food
No mention of 5-a-day leaves the Food Network’s pledges short on substance
London, 14 March 2011, today innocent drinks responded to the first commitments from the Government’s new Responsibility Deal on food and healthy eating and asked that it continues its good work but does more to encourage fruit and vegetable consumption.
The Responsibility Deal brings together Government ministers, civil servants, scientists, health professionals and industry to map out mechanisms for health improvements across a number of areas including food, exercise, alcohol and behaviour change.
The initial pledges from the Food Network have just been announced and innocent believes that they could have gone further. The Food Network contains over 30 representatives from associations, trade bodies, retailers and manufacturers including United Biscuits, Pizza Hut, Mars UK, McDonald’s and Pepsi Co.
“We are happy to see collective commitments on food labelling, salt and artificial trans fats but this first set of pledges could have gone a lot further. We would have liked to have seen assurances on fruit and vegetable promotion, advertising and a commitment from government to include so-called composite foods when calculating people’s fruit and vegetable portion intake. We hope that the next set of commitments looks towards encouraging fruit and vegetable consumption, as increasing this can directly impact the health of the nation”, said Richard Reed, Co-founder of innocent.
Last month, innocent unveiled their first health Orange Paper “Making it Happen: Healthy Eating and 5-a-Day” including four key public health recommendations to help people make healthier food choices.
Within the Orange Paper, innocent recommended that:
·The Government makes healthier choices more affordable by exploring fiscal or public health interventions to make such food and drinks more accessible and affordable for consumers
·The Government re-balances the messages aimed at children by maintaining stringent restrictions on the advertising of unhealthy food and drinks to children and ensuring that NGOs or those in the food industry that make healthier products do not fall foul of such restrictions
·The Government makes it easier for people to reach their 5-a-day by reviewing the scheme so that it includes composite foods such as soups and readymade meals that contain fruit or veg – at the moment they don’t count!
·The media make better use of credible and qualified nutrition professionals to underpin their communications, by including more science and evidence-based reporting of nutrition or public health
Whilst Innocent fully supports the Government’s efforts to positively promote healthy lifestyle choices by means of the recent White Paper “Healthy Lives, Healthy People”, and the more recent Responsibility Deal, the company believes in sharing its own views to ensure fruit and vegetable intake is at the core of Government thinking.
Vanessa Hattersley RNutr, RD, innocent drinks’ company nutritionist, comments “Recent figures confirm that half of Europe is overweight and that the UK is the heaviest European country1. When it comes to improving health through diet, nobody can argue the benefits of an individual achieving their 5-a-day. Innocent feels now is the time to provide workable solutions that improve the health of the nation and hope to see pledges on fruit and vegetables in the near future.”
The independent expert panel, from which innocent’s Orange Paper is drawn, discussed ways that could help improve the public’s health and fruit and veg intake, weighing up the factors that influence people’s food choices and debating whether intervention initiatives work, all with the hope of making healthy eating easier for all. The panel was made up of:
·Sheila Dillon, Presenter of the Food Programme, BBC Radio 4
·Ian Campbell, GP and Obesity Specialist
·Gill Fine, Independent Public Health Nutritionist
·Jason Halford, Health Psychologist, University of Liverpool
·Anne De Looy, Professor of Dietetics, University of Plymouth
·David Marshall, Professor of Marketing and Consumer Behaviour, University of Edinburgh
·Maureen Rice, Editorial Director, Cedar Communications
·Jane Symons, Media Consultant, Journalist and Author
·Bruce Traill, Professor of Food Economics, University of Reading.
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