Missed opportunity to tackle obesity through alcohol advice
Slimming World, the largest weight management organisation in the UK and Ireland, has expressed its deep disappointment that the CMO has missed a golden opportunity to use the first review of official alcohol guidance in 20 years to help tackle the UKs obesity crisis.
Carolyn Pallister, Public Health Manager at Slimming World, says that the Government has stated its commitment to reducing obesity and to raising awareness of the dangers of excessive drinking but must do more to link these two critical public health issues.
Carolyn says; “Dame Sally has produced new guidelines to safeguard the public from the harmful effects of excess alcohol but the guidelines fail to acknowledge the link between obesity and alcohol, both as alcohol is often high in calories and drinking too much alcohol can impact on weight-affecting lifestyle behaviours.
“Over the next two decades, the number of obese adults in the UK is forecast to rise by 73% to 26 million people. As well as the serious physical conditions obesity can lead to — from diabetes and raised blood pressure to the increased risk of heart disease and cancer — people who struggle with their weight often experience chronic issues of low confidence, poor self-esteem and even mental ill-health.
“Alcoholic drinks are highly calorific and people need to be made aware of what they are consuming so that they can make their own informed choices. We believe that calorie labelling on alcoholic drinks will go some way to redressing this balance.
“Most non-alcoholic food and drink products must display calorie information on the labels yet the European Commission has ruled that alcohol is exempt. This leaves responsibility with the Government to increase pressure on the industry to introduce this more widely,” adds Carolyn.
Slimming World says that to raise awareness of the fact that alcohol is high in calories is one step towards linking the impact of alcohol on weight gain. However it believes that the Government should also improve guidance in public health campaigns about how drinking too much alcohol can impact on weight-affecting lifestyle behaviours – leading to people eating unhealthily and being less active.
Carolyn adds: “Government campaigns encourage people to eat healthily and then, as this new guidance demonstrates separately spends millions warning about the dangers of excessive drinking, but it fails to point out the connection between the two.”
