London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

The lead editorial in this week’s Lancet focuses on recent comments by new UK Health Secretary Andrew Lansley that a campaign to promote healthy eating in UK schools, fronted by TV celebrity chef Jamie Oliver, has not worked.

The publication also makes reference to a comment by Cécile Knai of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and colleagues about DRINC, a UK research initiative aimed at designing foods with improved nutritional value and which may be in danger of distracting attention from the very real public health risks posed by the relentless growth of obesity and diabetes (http://press.thelancet.com/comments1007.pdf).

Although 90% of the funding for the £10 million, five year DRINC project comes from the public purse, there is prominent involvement of large multinational food and drink companies such as Cadbury, Coca Cola and Nestle. The Lancet editorial cautions that this raises questions about the balance of possible benefits between public health on the one hand and the companies’ businesses on the other.

Lecturer at LSHTM, Dr Knai comments, “As public bodies funding and conducting health research, research councils and universities must recognise that corporate behaviour is, by definition, primarily driven by the pursuit of value to shareholders, not altruism or public health. It is therefore important to ensure that public funding is used to support research that food companies would not otherwise fully fund themselves and which will directly benefit the wider public and tackle inequalities.”

Andrew Lansley noted that there had been a fall in the number of children eating school dinners after Oliver’s public campaign to improve the nutritional value of food provided in schools. He concluded that lecturing parents and their children would result in an alienation that could ultimately be counterproductive to public health.

Yet latest figures from UK Government’s School Food Trust show that proportions of children eating school meals are slightly increasing, not falling. And there is other evidence that healthy eating at school can make a difference, including the recently published HEALTHY study. This multi-component, school-based intervention included improved physical education and classroom activities to promote behaviour change, and resulted in some evidence for reduced body fat in schoolchildren at risk of obesity and type 2 diabetes.

The Lancet editorial concludes: “It is perhaps not surprising that Andrew Lansley is seeking to make a break from decisions made by the previous administration. Yet he is in danger of distracting attention from the very real public health risks posed by the relentless growth of obesity and diabetes. Even in the course of today’s severe financial belt-tightening, the UK’s leaders should avoid gratuitous and unhelpful public statements. Instead, they should devote their energies to framing a forward-looking health policy—one that offers clear and tangible support to effective education for families on how important a good diet is to their children’s growth, health, and future.”