Food and nutrition consultations

Do you think we're changing the way we eat in this country? Recent headlines seem to indicate a change: grow your own, less meat equals less methane, learn more if you eat breakfast, eat at the table not the television, reduce your food miles. That does not, however, necessarily mean we're improving our diets.

What about the aim to reduce childhood obesity? Even if bad habits are hard to break, the battle to improve what we and our children eat continues. Some measures, such as piloting free school meals for all primary school children in two local authorities in England, specifically target children. Many others have to look at tackling the issue for the entire population. For instance, the Food Standards Agency (FSA) is undertaking a number of UK-wide consultations. One is on voluntary recommendations for the food industry to reduce levels of saturated fat and sugar, put more effort into marketing these products to the consumer, and increase the availability of smaller single-portion sizes. Another is about integrating universal front-of-pack nutrition labelling so that the consumer can understand more about the nutritional content of what they're buying no matter where they're buying it from.