Bolder action needed from government on obesity, says heart charity

4 March 2010

In response to the Department of Health's 'Healthy Weight, Healthy Lives Strategy Two Years On' report looking at the Government's progress on tackling rising levels of obesity in children and adults, Peter Hollins, Chief Executive for the British Heart Foundation (BHF) says:

"Unfortunately childhood obesity levels in England remain far too high and it is too early to trumpet success when the government still hasn't taken the steps it needs to really tackle this problem.

"The report recognises that consumers need the right information to help them identify healthier choices – yet ministers have been sitting on their hands. They need to stop shilly-shallying around and bring in a single front-of-pack food labelling scheme without further dithering.

"A combination of traffic light colours, guideline daily amounts and the words high medium and low has been demonstrated to give shoppers at-a-glance information about what's going in their trolleys.

"The Government must also do more to stand up to junk food marketers. A ban on all junk food advertising before the 9pm watershed is the only way to stop children from being bombarded with adverts for unhealthy products."

---

Press releases, papers and documents published on this page are the intellectual property of an organisation unrelated to ePolitix.com. We promote their parliamentary and political campaigning activities as they are subscribers to the ePolitix.com service.

As such, ePolitix.com does not edit, endorse, or attempt to balance the opinions expressed on this page. The content of press releases and other such types of content are the responsibility of the originating organisation.