by Tom Embury, BDA's Public Affairs Officer.

Public Health England’s Calorie Reduction Programme is the latest part of government’s effort to encourage the food industry, and retailers, to reformulate the food the public consume to improve the nation’s diet. It’s part of the UK government’s childhood obesity strategy for England, although the impact will be felt across the UK.

Last week, I attended the first stakeholder forum event where PHE set out the scope and scale of the programme, and on first impressions it seems to be the most ambitious effort to date. Voluntary calorie reduction targets of 20% have been set for a huge range of foods across more than a dozen broad categories, for both the retail sector and the out of home sector, with calorie caps for single serve portions as well.

The proposals are in draft at this stage, and PHE are keen to engage with industry, non-governmental organisations and professional bodies like our own to ensure the proposals are workable while remaining sufficiently stretching. Just like with the sugar reduction programme started in 2017, the BDA is planning to be closely involved to make sure there is a strong dietetic perspective. After all, dietitians are the ones working on the ground with the people these changes are hoping to have an impact on.

Tough questions

There is plenty to discuss; once you start to get into the detail of such a programme, it’s clear just how complex it is. Just deciding on appropriate categories presents a challenge – should crisps and savoury snacks be separate to savoury biscuits and crackers? Do you treat cooking sauces and condiments the same way? When does a flavoured flat bread become a pizza?

Collecting accurate data and information about foods is also difficult, particularly in the out of home sector. For some categories, data is only available for fewer than half of all products on the market. Deciding what counts as a “single serve” portion for the purposes of setting calorie limits is hard when a 500ml bottle of soft drink is described as “two servings” by manufacturers, even though we know consumers often drink them in one sitting.  

Getting these things right is important if the programme is to be a success; industry need to have a reasonable chance of achieving the targets set, while also ensuring that there are as few loopholes as possible. PHE have made it clear that they do not want companies to just produce healthier options which nobody buys, or to make the changes to already fairly healthy products. This is about changing the most popular unhealthy products or acting to make those products less popular. If changing the ingredients is not possible, smaller portion sizes could have the same impact.

Does it go far enough?

Of course, the question remains whether a voluntary approach will have a big enough impact, and whether companies are under enough pressure to make change. The first report on the sugar reduction programme, targeting a five per cent reduction across categories, was disappointing. Some categories achieved little or no change and the puddings categories even managed to increase the total amount of sugar sold. On the other hand, these are still early days, and changes to production don’t happen overnight.

Industry has expressed concern that some products will be too difficult to change without consumers noticing and switching. Though the often-huge gap between the highest and lowest calorie products in one category undermines this argument. Clearly some companies are managing to produce successful products with fewer calories, and others need to be learning from them.

What was made clear is that the clock is ticking. Companies will be judged from a baseline of 2017, with the first progress report issued in 2021. PHE and the Department of Health and Social Care have said that other measures will be considered if the voluntary approach doesn’t work, and we will hold them to that commitment.  

You can read more about the thinking behind the calorie reduction programme in a blog post written by PHE’s Alison Tedstone on the public health matters website and in the full “Scope and Ambition” document on the PHE website.

We will keep our involvement in this work updated in the obesity section of our influencing pages.