The UK’s obesity crisis will see millions having to rely on permanent medication, according to the co-founder of a major high street fast food chain.
Co-founder of LEON restaurants and ex-Government food adviser Henry Dimbleby says that by 2035, our food consumption will result in the NHS treating more type-2 diabetes than cancer.
He says the Government may opt to medicate the public in a mass effort to quell appetites.
Speaking to Camilla Tominey, he said: “85 per cent of the food that food companies now process and make for us is deemed unhealthy by the World Health Organisation and too unhealthy to market to kids and they have hacked into our appetite so they market it, they sell us more wheat and we get sick.
Henry Dimbleby says the Government may look to radical solutions to tackle obesity
PA / GB News
“By 2035, we will be spending more in the NHS treating type two diabetes than all cancers, and also it is now meaning that people aren't working because they're sick. So what happens is you have a state attached to the NHS rather than the other way around.
“1 per cent of people were obese in 1950, and the prediction is that 80 per cent of Brits will be overweight and obese by 2060 and 28 per cent of us are obese today. Humans haven't changed, we haven't evolved, it’s the food system that has changed.
“I worry that we will go down the drug route, so we have this appetite suppressant drug. We go via Semaglutide, to use the trade name, which are very effective in stopping you being hungry and I can see a situation where 20 million people are permanently medicated.
“It's like anti-depressants you have to basically take them for life, permanently medicated rather than tackling the food system.”
Henry Dimbleby has issued a grave warning over obesity
PA
Henry Dimbleby stepped away from his Government role earlier this month, citing a lack of action on the issue of obesity.
The ex-lead non-executive board member of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs hit out at the Conservatives for their “insane” inaction.
Successive governments have failed to introduce a long-promised ban on pre-watershed TV advertising for junk food.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s administration said in December the anti-obesity measure will not come into force until 2025.
Dimbleby says the Government needs to restrict things such as advertising of junk food, but would not advocate state intervention.
He told GB News: “It's a really tricky one and actually I'm not a big fan on the whole of state intervention. I've had to deal in Leon with tables and chairs inspection officers, but you have to make a choice.
“The free market is an amazing thing, but occasionally things go wrong in it, it causes problems and this is an area where you have a choice.
“You either don't do anything and the NHS collapses and the tax receipts go down so you have to make a choice.
“You don't tell people what to do. You do things like restrict advertising of junk food to children. That is a wildly popular thing, it actually makes the food cheaper.
“The government said they'd do it and then they didn't, so Boris Johnson came out having thought he was gonna die and said he was going to do it. And then they have the little kind of voices in the air.
“You have in government, all the different departments act for their kinds of industries. So the Department of Culture will be saying 'No we can't ban advertising because we won't be able to make children's programmes' because ITV has been telling them this will be a disaster and Defra for the department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs will be saying 'oh this will be bad for food companies'.
“So you need a strong centre for anything that's quite complicated and systemic like this. You need a strong centre, who will bring those interests together and make a decision.”