Two million cases of disease over 25 years could be prevented by an industry levy on salt and sugar in food according to modelling commissioned by a new Recipe for Change campaign coalition of health and food organisations. The fresh analysis shows this would be worth £77.9 billion to the economy over the same period through quality adjusted life years.
Thirty six well-known health organisations (including Sustain, Food Foundation, Obesity Health Alliance, British Heart Foundation, Action on Salt/Sugar and Impact on Urban Health), Royal Colleges and charities have now joined forces in the ‘Recipe for Change’ campaign, calling on the Government to introduce a new industry levy to make food healthier and raise additional revenues for investment in children’s health.1
The Recipe for Change campaign launches alongside new modelling evidence conducted by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine showing that an industry wide levy on sugar and salt used in manufactured foods or in restaurants and catering could:
- Reduce average salt intake per adult by up to 0.9g per day (11% of their current intake) and sugar by up to 15g per day (30% of their current intake)
- Prevent almost 2 million cases of chronic disease over 25 years including:
- over 1 million cases of cardiovascular disease (CVD)
- 571,00 cases of type 2 diabetes
- 11,000 cases of cancer
- 249,000 cases of respiratory disease
- Be worth up to £77.9 billion to the economy over 25 years (by delivering gains of more than 3.7 million quality adjusted life years)
Public polling conducted in May 2023 on behalf of the Obesity Health Alliance indicates that 68% of the public would support further food levies if the revenues raised were invested in children’s health. 73% of the public support action by Government to require food manufacturers to reduce sugar and salt from everyday foods.
Currently, in the UK, the population consumes 50% more sugar and 40% more salt than recommended. This is because 85% of our salt intake is already in food when we buy it and 60% of our sugar comes from just three categories: biscuits, confectionery and desserts.
One quarter of adults in England are affected by obesity (25% of men, 26% of women), and one third of children (37.7%) are above a healthy weight by the time they leave primary school. It has been estimated that in the UK there are approximately 7.6 million people living with cardiovascular disease, 4.3 million people living with type 2 diabetes and 375,000 new cases of cancer every year.
The food industry has repeatedly failed to meet sugar and salt reduction targets voluntarily – most recently reporting an overall average 3.5% reduction versus 20% target3. They argue that a new levy would encourage food and drink companies to change their recipes (known as ‘reformulation’) to become healthier, help to shift sales towards healthier products and potentially raise money for improving children’s health. It was one of the recommendations of the independent National Food Strategy (NFS), an
independent review of the food system commissioned by the Government and led by Henry Dimbleby.
The new coalition has launched a new ‘Recipe for Change’ campaign, arguing the levy could work either:
- By being applied at a rate of £3/ kg on sugar and £6/kg on salt as proposed by the National Food Strategy. This would be applied to all sugar and salt used in manufactured foods or in restaurants and catering but would not apply to pure ingredients at retail, so home cooks would be unaffected.
Or
- By targeting it to products within specified non-staple food categories, such as confectionery, biscuits, cakes, desserts, crisps and savoury snacks, using either nutrient-based (eg salt, sugar, fats, calorie content) or other health classification systems.
Any new fiscal incentive for the food industry would build on the success of the Soft Drinks Industry Levy, which has succeeded in reducing overall sugar sold in soft drinks by 35%, whilst raising over £1.5 billion since 2018, enabling the Government to invest in
expanding breakfast clubs, holiday activity and food programmes and primary sports and PE equipment. According to the National Food Strategy, an industry-wide sugar and salt reformulation tax could have the potential to raise up to £3 billion per year that could be reinvested into programmes designed to increase access to healthy food.
1 https://www.recipeforchange.org.uk
2 https://obesityhealthalliance.org.uk/2023/05/23/manifesto-pr/
3 https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1121444/Sug