Nesta's blueprint for halving obesity

Poor health caused by excess weight is one of the leading causes of death across the UK. Since the early 1990s, obesity rates have doubled, blighting people’s lives and putting huge pressure on our NHS as well as damaging our economy through lost productivity.

Nesta has collaborated with academic experts to build a toolkit that evaluates the impact and cost of different policies to reduce obesity. For the first time, it is possible to identify the most effective routes to pursue and at what scale, based on the strength of the evidence about what works and how much each would cost to implement.

The toolkit compares the effectiveness of a wide range of policies focused on reducing obesity. It considers policies like advertising restrictions, weight-loss drugs, taxes and public education measures. In each case policies are given a traffic-light rating for impact on obesity, quality of evidence and cost to governments.

Using the blueprint toolkit, the team has produced a series of policy packages - including Nesta’s recommended ‘prevention and treatment’ package - to help policymakers and governments chart a course to halving obesity in the UK.

Any successful package needs to incentivise food businesses to sell healthier products – through tax or regulation – and provide treatment for those who need it most. Focussing on information, education and voluntary action will not work.

Recommended policy package:
prevention and treatment

Nesta has created a package of 7 high-impact, low-cost, equitable policy solutions that, taken together, would halve obesity by 2030.

Mandate all large food and drink businesses to publish nutritional and sales information of what they sell

Stop online delivery platforms from advertising with online product placement adverts, such as pop-ups, on their webpages or homepages

Require front of pack labelling, similar to
nutri-score, on food and drink retail packaging

Incentivise large retailers to meet targets for selling healthier food

Extend access to weight-loss drugs to an additional 150,000 people a year

Ban price promotions on unhealthy food by medium and large restaurants, takeaways and similar businesses

Further restrict junk food advertising on TV, online and public transport