20 Thursday April 28 2022 | the times
News
Kellogg’s is mounting a legal challenge
against the government, claiming that
the sugar content of its cereals should
be measured after milk is added.
Rules are set to come into force in En-
gland in October which aim to regulate
food and drink that is high in fat, salt
and sugar. The regulations — part of a
government drive to tackle childhood
obesity — will restrict where certain
types of food are displayed within su-
permarkets or on their websites, and
will also ban multibuy promotions of
foods deemed high in fat, sugar or salt.
Kellogg’s argues that the regulations
are unlawful because the nutritional
value of breakfast cereals will be
assessed by dry weight as sold, rather
than how they are eaten.
The US company, which produces
brands such as Coco Pops and Spe-Kellogg’s: add milk before
counting sugar in cereal
cial K, said it has “tried to have a reason-
able conversation with government”
about the changes without success.
Chris Silcock, the UK managing di-
rector, said: “We believe the formula
being used by the government to meas-
ure the nutritional value of breakfast
cereals is wrong and not implemented
legally.” The formula “measures cereals
dry when they are almost always eaten
with milk. All of this matters because,
unless you take account of the nutri-
tional elements added when cereal is
eaten with milk, the full nutritional
value of the meal is not measured”.
Kellogg’s is among several compa-
nies that will be subject to the new regu-
lations, which also include a ban on
junk food advertising before 9pm on
television and online.
A spokesman at the Department of
Health and Social Care said that break-
fast cereals contribute 7 per cent — “asignificant amount” — to the average
daily free-sugar intakes of children.
“Restricting the promotion and adver-
tising of less healthy foods is an impor-
tant part of the strategy to halve child-
hood obesity by 2030, prevent harmful
diseases and improve healthy life ex-
pectancy, [to] continue to level up
health across the nation.”
Whitehall officials have calculated
that obesity costs the NHS more than
£6 billion annually and is the second
biggest cause of cancer in the UK.
Barbara Crowther, of Sustain, an alli-
ance that promotes healthy eating and
farming, criticised the threatened legal
challenge and said it was “perfectly cor-
rect” to measure the product as sold,
and not what people choose to add to it,
whether that be milk, yoghurt, juice,
fruit or nothing at all. “What they pro-
pose seems not just perverse but also
unworkable in practice.”Jonathan Ames Legal EditorISLAND VISIONS/BNPSIsle of light The sun sets over The Needles on the Isle of Wight, named after the
fourth needle-shaped pillar, which collapsed in a storm in 1764. Weather, page 58
End of neighbourhood GP practices
The “corner shop” GP practices that
provided NHS services to a small
neighbourhood are a relic of the past,
Britain’s top GP has said.
Professor Martin Marshall, chair-
man of the Royal College of GPs, saidthat in the future, surgeries would be
larger-scale operations or part of
chains or hospitals.
He told a Pulse magazine conference:
“The old cottage industry — the old
corner shop practices that used to exist
in isolation that did an amazing job
serving their local communities — sim-ply can’t survive in the kind of environ-
ment that we’re operating in now.
“We need to have an infrastructure
that provides good HR support, data,
quality improvement activity, that sup-
ports research, training, education and
greater accountability. Small practices
simply can’t do that.”Kat Lay Health Editor