BRITAIN NEEDS TO GO ON A DIET

÷Count calories at every meal, say health officials ÷Food firms told to cut portions to beat obesity

BRITONS were last night told to ‘go on a diet’ and slash their calorie intake.

A public health watchdog wants all UK adults to get into the habit of counting the calories in meals.

At the same time, it is ordering the food and restaurant industry to cut the calorie content of meals and popular family products such as quiche, hummus, meat pies, sausages and pasta sauce.

Food firms and restaurants must reduce their average calorie content by a fifth by 2024, either by reducing portion sizes or changing the ingredients.

Public Health England (PHE) said it was issuing the new UK-wide guidelines because it feared that obesity was now becoming ‘the norm’.

The action was welcomed by the Scottish Government. It said it wanted to go further and stop certain promotions of high-fat foods in shops.

Its Healthy Weight strategy is also expected to include a crackdown on junk food promotions.

PHE wants adults to eat no more than 400 calories for breakfast, 600 for lunch and 600 for dinner.

This will allow having some snacks and drinks and still be well within the recommended daily limit of 2,000 calories for women and 2,500 for men.

The guidelines mean breakfast could be a large bowl of granola – but nothing else – or a bowl of muesli and a low-fat yoghurt.

Lunch could include a chicken salad sandwich and crisps or a tuna pasta salad and small cereal bar. Dinner could be two sausages and a small portion of mash or a vegetarian lasagne and an apple.

But fish and chips would be off limits, at 850 calories, as would a take-away chicken tikka masala, at 1,200 calories.

Research shows that, at present, the average adult eats 300 calories more than needed each day, while some children consume 500 calories too many.

UK obesity rates are among the worst in Europe and two-thirds of adults and a third of children are overweight or obese.

Duncan Selbie, chief executive of PHE said: ‘Britain needs to go on a diet. The simple truth is on average we need to eat less. Children and adults routinely eat too many calories and it’s why so many are overweight or obese.’

He added: ‘It is not an attack on overweight folk, it is about getting more options and extending knowledge and more choices.’

The UK food industry has been given voluntary targets by PHE to slash the calories in 13 types of savoury, processed food.

Although the targets are not mandatory, PHE said it would resort to ‘other levers’ if manufacturers refused to take action. It could decide to lobby for compulsory calorie limits.

It successfully called on ministers to impose a sugar tax on fizzy drinks, which is coming into force at the beginning of next month.

The targets will cover high street restaurants and fast-food chains across the UK, including McDonald’s, Pizza Express and Subway. A Big Mac Meal with medium fries contains 845 calories. A Sloppy Giuseppe – a meat pizza from Pizza Express – has 842 calories.

There are 503 calories in a chicken and bacon ranch melt from Subway. Crisps add 170 calories, or a cookie, 200 calories.

Alison Tedstone, chief nutritionist at PHE said: ‘As a nation we are getting fatter and fatter as we age. We have an obesity epidemic here. We need to start advising consumers. We have moved on from it affecting a small section of society, it is the norm now.’

PHE officials say that if the food industry hits its targets, 35,000 premature deaths will be avoided over the next 25 years and the NHS will save £9billion.

Only last week figures showed there are now 289,040 people diagnosed with diabetes in Scotland – an increase of 65,097 from 2010. Almost nine in ten people with diabetes have type 2 – associated with being overweight or obese.

Scottish Public Health Minister Aileen Campbell said: ‘I welcome this report but we want to go further – as we’ve outlined in the Scottish Government’s draft Healthy Weight strategy. Improving the food environment is the single biggest change we want to see in terms of public health.’

But Tam Fry, chairman of the National Obesity Forum, said asking the nation to stick to 1,600 calories for their main meals was a ‘near starvation diet’.

Gregor McNie, Cancer Research UK’s head of external affairs in Scotland, said: ‘As the nation’s appetite for “grab and go” meals increases, so do our waistlines, and so this initiative to make some of these foods healthier for everyone across the UK is welcome.’

Ian Wright CBE, director general of the Food and Drink Federation, said the sector took its responsibility in tackling obesity ‘seriously’. He added: ‘For the last decade, the UK’s food and drink companies have been reformulating their products to reduce sugar, calories, fat and salt, as well as limiting portion sizes.’

‘As a nation we are getting fatter’