Unhealthy food impacts costing UK more than £260bn per year, report says

The health impacts of the UK's unhealthy food system is costing an estimated £268 billion every year, a report claims.

The Food Farming and Countryside Commission (FFCC) calculated the direct and indirect impact of diet-related ill health by combining the cost of healthcare, social care, welfare spending, productivity losses and identifying what proportion relates to food.

It found food-related costs of £67.5 billion in healthcare, £14.3 billion in social care, £10.1 billion in welfare, productivity losses of £116.4 billion and £60 billion that can be linked to the chronic disease attributable to the current food ecosystem, the research states.

Professor Tim Jackson, who carried out the analysis at Surrey University, said: “The connection between diet and health is often discussed, but the economics of that link are staggering.

“When we factor in the health impacts, we discover that the true cost of an unhealthy diet is more than three times what we think we’re paying for our food.

“Some of these hidden costs, like lost economic productivity, can be hard to see.”

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Ultra-processed foods constitute over half of the UK adult diet and almost two thirds of the adolescent diet and the market, which has rapidly grown over the last two decades, is set to increase in the coming year, the FFCC states.

The report says the right to healthy food should be enshrined in law, there should be regulation of the food environment to prevent harm and money could be redirected towards a healthier, greener, fairer and more resilient new food economy.

FFCC chief executive Sue Pritchard suggested “there is a clear and urgent economic case for changing the UK food system”.

She added: “The state of the nation’s health is not simply the result of under-investment in the NHS. It represents the longstanding failure to take seriously the critical relationship between food and farming, health and inequalities."

Earlier this week, the Food Foundation's annual State of the Nation’s Food Industry report suggested the UK food system is “relentlessly” pushing consumers to make unhealthy choices.

In September, the Government confirmed that a ban on junk food adverts being shown on TV before 9pm will come into force on October 1 next year, although there are already well-established restrictions that prohibit such ads from appearing on dedicated children’s channels or around children’s programmes.

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