A healthy life
Nesta’s mission is for more people to live a healthy life for longer
Everyone deserves to live a long and healthy life, no matter where they live or their life circumstances. But right now, some people are dying years earlier than they should. In many cases this is because they are living with obesity, a condition that cuts lives short by increasing the risk of disease and other health problems. One of the main causes of obesity is unhealthy food and drink.
Nesta is working with partners across the public, private and non-profit sector to design, test and scale innovative solutions to reducing obesity.
Our goal is to help people live longer, healthier lives by halving the number of people with obesity in the UK over the ten years to 2030.
Obesity affects our health and quality of life. Excess weight – both those who are overweight or obese – affects 35 million adults in the UK and 26% of the adult population in England are obese according to the NHS Health Survey of England 2021.
"Small changes to the food environment that make it easier for everyone to eat healthier food would lead to massive improvements to health in the UK."
Excess weight (or a high BMI) was the third-highest risk factor for death and disability in the UK in 2019. High blood pressure, type-2 diabetes, heart disease, stroke and cancer are all diseases linked to obesity and diet.
Obesity has a huge impact on the individual but also on our wider society. The costs of obesity and the resulting impact on health are felt by local communities and the state due to absences from work and additional costs for the National Health Service. Frontier Economics estimates that obesity costs the UK £54 billion a year, including losses to productivity. In 2014-15 the NHS spent more than £6 billion tackling the direct consequences of excess weight and obesity in England alone.
The potential economic benefits of reducing obesity levels in the UK could be huge. A recent report from the Behavioural Insights Team found that the adoption of just a handful of policies could provide a net return to the UK economy of £76 billion over 25 years.
Obesity prevalence is broadly the same across the UK, but there is variation across regions and local authorities. The gap in the prevalence of obesity (in percentage points) is the difference between the percentage of people living with obesity in the least and most deprived areas.
There is a high prevalence in more deprived areas and among some disadvantaged groups in society. Rates of obesity-related hospital admissions in the poorest parts of England are more than two times higher than in the wealthiest areas.
We know that by removing around 216 calories from the daily intake of people who are overweight or obese, England would be set on a path to halve obesity by 2030.
This sort of small but sustained reduction across very large numbers of people leads us towards population-level interventions in the food environment such as reformulating food, reducing junk food advertising and shifting price promotions towards healthier foods. We do not suggest or propose that these calorie reduction figures should be used to set individual calorie reduction targets for people.
By halving the obesity rate by 2030, we expect to see improvement in the nation’s health and an increase in the number of healthy years lived.
The UK faces a significant challenge in reversing obesity trends and numerous public policy initiatives have failed to shift the dial. During the past 30 years, we have seen 14 government targets containing 689 policy recommendations yet obesity has increased.
The traditional approach to reversing the obesity trend has been to emphasise individual responsibility, willpower and education over food choices. However, this outlook has not proven to be effective.
Where people live, work, shop and learn can affect the food they eat and how healthy they are. This is called the food environment: it could be your neighbourhood, workplace or even online and it includes everything you experience in those places relating to food. When it comes to reducing obesity, evidence shows that changing food environments is more likely to be effective than measures that try to educate or change people’s behaviour.
Many of us live in environments where the food that is most readily available is unhealthy. This is because of things such as the portion sizes of meals in restaurants or takeaways and the price and convenience of unhealthy foods in shops. Other factors include the ways in which food is promoted, advertised and displayed as well as the fact that some neighbourhoods are flooded with fast-food shops and convenience stores, while places to buy fruit and vegetables can be a bus ride away.
But we can change this flood of unhealthy influences by changing the food environment. It is possible to make food healthier by reducing high levels of sugar, fat and salt. It is possible to make healthy eating more appealing (and unhealthy food less appealing) by changing how food is advertised and promoted. It is also possible to make healthy food more accessible by redesigning our high streets, workplaces, schools and online spaces so that healthy options are affordable and within reach, for everyone.
To help more people live healthier and longer lives, we are currently focusing on:
Making food healthier by encouraging reformulation and smaller portion sizes
Making healthier food more appealing by shifting promotional activity towards healthier choices
Making healthy food more accessible, affordable and convenient
Making food healthier
To make food healthier, it can be reformulated (this means changing the ingredients, while maintaining the overall taste and flavour).
Nesta has used data science to identify which food types should be reformulated in order to deliver the most health benefits and works with people across government and the food and drink sector to make that happen.
"Reformulation offers an opportunity to improve the diets of millions of people, without requiring them to make changes to their routine. Small improvements across a wide range of products is the key to this being effective."
We’re also exploring a role for new product development and encouraging healthier products to the market, working with retailers and manufacturers to experiment with new healthy food products.
Making healthy eating more appealing, and unhealthy food less appealing
Cues in our environment influence our decision to purchase and consume foods. Factors such as advertising, promotions and product positioning of unhealthy food all play a role in our decision making.
To make healthy eating more appealing, Nesta conducts research and runs experiments to understand the impact of price promotions and advertisements (including price, volume and location) on what people eat. We then work with the government, the food and drink sector and the advertising and marketing industry to advocate for and incentivise healthier approaches to food and drink promotion.
We’re also researching how products are displayed, testing different ways of positioning healthier swaps and substitutes, and supporting retailers to redesign shops and online ordering platforms to make healthier food an easier option.
Making healthy food more accessible, affordable and convenient
If healthy food is not available, accessible, affordable, acceptable and convenient for people to purchase and consume, then it makes healthy eating very challenging.
To make sure that healthy food is within reach for everyone, Nesta researches the ways in which people interact with their everyday environments and the factors in local areas that influence obesity, such as the location of shops and restaurants.
Nesta also collaborates with local and national partners to test different ways to improve those food environments, seeking to understand how they affect calorie intake and how we might scale more effective interventions.
We need to act now to improve our health. Too often, the healthy option is harder to access. But, together, we can make sure that everyone can eat healthy, affordable food, no matter where they are. By stemming the flow of junk food on our high streets and where we spend time online, and making healthy options the norm in every school and supermarket, we can all live healthier, longer lives.
You can find out more and get updates on the healthy life mission on our mission pages.
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