Ideas for reducing the consumption of junk food have been blasted as “overprotective” as experts and politicians disagree on the best way to tackle the issue.
It comes amid calls for cigarette-style health warnings on unhealthy food items such as chocolate and crisps.
Government food tsar, Henry Dimbleby, the healthy eating campaigner behind the proposal,told the BBC: “If you walk into a supermarket, the first thing you’ll see is a huge amount of fruit and veg.
“And then you have aisles and aisles of food-like substances – you have Kit Kat cereal next to Krave cereal being marketed at children with discounts, because that is the food that it’s easier to make money selling that food.
“The food would still be there but be displayed less prominently, you’d have black marks on it to say this is not a good thing to eat… a mandatory label saying this is bad for you in a big visible way.”
His plans were labelled as “crackpot”.
Chris Snowdon, Head of Lifestyle Economics at the IEA said: “Mr Dimbleby seems to think that the normal rules of policy-making shouldn’t apply to his crackpot ideas about food.
“He wants politicians to ignore public opinion, forget about the economic costs and not worry about whether the policies will work or not.
Snowdon added: “Yet another nanny state policy crashes and burns.”
It comes as critics admitted that listing calories next to items on food menus did not have the impact researchers thought it would.
Currently, the government does not have plans to put cigarette-style warnings on junk food however is looking to ban junk food advertising.
Both tobacco and ultra-processed foods cause numerous serious illnesses and premature deaths but politicians and food experts can’t agree on how far to take warnings.
Ultra-processed foods include ready meals, fizzy drinks and ice cream which are just some of the items experts believe should be labelled.
Others say they should be heavily taxed or even banned entirely – the foods tend to be higher in fat, saturated fat and sugar.
