Supermarkets Told to Cut Shoppers’ Calories
A new Labour “nanny state” crackdown will force supermarkets to cut 100 calories from shopping baskets in a bid to tackle obesity. The Telegraph has more.
Ministers are set to impose a “healthy food standard” that will force stores to curtail sales of sugary and salty snacks in favour of more fruit and vegetables.
Shops failing to meet the mandatory targets could face fines, which retail sources warned could see prices rise.
The measures will form the backbone of a 10-year plan to improve the nation’s health, which will be unveiled by Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, this week. Downing Street hopes the changes can help avert the need for future tax rises by slashing the £11 billion a year that obesity costs the NHS.
But senior retail figures said they had been blindsided by the “draconian” plans, which they said would add to a growing glut of red tape on business.
One called the proposals a “nanny state” policy, while another industry source warned that the measures were being “propelled by food propagandists” who did not believe in people taking responsibility for their own diets. …
It will be underpinned by a new regime of mandatory reporting, meaning large shops have to submit data on how much of each product they sell.
Under the proposals, it will be left up to supermarkets to decide how they meet the requirements. Retailers could change the recipes of own-brand products, target discount offers or award shoppers more loyalty points for choosing healthier options. …
Announcing the new policy, the Government cited research estimating that cutting the average person’s intake by just 50 calories a day would lift 340,000 children and two million adults out of obesity.
However, experts questioned the claim. Tom Sanders, Professor Emeritus of Nutrition and Dietetics at King’s College London, said it was “not a view that most experts in nutrition would share”. …
Shops already face significant regulation over unhealthy food, including being required to move products with high salt and sugar away from the front of stores. Supermarket chiefs are understood to privately be concerned that further regulation would force them to raise prices in stores and pause new openings.
One senior industry figure said there was no evidence that such “draconian regulation” had helped tackle obesity, adding: “Proponents now want to go further.”
The insider claimed the agenda was “propelled by food propagandists” who wanted a crackdown on ultra-processed products such as sliced bread, crisps, biscuits and ham. Another source questioned why ministers were focusing solely on supermarkets rather than also including takeaway chains and high street bakeries.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: Reform the NHS, not our shopping baskets, says the Telegraph in a leading article.
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Its not for heath reasons, its a dictatorship we are now living in, wonder if anyone’s told lardy lammy to eat less? and of course straight away suppliers, oooh prices will have to go up maybe(read absolutely), the worst thing a government can do is treat the electorate as stupid, but this one keeps doing it!!
For many people this sounds like the nanny state going too far.
For me mandatory seat belts is the nanny state going too far.
People who disagree with the latter just don’t understand that the first is a direct and inevitable consequence of the other.
And it doesnt end with supermarkets being forced to sell less calories. It never ends. There is no end to the principle that the state has a responsibility to take care of its population.
Communists believe, and want, to take control of other peoples lives. They are evil people, not just deluded, evil.
Without rulz there would be no bureaucracies and no need for the parasites that infest them.
I wonder when this idea really took hold. Was it post WW2 or was it earlier?
It seems the same in most/all rich world countries, which are all fundamentally socialist
Seems like you have triggered some seat belt fascists!
Given that the Clunk Click campaign was fronted by a certain discredited former miner, perhaps it should be reversed.
A sight I enjoy almost daily is a supermarket counter with the usual rows of chocolate bars etc next to it. Supposedly, this has been illegal for a while but since that’s a Polish supermarket, it seems they never noticed. I’m also pretty certain that most of the ‘ethnic’ superstores on Oxford Road are blissfully unaware of this regulation.
The real power of these would-be dictators is much smaller than what they believe it to be.
Precisely. Ignore their rules. We can think for ourselves. We know we do no wrong.
Si on n’a pas le droit, on prend la gauche.
I don’t think people are fully aware how much nanny state policy is deployed through rules and regulations ob companies.
Basically, the state has discovered that they can coopt private companies to do their bidding by imposing a raft of rules and regulations.
Companies are far less likely to rebel – they just pass the cost on. And the general public are none the wiser. It just looks like market forces, or capriciousness of companies.
It’s a very opaque and very effective way of deploying state control.
It is also a very good way of slowly destroying your economy. Over regulation is wiping out Germany’s industry as it is far easier and cheaper to invest elsewhere, not to mention the problem with energy costs.
Seems the Fabian Society agenda is stepping up a gear – possibly several.
“…cutting50 calories a day would lift 340,000 children and two million adults out of obesity.” Where do they get this rubbish?
From what I see walking around supermarkets, it would take an 80T crane to lift them out of obesity, not a Kiwi…
Civil serpents advisers. That’s where. The civil service is rammed with wannabe clever people, who are mostly not very clever, and very socialist minded (they’ve been to uni, you see. So, that makes them automatically clever).
Applied misuse of statistics, as usual. If the numbers haven’t just been made up, my guess would be that they multiplied 50 by some population estimate in order to arrive at a total calorie reduction and then fitted the average calory intake which supposedly causes obesity to that.
They could ban the Krispy kreme doughnut racks for starters. High calorie rubbish through and through.
Another important point of the 10-year-plan to improve the nation’s health will be mandatory assissted suicide at 65 to slash the enormous amount of resources the NHS has to spend on old people.
According to the BBC, 50 calories is the equivalent of a single Kiwi. Nobody will become obese if he eats a single Kiwi in addition to whatever else he’s eating. And nobody who is already obese will become slim by not eating a single Kiwi per day.
And baby murder (abortions), don’t forget that other ‘benefit ‘of socialism and feninazism. Vile bloody people.
Assisted suicide at 65 to help improve the production of Soylent Green. The Party members will of course be eating natural food.
Yummy.
Communist bstards. Communist bstards. Get rid of these Orwellian pigs. The civil war cannot come soon enough.
The whole thing has been dumbed down to the extent that the people who are doing the dumbing-down don’t even realise they are doing it.
The calorie is merely a unit of energy. It makes zero reference to the form of that energy. For example, a litre of petrol contains about 8342 KCals, but we humans can’t process it, nay, drinking it would only make us sick. A 10oz ribeye, on the other hand, contains 750-850 KCals, but we humans can use it. On top of that, one human will process it more efficiently than another.
It’s all complete BS.
Hands off my steak, hands off my fat, hands off my sugar, hands off my salt. What I put in my body is my business. What next?!
“Eat fewer calories to save Granny!”
Calories are a measure for the amount of energy that’s released when burning something. The classic here is alcohol which has quite a lot of calories because it … well … burns well. But this doesn’t mean it’s particularly nutritious.
Hands off my petrol too!
No – “Euthanase Granny to save the planet.”
Low calorie protein?
Don’t let her go to waste. Eat her.
Monty python suggested that first (Funeral Director sketch, burner, buryer, eater), the Government are trying to emulate comedians! Difficult as they are comedians already!
Is this the first government health initiative to make supermarkets do the bureaucrats’ dirty work? I suspect not; minimum alcohol pricing (Scotland) and the sugar tax spring to mind. It is however, quite a blatant demand for supermarkets to become an direct agent of the government. So, what next? Well all of government agrees that we eat too much beef and lamb – expect the supermarkets to be required to suppress meat consumption to ‘save the planet’.
We can expect the Tesco* meat aisles to have fewer and fewer choices.
*other supermarkets too.
I fancied steak and salad this weekend; it was going to be hot and I didn’t want to cook anything that took a long time. I’ve been living on fish and salad for weeks 🙂
I don’t often buy steak and I was stunned by the prices in my local Sainsbury and also the much smaller quantity on the selves. Prices significantly up; availability significantly down.
It would seem the “nudge” to stop people eating beef is well underway.
I have another explanation: Food inflation is enormous, probably 25% in the last year. Meat is rising very fast, even in Lidl and Aldi. Farmers don’t seem to be seeing this money, or at least not much of it. Food packages (tea bags for example) have got smaller (240 bags to 210) and the price has gone up significantly. Inflation is said to be 3.9%. I don’t believe a word of it, and pushing supermarkets to not sell us stuff is yet another way to cover it up. Your smaller basket costs the same as last week, so no inflation!! Magic.
They are trying to ban Emergency Food… Survival Food.
“Ultra-processed food” like crisps, crackers, sweet biscuits, salty & sugary snacks, and preserved dried meat products, etc. are easily portable, do not require cooking or refrigeration, and do not require your gas or electricity to be working. They are perfect as Emergency Food in a blackout, flooding, food shortages, or other emergencies.
In contrast, fresh fruit & vegetables can quickly go off, and many require cooking.
The Evil Globalist attempt to restrict the food supply of the entire population, ostensibly in order to punish Obese People who eat too much and are too lazy to exercise, is just part of the Depopulation Agenda, like the attempt to “Abolish Animal Agriculture”: fishing & animal husbandry. They couldn’t care less about the “health” of the peasants. They want us to eat bugs.
Just Say No!
“…curtail sales of sugary and salty snacks in favour of more fruit and vegetables.”
Fruits contain sucrose, fructose, glucose = sugars.
Vegetables also contain sugar and some contain starch that converts to sugar during digestion.
There is no “obesity crisis” it’s manufactured like the “climate crisis” and the “covid crisis”.
Obesity is or at least was a specific clinically def8bed condition.
There is no default weight for a Human. Being plump or a bit overweight is not obesity.
My observation of people in the street, in shops is very few are overweight. I see no more overweight now than I did decades ago.
Whilst I agree that “they” love manufacturing crises, I disagree with the statement that the last few decades have not seen an increase in weight. It is fairly evident, especially in children.
Whether or not it is a crisis is to be debated. And if it is, we certainly don’t need the government “fixing” it.
The more the hapless government try to “fix” it, the less responsibility people will take for themselves – and the worse the problem will get.
I didn’t say no increase in weight – I said over-weight, that is what one might call rather fat.
Children as they approach puberty undergo metabolic changes, and tend to eat more as they are growing.
This used to be called “puppy fat” – now it’s an obesity crisis.
There’s no default weight for a human but there is probably a range of values for bodyfat as a % of overall weight which represent a good guide to what is going to give someone the best quality of life. I would say the same goes for muscle mass as a % of total bodyweight. Of course, some people may consider that their lifestyle (let’s say lying on the couch eating chocolate biscuits) gives them a quality of life and this is more important to them than being able to run for the bus or lift their grandkids up. That’s their choice, though it seems to me a dysfunctional one that I would advise against, if asked for advice. I’m fine with people putting information out there and fine with people ignoring it. None of this should be any business whatsoever of the state.
I do think there are more “overweight” people now than when I was a boy (50 years ago) and it seems a shame to me. But as I said, I basically just do me and my close family and let everyone else go to hell their own way. I probably drink too much booze.
Reminds me of a question nutritionists were asked to answer some years ago, who lives longer, happy fatties or sad skinnies? The almost unanimous conclusion was..the former!
I can believe that
I don’t think being skinny is a particularly good choice unless you’re just naturally like that
I am working on getting stronger (and succeeding- important at age 60 to stave off sarcopenia), do a bit of cardio (boring) enjoy food and booze, pudding sometimes, lots of fun physical activity. Works for me. Not fat, not ripped either
Who will last longer when Net Zero arrives at its inevitable end-point, shortage of food?
My money is on the fatties.
That’s a very important point when the background is someone talking about lifting people out of obesity, supposed to mirror the phrase lifting people out of poverty. Except in really rare cases (Diogenes) poverty is an involuntary condition but so-called obesity isn’t. It’s a quite voluntary lifestyle choice, people simply eating much more than necessary because they like eating more than other things, like, say, running around in the countryside for the sake of it. Lifiting people out of obesity (so that they can run around in the countryside for the sake of it, presumably) is thus really a euphemism for Forcing people to each much less than they want to and Forcing people to eat something other than what they’d like to eat, both of which don’t exactly sound charitable.
Yup there’s a common theme- trying to make people live their lives how someone else thinks they should, not how they choose to
I find it weird personally- I mean I have probably been guilty at times of trying to live my kids lives for them (they are grown up now, top tip to parents, this is a really bad idea) but I have enough on my plate trying to keep my own head straight without wanting to stick my nose in the business of complete strangers
This is equally mystifying to me. I have more than enough to worry about in my own life. I certainy don’t need any additional worries about other people’s lifes.
When I was a boy, there were more underweight people. In my class some children’s only meal was school dinner.
That is a fair point. I grew up in a reasonably well to do area so that would not have been an issue I would have noticed.
The number of overweight people is staggering.
And you may not want to hear it, but the morbidities that go with being overweight are staggering.
And it is a choice you make.
Look at the audience in a 60s or 70s broadcast of Top of the Pops on YouTube. And then look at the state of young people today. Hardly anyone was overweight then. It’s ridiculous to claim that very few people in shops are overweight. Most of them are.
10-year plan?
I know a certain Joseph Stalin who liked 5 year plans
My Tesco groceries app opens with a promotion for Pride. Baffling.
I have complained every time I saw it
Barking mad. Can’t see how this bunch of goons can stop people buying chops and crisps at a service station for example.
Or the back alley food speakeasies. “Psst! Wanna buy a pack of biscuits?”
How long before we find ourselves dressed in singlets and shorts lining the street at dawn doing calisthenics? All to the sounds of propaganda speeches and martial music, and overseen by Party Block Wardens.
Everybody will still be able to get their Deliveroos delivered direct to the comfort of their sofa though, so we now have two tier diets too.
keir starmer podgy. Rachel Reeves heavy, Angela Rayner buxom
Cutting out that apple a day would save 50 calories straight off.
This is the worst bit:
“It will be underpinned by a new regime of mandatory reporting, meaning large shops have to submit data on how much of each product they sell.”
Why don’t our Marxist civil service just admit that what they actually want is to nationalise all our supermarkets?
Because this is not a “Labour” nanny state crackdown. Remind me who introduced the sugary drinks tax?
It was the Fake Conservatives, in 2016.
Let’s imagine I have a salt and vinegar crisps addiction. I can buy a bag in Sainsbury and then pop over the road to Morrisons and buy another bag. If I really want to, I can then go to Tesco, Aldi, Co-Op, Lidl … or even my corner store … and buy more of them.
And this is why we must never permit a CBDC and a Social Credit System. Because the Fascists who want to control everyone would be able to prevent self determination in EVERY aspect of our lives. And they won’t be able to resist it. They won’t even try, because that’s their aim.
This is a job creation exercise to help expand the economy, if not our waistlines. Someone has to monitor the supermarkets and who better that the many people in NHS England about to be made redundant. The supermarkets themselves will also have to employ extra staff to write reports for the NHS. You know it makes sense.
If the supermarkets are forced to hire more staff then we will pay for it. It basically means taking some sales data which they already have.
I do so look forward to an interviewer asking Streeting what the point of a 10 year plan is when Labour will be gone in 4 years or less.
When it comes to children you have to look to the parents. At an airshow yesterday a family with 3 children looked to only have high sugar and calorie food for them.