Calorie-cutting plans could increase childhood malnutrition

The government’s efforts to cut calories in food could lead to an increase in the number of underweight children, according to a new report.

Since 2016, the government has been encouraging food manufacturers to reduce the amount of sugar, fat and calories in their food to tackle childhood obesity.

The programme targets of a 20% reduction in calories in manufactured products by 2025.

There have been calls to make this target mandatory.

The new Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, has previously urged food companies to “Do reformulation now, make your products healthier now,” before a future government introduces new regulations or new levies.

Failed to consider consequences 

But Calories Out: The Unintended Consequences of Food Reformulation finds that the official assessment from Public Health England failed to consider the consequences for underweight children or family budgets.

The authors, Professor Gavin Sandercock - from Essex's School of Sport, Rehabilitation and Exercise Sciences , Alex Scott-Bayfield, and Dr Christopher Snowdon, model how a 20% calorie reduction would impact children across age groups.

Their work was used for modelling by the free market think tank the Institute of Economic Affairs

They conclude that for every child taken out of obesity at least two would be pushed into the underweight category.

This would include an increase in underweight 10-11-year-olds by up to 60%.

Poorer families

Underweight is strongly associated with “increased risk of stroke, asthma, heart attacks, osteoporosis and all-cause mortality”, according to the paper.

Children in poorer families are already more likely to be underweight and, therefore, could be particularly affected by the policy.

However, the authors stress that these results are unlikely even if food manufacturers meet the targets for reducing calories.

This is because households can be expected to continue consuming the same amount of calories by switching to more calorific alternatives and purchasing more food.

The cost of purchasing additional groceries to make up for lost calories can be expected to increase bills by 10%, adding up to £400 per year for the average family.

This will likely hurt the poorest households, who spend a greater proportion of their income on food.

High calorie/low cost

“If they cannot acquire enough calories through their normal basket of goods, they will find high-calorie/low-cost products to use as substitutes, or spend more money on food”, the authors write.

“If food companies reduce the size of their products (a common way of meeting Public Health England’s targets), people will simply buy more of them.”

Christopher Snowdon, co-author and IEA Head of Lifestyle Economics, said: “When Public Health England modelled the impact of its food reformulation scheme in 2018, it deliberately excluded the impact on people who are not overweight or obese. This was a serious omission.

"Cutting calories from a huge number of food products will increase the number of dangerously underweight people unless they compensate by buying more food.

"In practice, people of all shapes and sizes probably would buy more food under such a system.

"If so, reformulation would cost households dearly and achieve nothing.

“Advocates of food reformulation cannot have it both ways.

"Either it would make everyone eat less, in which case there will be a sharp rise in the number of underweight children, or consumers will get around it by eating more, in which case it is a pointless endeavour that would increase the cost of living.”

Unintended consequence 

Gavin Sandercock, co-author and Professor of Sports and Exercise Science at the University of Essex, said: “Our modelling shows that the minor benefits of food reformulation to our children are heavily outweighed by the negative effects which this would have on the weight status of the population as a whole. 

"The unintended consequence would be to drive more children toward being underweight.”

Alex Scott-Bayfield, co-author and director at Fitmedia, a children’s physical assessment company, said: “This is the first study of its kind to look in detail at the wider consequences of the food reformulation scheme.

"It clearly shows that, if it works as intended, it would result in more people being underweight.

"Worse yet, the unintentional victims of the policy are concentrated within low income families who are already at risk of additional adverse health outcomes.

"Furthermore, these unintentional deleterious effects will likely have been exacerbated in the last few years, both by the cost of living crisis and acutely by the Covid pandemic.”