Over 13,000 of you have signed our petition calling on the UK government to take action on ultra-processed foods. Will you now write to your MP?
Your support helps demonstrate citizen concerns about ultra-processed food. Will you help us gather MP support for action too? Use our tool to email your MP. You can personalise the email before clicking send to capture more attention.
Most of the food eaten in the UK is ultra-processed, making up a shocking 65% of children’s diets. But ultra-processed foods carry serious health risks.
A growing body of new scientific evidence links these foods with heart, kidney and liver disease, cancer, depression and even early death.
Write to your MP to ask them to:
- Write to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care to share your concerns about the impact of ultra-processed foods on children and struggling families,
- Ask a question in parliament or in a relevant committee, calling for a debate on how the government should address the impacts of ultra-processed foods,
- Support and share the Soil Association’s Taking the Biscuit campaign.
What is the UK government doing about it?
Despite the UK being one of the highest consumers of ultra-processed food and British children having the highest levels of ultra-processed food intake in Europe, these products have been ignored in UK government guidance addressing dietary ill health.
Worse still, efforts to help parents and carers choose healthy products for their children have actually encouraged the purchase of ultra-processed food and drink.
We have found products encouraging unhealthy snacking, artificially sweetened beverages and even energy drinks awarded the UK government’s Good Choice badge and promoted as healthy swaps by its NHS Food Scanner App.
This is playing into the hands of big businesses, while failing families struggling with a cost of living crisis.
Join us and call on the UK government to stop taking the biscuit, remove their Good Choice badge from these products and support people to eat less ultra-processed food.
