Yet another nanny state policy crashes and burns
9 December 2024
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Economics
Housing and Planning
9 December 2024
Lifestyle Economics
9 December 2024
Responding to a new study showing that calorie labelling in the out-of-home sector failed to reduce calorie consumption Christopher Snowdon, Head of Lifestyle Economics at the free market think tank the Institute of Economic Affairs, said:
“Yet another nanny state policy crashes and burns. The lesson of this study is that people do not eat ‘unhealthy’ food because they are ignorant but because they like it. They don’t need to know exactly how many calories are in a meal and giving them this information makes no difference.
“The government said that mandatory calorie labelling would reduce energy consumption by 41 calories per meal and would produce £5.6 billion of benefits over 25 years. This was never credible and now looks preposterous. There is nothing wrong with people being given information, but there is something very wrong with a system in which politicians are repeatedly tricked into introducing ineffective nanny state policies by public health campaigners who are, at best, naive.”
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