’s ideas, despite their preachy tone. They will do little harm, and if they push food producers to finetune their products to use less salt and sugar, they may do some good.

Let’s, however, be aware that a salt and sugar tax will be carried disproportionately by the poorest people and we need to think hard about how that burden can be lifted. And let’s look too at the other reasons for our health problems and tackle those. Then we can enjoy our – slightly smaller – rib-eye steak without feeling guilty about it.