The UK spends just over GBP 100 billion a year on food with serious health impacts. The FFCC reckons that by spending less than GBP 60 billion a year to develop an effective food policy, there would be some prospect of a healthier population in a happier place. For now, this is not the case: the direct cost to the government of diet-related healthcare is over GBP 90 billion/year, indirect costs which are not readily visible to the public are nearly twice that sum (estimated by FFCC at GBP 176 billion a year). Direct costs appear in an accessible format, such as annual accounts. Some, but not all indirect costs are available if you know where to look; some of them are part of the public record, but many of them are stranded across multiple sources. To say that the UK can’t afford a coherent food policy would be ludicrous. Yet the administrative inertia of the current mess is more likely to wreck the UK economy — if it hasn’t already done so — than a serious attempt to improve the national diet. The list at the foot of this page brings together all the coverage on this website of the FFCC’s research.
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