IEA Head of Lifestyle Economics Christopher Snowdon has written for The Critic on his new research, co-authored by Prof Gavin Sandercock and Fitmedia Director Alex Scott-Bayfield, which warns that government plans to reformulate food to reduce their calories by 20% would risk a spike in the prevelance of underweight children.

Christopher wrote:

“We modelled various different scenarios, but reformulation led to a major increase in underweight children in all of them. Even in the best case scenario, two children would become underweight for every child who stopped being obese. 

“Surely, I hear you say, Public Health England would have considered the consequences of playing God with the food supply? Not really. When they set out their plans in 2018, they said that since the scheme was ‘aimed at moving energy intakes of the general population more towards current UK dietary recommendations’ it was ‘anticipated that the intended approach to calorie reduction would present a low risk of significant undernutrition in the general population’.

“Even if it did succeed in removing 20 per cent of calories out of the most popular food products, it is likely that people would just buy more food to fill them up. That would have the negative consequence of hiking people’s grocery bills up and would be particularly bad news for the poorest households (where a disproportionately high number of underweight children can be found), but at least it wouldn’t lead to an epidemic of malnourishment.”

Read Christopher’s full piece here.

You can also read a full copy of Calories Out: The Unintended Consequences of Food Reformulation.