AoMRC Proposes Plan to Combat UK Obesity Crisis

The Academy of Medical Royal Colleges (AoMRC) is proposing a ten point action plan to combat the UK’s obesity crisis. The British Dietetic Association (BDA) contributed to this work.

26 Feb 2013 --- The BDA is the professional association for registered dietitians in Great Britain and Northern Ireland. It is the nation’s largest organisation of food and nutrition professionals. The BDA is also an active trade union.

The recommendations make up part of a report that says that the UK is the ‘Fat Man’ of Europe and that two thirds of adults are overweight (BMI over 25) and one quarter of men and women are obese (BMI over 30).

In its ‘Measuring Up – The medical profession’s prescription for the Nation’s Obesity Crisis’ report, the AoMRC report recommends 10 key actions it believes must be taken to make real inroads into tackling the obesity crisis in the UK.

The recommendations fall into three areas:

Actions to be taken by the healthcare professions;
Changing the ‘obesogenic’ environment;
Making the healthy choice the easy choice.

Education and training programmes for healthcare professionals: Royal Colleges, Faculties and other professional clinical bodies should promote targeted education and training programmes within the next two years for healthcare professionals in both primary and secondary care to ensure ‘making every contact count’ becomes a reality, particularly for those who have most influence on patient behaviour.

Weight management services: The departments of health in the four nations should together invest at least £100m in each of the next three financial years to extend and increase provision of weight management services across the country, to mirror the provision of smoking cessation services. This should include both early intervention programmes and, greater provision for severe and complicated obesity, including bariatric surgery. Adjustments could then be made to the Quality and Outcomes Framework, providing incentives for GPs to refer patients to such services.

Nutritional standards for food in hospitals: Food-based standards in line with those put in place for schools in England in 2006 should be introduced in all UK hospitals in the next 18 months. Commissioners should work with a delivery agent similar to the Children’s Food Trust to put these measures into place.

Increasing support for new parents: The current expansion of the health visitor workforce in England should be accompanied by 'skilling up' the wider early years workforce to deliver basic food preparation skills to new mothers and fathers, and to guide appropriate food choices which will ensure nutritionally balanced meals, encourage breastfeeding and use existing guidance in the Personal Child Health Record as a tool to support this.

Nutritional standards in schools: The existing mandatory food- and nutrient-based standards in England should be applied to all schools including free schools and academies. This should be accompanied by a new statutory requirement on all schools to provide food skills, including cooking, and growing – alongside a sound theoretical understanding of the long-term effects of food on health and the environment from the 2014/15 academic year.

Fast food outlets near schools: Public Health England should, in its first 18 months of operation, undertake an audit of local authority licensing and catering arrangements with the intention of developing formal recommendations on reducing the proximity of fast food outlets to schools, colleges, leisure centres and other places where children gather.

Junk food advertising: A ban on advertising of foods high in saturated fats, sugar and salt before 9pm, and an agreement from commercial broadcasters that they will not allow these foods to be advertised on internet ‘on-demand’ services

Sugary drinks tax: For an initial one year, a duty should be piloted on all sugary soft drinks, increasing the price by at least 20%. This would be an experimental measure, looking at price elasticity, substitution effects, and to what extent it impacts upon consumption patterns and producer/retailer responses.

Food labelling: Major food manufacturers and supermarkets should agree in the next year a unified system of traffic light food labelling (to be based on percentage of calories for men, women, children and adolescents) and visible calorie indicators for restaurants, especially fast food outlets.

The built environment: Public Health England should provide guidance to Directors of Public Health in working with Local Authorities to encourage active travel and protect or increase green spaces to make the healthy option the easy option. In all four nations, local authority planning decisions should be subject to a mandatory health impact assessment, which would evaluate their potential impact upon the populations’ health.

Speaking about the report, Linda Hindle, Chairman of the British Dietetic Association’s DOM UK specialist group (Dietitians in Obesity Management UK), said: “Obesity in the UK is an absolute epidemic, there is no question that the recommendations in this report are essential if we are to tackle this growing concern. The focus on the obesogenic environment is particularly positive because the odds are stacked against individuals trying to make healthy choices when they are surrounded by easily accessible, relatively cheap, high calorie snacks.”

“The British Dietetic Association worked hard in contributing to this report, but words alone will not combat obesity rates in this country. Action across the board is what will make a difference.”