The document pushed out by the UK government on 18 August to address an epidemic of obesity among youngsters might as well have not been written.
The long-awaited Childhood Obesity Strategy has been downgraded to a simplistic ““, now described as the start of a “conversation” on improving health.
This will be a conversation light years away from spawning any meaningful dialogue and even further from the “robust” and “game changing” measures that health secretary Jeremy Hunt frequently promised on this issue.
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With starry eyes he had – but any hope of fulfilling that dream now looks at least another decade away.
The government has once again rolled over at the feet of the powerful lobbies of the food and soft drinks industries. It has done what they wanted – freedom from legislation and reliance on their voluntary assistance to reformulate products.
History repeating
History has told us that such an approach will not work. The , introduced in 2011, was supposed to have been a shining beacon for corporate responsibility as a driving force to improve public health. It when Whitehall failed to penalise any manufacturers who broke their deal pledges.
It had been hoped that a repeat of this would be avoided. In another bout of headline grabbing rhetoric, Hunt had indicated that “draconian” measures would be the backbone of whatever obesity strategy was finally launched.
What we have, however, is a spineless 10-page document, which sidelines any strategic concept and ushers in a collection of “maybes”, lacking a road map to be followed.
What is particularly galling is that the actual road map that could make real progress on this issue exists, collecting dust somewhere in Whitehall. It was sculpted by the nearly two years ago with the aim to reduce obesity within the UK by 20 per cent in around 5 years.
National risk
McKinsey was explicit, when signposting its 44 recommendations, that they would fail without overarching direction. England’s chief medical officer, Sally Davies, echoed that thinking. She famously declared that obesity was such a “national risk ” , akin to the COBRA committee the government assembles to address major emergencies.
Simon Stevens, chief executive of the National Health Service, had also predicted that the health of millions of children and the very sustainability of the service was in jeopardy if no concerted action was taken.
He is now facing as much inaction as the government feels it can get away with. The question is, what will he and the myriad other senior health professionals do now to get prime minister Theresa May to address the issue when she comes down from her Swiss mountain holiday.
The unpalatable truth is that pressure groups and charities look powerless – their calls for robust action have been ignored. It will take politicians and others inside Westminster to confront Downing Street and ensure it gets its act together.
