In recommending that these measures are initially introduced on a voluntary rather than a statutory basis, the Committee say that they have chosen to take the food industry at their word in seeking to be part of the solution, not just the problem. However the Report is clear that if insufficient action has been taken in three years the Government will need to introduce more direct regulation.

The Report refutes the argument frequently cited by the food industry and also supported by the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport that there are no such things as healthy or unhealthy foods, only healthy and unhealthy diets, and calls on the Government to accept the clear fact that some foods, which are extremely energy-dense, should only be eaten in moderation by most people. It goes on to recommend the introduction of legislation to effect a traffic light ™ system for labelling foods, either red ”high ™, amber ”medium ™ or green ”low ™ according to criteria devised by the Food Standards Agency, which should be  based on energy density. The Report argues that not only will such a system make it far easier for consumers to make easy choices, but it will also act as an incentive for the food industry to re-examine the content of their foods, to see if, for example, they could reduce fat or sugar to move their product from the high ™ category into the medium ™ category.

Activity

The Report praises the recent measures and funding directed towards schools but describes as lamentable the fact that most of the nation ™s youth fail to achieve the target of 2 hours of physical activity per week. It recommends that this should be raised to 3 hours, that activity should be broadened to embrace non-traditional activities such as dance or aerobics and that a school ™s performance in terms of physical activity should form part of the Ofsted inspection.

The Committee remark that the key to improving activity levels across society is to boost activity in everyday life in areas such as transport. They describe as scandalous the failure of the Department for Transport to produce a National Walking Strategy which was promised 10 years ago, and seems to have been delayed by political timidity (with one witness suggesting that the Monty Python Silly Walks sketch was to blame).

The Committee call on the Government to:

Co-ordinate departments to achieve widespread use of pedometers to measure activity in the community

Take serious measures to boost cycling such as creating properly segregated cycle lanes

Make all major planning proposals subject to a health impact ™ assessment

Encourage industry to make workplaces more active perhaps via fiscal incentives from the Treasury

Have a co-ordinating council for public health along the lines of those in Scandinavian countries

NHS

The Report argues that while the NHS has an important role to play, both in the prevention and treatment of obesity, evidence received by the Committee suggests that this has not been as high a priority for PCTs as it should have been. The Committee ™s evidence covered cases of  GPs being asked to limit the prescription of NICE-approved obesity drugs, of specialist obesity services with closed waiting lists, and of pioneering local projects threatened with closure due to lack of funding. To address this, the Report recommends the establishment of a strategic framework for preventing and treating obesity within the NHS, underpinned by stringent public health targets. The strategy must include the expansion of services to treat obese patients within both primary and secondary care. A full range of treatment options should be open to obese patients, including behavioural or lifestyles approaches, counselling, drug therapy, and, as a last resort, surgery. In particular, children must have access to appropriate services, and should be screened for overweight and obesity annually within a school setting.