Let’s be honest… public health grinches want to steal Christmas
Calorie counts on menus have been proven not to work, but nanny-state Scrooges are marching on regardless, says Matthew Lesh
The holiday season has begun. Christmas trees are already everywhere. The cities’ shopping thoroughfares are sparkling with decorations. Slow-walking tourists are getting in the way even more than usual.
Yet one group simply refuses to get into the Christmas spirit. The public health grinches are not showing any contrition. They have been naughty. St Nick will be putting coal in their stockings – something they may actually prefer a sweet treat. But they will solider on, seeking to make our lives that little bit more miserable.
Let me explain.
In 2022, the government began mandating that larger food outlets publish calorie counts next to meals on menus. There was particular concern at the time, ignored by the government, that the policy could exacerbate anxiety among vulnerable groups, such as individuals with eating disorders.
Nevertheless, the official impact assessment, based on a meta-analysis, claimed that this would reduce energy consumption from out-of-home meals by 41 calories per meal. This was meant to produce £5.6bn in benefits over 25 years, by cutting obesity, while costing businesses ‘just’ £0.5m per year.
There’s just one teeny tiny problem – the policy enthusiastically backed by public health interventionists simply hasn’t worked.
The government-funded evaluation study out this week, published in Nature Human Behaviour journal, has found that while healthier food choices may be available, British diners have chosen not to make them. The researchers concluded that the average diner consumed 1,007 kcals per meal before mandatory calorie labelling. Afterwards, the number increased to 1,081 kcals. They claim there is no statistically significant difference after adjusting for different groups. The study relies on exit surveys conducted with 6,578 customers at 330 outlets.
Knowing Christmas pudding contains a lot of calories doesn’t stop anyone wanting to eat it
It turns out that even when people are told that food – like a pizza or a Christmas pudding – contains a lot of calories, they still want to eat it. This research has effectively disproven a key premise of nanny statists. The problem is not that people are fundamentally uneducated about food – it’s that even when you successfully inform people, as the policy did, they just want what they want. People focus on taste over calorie counting.
So, are the public health community, those oracles of evidence-based policy, now admitting a mea culpa? No.
Professor Keith Frayn of the University of Oxford said this “early snapshot should be seen as encouraging rather than disappointing.” Professor Tom Sanders of King’s College admits that “on its own mandatory calorie labelling is an ineffective” yet still says “it would be a backwards to step to abolish mandatory calorie labelling”.
Advocates for the policy have excused the findings by claiming some people noticed the calories, that it could encourage reformulation and perhaps work ‘alongside’ other policies. This is all a coping response, the only relevant fact is that the policy didn’t work and should, therefore, be repealed.
This Christmas public health activists will march on undeterred by their failures. Next on their agenda are bans on ‘junk food’ advertising, set to take effect next year, propped up by equally dubious claims about reducing calorie consumption. Then there are calls, just this week from Henry Dimbleby, for health warnings on breakfast cereal. Playing the Scrooge must be exhausting, especially during the season of joy.
Matthew Lesh is Country Manager at Freshwater Strategy and a Public Policy Fellow at the Institute of Economic Affairs