Food firms to help fund obesity fight

Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said the Government wants companies like Mars and Coca-Cola to take over responsibility for the Change4Life campaign, set up 18 months ago to help to tackle soaring levels of obesity in the country.

Mr Lansley said he wanted to free food and drink firms from the "burden of regulation" and would invite them to take on a greater role in public health. He added that firms selling chocolate, crisps and soft drinks did not want the public to see their products as "harmful" but as something that could be incorporated into healthy diets.

The Department of Health is one of only two departments to have a protected budget but Mr Lansley said yesterday that the health service "was not immune" from the debt crisis.

The Change4Life campaign was launched in January 2009 with 75m of government funding over three years. Last night the Department of Health said it has spent 50m already.

Mr Lansley told public health workers the Government would be "progressively scaling back the proportion of taxpayers' money spent on Change4Life" and private firms, local authorities and charities would be invited to fill the gap. He also announced that Change4Life would be expanding, to cover areas such as alcohol.

Mr Lansley said: "We are more likely to have an impact on the people we most want to impact on if, when they are contemplating buying carbonated drinks, buying sweets or buying crisps, they don't feel that they've somehow gone outside the framework of responsibility for their health, that it's perfectly possible to eat a bag of crisps, to eat a Mars bar, to drink a carbonated soft drink but do it in moderation, understanding your overall diet and lifestyle, understanding what your energy balance is between calories in and calories out.

"Then you can begin to take responsibility for it and the companies selling these things to you, they can be part of that responsibility too."

The announcement has prompted a backlash from some health campaigners. Tam Fry, board member of the National Obesity Forum, said he was "horror-struck" at Mr Lansley's remarks.

"It sees them as nothing other than a bare-faced request for cash from a rich food and drink industry to bail out a cash-starved Department of Health campaign," he said.

"What the UK desperately needs are people willing to stand up to the food and drink lobby, such as Michelle Obama is doing in her anti-obesity campaign in the US, rather than politicians rolling over on their backs in front of the lobbyists as is apparently happening here."

His views were echoed by Betty McBride,, of the British Heart Foundation, who said: "We wait with bated breath for the fast food merchants, chocolate bar makers and fizzy drink vendors to beat a path to the public health door.

"Meanwhile, parents and children continue to be faced with the bewildering kaleidoscope of confusing food labels and pre-watershed junk food adverts."

However, there was some support. Julian Hunt, director of communications at the Food and Drink Federation, said shared social responsibility was the answer to tackling obesity and not state regulation.

Ian Barber at Business4Life, a group of companies backing Change4Life, welcomed the focus on how business could help to solve the problem.