A group of academics have strongly criticised the UK government’s food strategy in a letter published in Nature, saying it falls far short on the measures and urgency required to address the challenges of climate change and food-related diseases.
Written by academics from the Transforming UK Food System Programme, including the University of York’s Professor Bob Doherty, the scathing letter says that while the food strategy has some positive features, it fails to acknowledge the scale of the challenge being faced: an existential crisis in climate change and food-related diseases.
Henry Dimbleby, co-founder of the Leon restaurant chain, published an independent review of the UK food system last year, providing what he called a “once-in-a-lifetime” opportunity to reshape the food system.
However, the letter in Nature takes aim at the government’s response to this review, calling it “a piecemeal approach with only lip service to Dimbleby’s systemic analysis”, lacking a joined-up, systems-based approach, and failing to address the scale of the problems with the urgency required.
Of the review’s 14 proposals, only one is fully addressed in the strategy (funding for children’s holiday activities and food programmes), and even this is in fact a previous commitment, announced in December 2021.
The authors state that most prominent among these absences is the proposed tax on sugar and salt. The Dimbleby Review recognised this as the policy with the greatest potential to stimulate system change and break the “junk food cycle”.
Its absence from government’s food strategy signals both a lack of engagement with the evidence and a lack of ambition in achieving their goals, the authors argue. Despite highlighting the success of the Soft Drinks Industry Levy in the Dimbleby review, the government “seems unwilling to use fiscal measures to encourage further industry reformulation”.
Similarly, while Dimbleby set a clear target to reduce meat consumption by 30 per cent over the next ten years, the government strategy makes no such commitment.
The authors criticise the government’s failure to include interventions on areas of evidence identified by the Dimbleby review, including the food system’s contribution to biodiversity loss, deforestation, drought, freshwater pollution, the collapse of aquatic wildlife and climate change, and the adverse effects of highly processed food on human health.
To arrange an interview with Professor Bob Doherty, contact Harry O'Neill at Insight Media: