LONDON (Reuters) – Britain will crack down on junk food advertising and introduce calorie counts on menus in an effort to combat obesity and ease pressure on the country’s National Health Service amid the coronavirus pandemic the government said Monday.
For British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the intersection of obesity and the coronavirus is personal. Mr. Johnson was, by his own admission, “overweight” when he was admitted to the hospital after falling ill with Covid-19 this year, and his health deteriorated to such an extent that he needed intensive care at one point.
Studies have linked obesity to an increased risk of serious illness or death from Covid-19, and Mr. Johnson, writing in the British newspaper The Daily Express, described his time in the hospital as a “wake up call.”
“We all postpone things, I know we do,” Johnson wrote. “I have wanted to lose weight for years and, like many people, I struggle with my weight.”
“I go up and down, but throughout the coronavirus epidemic and when I had it too, I realized how important it is not to be overweight,” he added.
As part of the government’s new obesity strategy, advertisements for any food high in fat, sugar, or salt will be banned from television and online until 9pm to avoid hours when children are more likely to see them. . There will also be a consultation on whether Britain should completely ban online junk food ads.
All major restaurants and cafes will be required to add a calorie count to their menus, and the government will seek to add calorie labels to alcoholic beverages.
Promotional offers like “buy one get one free” on fatty or sugary foods will also be banned.
Obesity in Britain has long been cited as a growing problem and a drain on the NHS, and the country is generally near the top of the charts ranking Europe’s fattest countries.
Government statistics show that almost two thirds of adults in England are overweight or obese. The World Health Organization estimates that about 39 percent of adults worldwide are overweight and that about 13 percent are obese.
More than 45,000 people in Britain have died from the coronavirus. Nearly 8 percent of patients with Covid-19 in intensive care units have been morbidly obese, the British government said, despite the fact that people with morbid obesity make up just 2.9 percent of the general population.
Johnson said in a video posted to Twitter Monday that he had lost more than 14 pounds since his hospital stay.
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The Daily Telegraph, a British newspaper, reported that the prime minister weighed 245 pounds when he was hospitalized in April. Even with his recent weight loss, Mr. Johnson, who is about 5 feet 10 inches tall, would still be classified as obese, according to an NHS calculator, although the prime minister said he had just begun to focus on improving his physical condition. and lose weight.
The broad measures announced Monday are a turnaround for Mr. Johnson, who last year described a sugary beverage tax as “sin stealth taxes” and warned of the “continuing uptick in the nanny state.”
Professor Parveen Kumar, a spokesman for the British Medical Association, which represents doctors, said in a statement Monday that the strategy “could go a long way in starting a health revolution for the nation.”
But the measures did not receive such a warm reception from the food and retail industry. Tim Rycroft, director of operations for the Food and Beverage Federation, a group representing industry manufacturers, called the plans a “hard hit” for companies that had been “announced by the government to feed the nation during the Covid crisis. “
The federation said that while it supported the government’s push for Britain to become healthier, the proposed policies had proven ineffective and would only serve to increase prices.
