Overview of the Recipe for Health report

The House of Lords has published its highly anticipated Recipe for Health report following their Food, Diet, and Obesity inquiry earlier this year. The report paints a stark picture of the nation's health, highlighting how poor diets and an unhealthy food environment are contributing to rising obesity levels, particularly in low-income communities.

One of the most concerning findings is that babies and children in the UK are not getting the best start in life when it comes to nutrition, which impacts their long-term health and wellbeing.

Key recommendations for childhood nutrition and obesity prevention

Improving Maternal and Infant Nutrition

• Set national goals to improve maternal and infant nutrition and prevent childhood obesity.
• Develop a comprehensive strategy by 2025 to meet these goals, using existing evidence and initiatives.
• Annually report progress to Parliament to ensure accountability.

Regulating infant and toddler foods

• Strengthen regulations on the composition and marketing of follow-on, toddler, and growing-up milks, which often undermine breastfeeding and healthy feeding practices.
• Ban the promotion of these products, which are typically high in sugar and marketed misleadingly.
• Set mandatory standards for commercial infant foods by 2025, ensuring independence from industry influence.

Improving early years food standards

• Update food standards for early years settings, making them mandatory to ensure children receive nutritious meals.
• Support early years settings to meet these standards and establish a system for monitoring compliance.

Enhancing school food standards

• Review and update school food standards to align with the latest scientific recommendations on sugar and fibre.
• Ensure water is freely available in schools and limit drink options to water and milk.
• Establish a system to monitor school food standards, with results published online by 2025.

Making healthy food affordable

• Improve the Healthy Start scheme by increasing payment values, simplifying enrolment, and extending eligibility to more low-income families.

• Increase funding for free school meals to account for rising food costs, ensuring all eligible children have access to nutritious meals.

   

Addressing wider influences on obesity

The report acknowledges the need to address the broader environmental factors contributing to obesity, moving away from solely focusing on individual responsibility. Poverty and food insecurity are key barriers to healthy eating, and these must be addressed as part of the solution.

The recommendations signal a shift towards a more systemic approach, acknowledging that improving access to healthy food is closely tied to reducing inequality and poverty.

A call for political action

While the report contains well-known challenges and recommendations, its power lies in the collective insight of over 150 individuals and organisations who contributed evidence to the inquiry. The report calls for bold political action to turn these recommendations into real change, advocating for a healthier and more equitable future.

Beckie Lang, Chief Executive of HENRY, shared her thoughts on the report:

"We hope that the political will is strong enough to act on these important recommendations and make the bold shifts needed towards a healthier nation."

Further reading on the Recipe for Health report

If you’d like to explore the report in more detail, the following links provide additional resources and insights on the Recipe for Health report and related initiatives to support healthy living.

• House of Lords report: Explore the full Recipe for Health report directly from the House of Lords.
• Obesity Health Alliance statement: Read the Obesity Health Alliance’s response to the report’s findings here.
• Healthy Start Scheme: Find out how the NHS Healthy Start programme supports families in accessing nutritious food here.
• Morpeth version of the report: For a concise summary of the report, read Ali Morpeth’s overview here.