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Written question asked by Caroline Johnson (Conservative) on Friday, 10 October 2025, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Tuesday, 14 October 2025. It was answered by Ashley Dalton (Labour) on Wednesday, 19 November 2025 on behalf of the Department of Health and Social Care.

Food: Nutrients

Question

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what discussions he has had with the food industry on the proposed update of the Nutrient Profiling Model.

Answer

As set out in our 10-Year Health Plan, we will take decisive action on the obesity crisis to ease the strain on our National Health Service and create the healthiest generation of children ever. This includes implementing junk food advertising restrictions on TV and online, introducing mandatory healthy food sales reporting for large businesses and setting new targets to increase the healthiness of sales in all communities, and boosting the impact of our advertising and promotions restrictions by applying the updated Nutrient Profiling Model (NPM).

The existing advertising restrictions and the location and volume price promotions restrictions on ‘less healthy’ food and drink use the NPM 2004/5 to determine which products are ‘less healthy’ and therefore in scope of the restrictions. The NPM 2004/5 is out of date, and we committed in the 10-Year Health Plan to updating these standards to reflect the latest dietary advice. This will strengthen the restrictions and more effectively target the products of most concern to childhood obesity.

We have started to engage with stakeholders across sectors of the food and drinks industry and will continue this ahead of and during a consultation period in 2026 on the policy application of an updated NPM to ensure stakeholders can feed in their views.

Secondary information

Type
Written question
Reference
78403
Session
2024-26
Subjects
Food Nutrients
Link
View this Written question on www.parliament.uk