Boost healthy food - NICE
Tuesday June 22nd, 2010
Sweeping changes to food policy in Britain could save tens of thousands of lives a year, government health advisers said today.
Low-salt and low-fat foods should be actively promoted, according to the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence.
NICE
- which is required to consider the cost-effectiveness of its policies
- says healthy foods could even be subsidised to ensure they are cheaper
than high fat, high salt counterparts.
It calls for a "traffic light" food labelling system - rejected last week by the European Parliament.
Campaigners welcomed the proposals.
Professor Sir Ian Gilmore, president of the Royal College of Physicians, said "population oriented" measures, such as restricting smoking, had had vastly more impact than attempting to change individual lifestyles.
He said: "The NICE guidance demonstrates conclusively why we need to change radically our approach to this vast and silent killer. Ten years of personalised healthcare interventions have simply not made a sufficient dent in the overall toll."
He added: "Banning trans-fats, reducing salt consumption and saturated fat levels in processed food may initially pose operational challenges for manufacturers, but the profits of private firms ought not to take precedence when compared with the health of the more than four million people at risk in this country."
Betty McBride, of the British Heart Foundation, said: "The fight for European adoption of traffic light labelling continues, and policy-makers must include the new guidelines in their briefing notes.
"Meanwhile, the food industry should take the initiative to adopt clear and consistent food labels to help their customers and countrymen protect their health.
"We've already seen some progress by industry on reducing levels of salt in processed food. We must see industry making major efforts now to reformulate products with less saturated fat.
"Cutting our sat-fat intake would have a major impact on heart disease."
Tags: Diet & Food | Heart Health | UK News
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