Article courtesy of Daily Mail.
Adverts for junk food should be banned – just like cigarette commercials – a top health expert has said.
Professor Graham MacGregor said it made ‘no sense’ that cigarette adverts were banned while the marketing of unhealthy food was still allowed.
He said what people ate was the biggest cause of death in the UK because of increased blood pressure and rising levels of cholesterol.
In Britain, 25 per cent of adults are obese – around 12 million people – compared with fewer than 3 per cent in the 1970s. The proportion is predicted to grow to one in three by 2030.
MacGregor, professor of cardiovascular medicine at the Wolfson Institute, said: ‘What we eat is now the biggest cause of death.
‘Processed foods and soft drinks are full of salt, which puts up your blood pressure, full of fat, which puts up your cholesterol and they are full of calories from sugar and fat.
‘This is what causes us to become obese. We need to ban all marketing of unhealthy food.
‘Why should we ban the marketing of cigarettes that kill us and allow the food industry, particularly to target our children?
‘It doesn’t make sense and why should they be allowed to do this? They get around all the regulations and it is a complete and utter scandal. We should be reducing portion sizes and we certainly need a tax on soft drinks.
‘We can take personal responsibility and most of us do. But if you’re Mrs Bloggs, living in Tooting with four children and your husband has left you, you go down the supermarket and buy the cheapest bread, cheapest fat, cheapest bacon, cheapest sausages and you buy soft drinks full of sugar because that’s what the adverts say.
‘We are looking after those people. We are going to fight for them.’
Studies have found that diseases caused by poor diet and sedentary lifestyles cost NHS more than £6billion a year – more than the costs of treating illnesses caused by smoking or alcohol.
Prof MacGregor, speaking at the Cheltenham Science Festival, said: ‘A Big Mac, large fries and coke has the calorie equivalent of 18 oranges or 11 bananas. I challenge you to eat 18 oranges.
‘I could eat a Big Mac now and go out and have a two or three course lunch two hours later. That is the problem.
‘There is relentless pressure on consumers. It is brilliantly marketed and particularly targeted at the socially deprived and our children with products that are going to kill you and your children.’
Last month Tesco announced announced that from next year it will reduce added sugar by 5 per cent in all of its own label soft drinks – a move welcomed by Prof MacGregor.
‘We have been very successful in the UK in reducing salt intake. Everything you buy in the supermarket, the salt intake has come down by 20 per cent to 40 per cent and you don’t even know it has happened,’ he said.
‘Your salt intake has come down and you haven’t even changed your food habits. We are going to do the same for sugar and you won’t even know it has happened.’
Prof MacGregor added: ‘The biggest tragedy of the last Government was taking nutrition away from the Food Standards Agency.
‘Can you imagine that the alcohol industry is now responsible for reducing alcohol consumption and the food industry is now responsible for the food we eat? It is just bloody mad.’