Exploring Alternatives to Sugar in Food Products

The UK's health sector has made significant progress in reducing childhood obesity, with government policies and initiatives aiming to promote healthy eating and physical activity. However, despite these efforts, many schools fail to meet the standards set by the government, prioritizing commission grants over student welfare. Additionally, parents' lack of knowledge about nutrition and their children's eating habits contributes to the problem. Furthermore, it is crucial to encourage children to engage in physical activities, as forcing them may not be effective. The success of these policies relies on the cooperation of various stakeholders, including government, schools, manufacturers, and the public sector, working together to create a healthy environment and promote healthy choices.

Contents
Heath policy and childhood obesity................................................................................................2
Key features of health policy...........................................................................................................3
How to reduce the childhood obesity..............................................................................................5
Introduction of soft drink industry levy.......................................................................................5
Taking out 20% of Sugar in products..........................................................................................6
Supporting innovation to help businesses to make their products healthier................................6
Making healthy options available in the public sector.................................................................6
Help for the Cost of products.......................................................................................................7
Encourage physical Activities......................................................................................................7
Healthy rating scheme for primary schools.................................................................................7
Making school food healthier......................................................................................................8
Encourage CMI (Case mix Index)...............................................................................................8
Clearer food labelling...................................................................................................................9
Barriers in the Plan of Action........................................................................................................10
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................11
References......................................................................................................................................12
1

Heath policy and childhood obesity
Health Policy- Health policy is basically a plan of action that is taken by the government or
institutions to reduce the health inequalities in the people of the UK. These policies have many
implications as well as the effects on the people of the UK. Every policy is related to the
development of the people and people. Child development and methods to reduce the health
inequality has been an important subject matter of study. It is important to be careful with
children especially during their earlier stages of life so as to ensure proper and healthy
development. Our main area of study talks about only two of these stages which would firstly be
the Pre-operational stage that is the stage that occurs in children from the age of two to seven
years and the next stage known as the Concrete operational stage which occurs from the age of
seven to eleven. Whatever a child learns at his earlier stages is what remains with him
throughout his life in his sub conscious mind. However, students must interact with their
environment in order to adapt and learn (Herriott & Williams, 2010). Children ranging from the
age two to seven are really curious about the world around them. They are always trying to
figure out how things work and how their actions can impact the world that is around them. It is
this stage that named as the pre-operational. This stage has been named so because at this stage,
children are not able to perform mental operations or mental problem-solving activities.
The next stage is the third stage of development and this stage occurs during the age of seven to
eleven. It has been explained that during this stage the thinking process of children becomes
more rational. They start becoming mature and they start thinking like adults. In short, their
thought process becomes operational. This process of development of thought and rational
thinking is carried forward to the teenage years. In the first stage children create ideas of objects
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on the basis of their appearance. During this stage children begin to have a better understanding
of mental operations, they think more logically about the events occurring around them, but at
the same time have difficulty in understanding hypothetical events. This stage includes abstract
thinking that is looking for logic behind things that occur around them in the world.
In today’s modern era, Obesity found as a very big problem that includes many drivers like our
behavior, culture, genetics and environment. This problem is caused due the imbalance of the
energy as it is consumed more by food, but not releases the excess of energy through the use of
physical activity. Physical activity is really beneficial for the health of the children as these
activities are helpful in strengthening the bones and muscles, improve the sleep quality and
maintains a health weight (Boyle, 2011).
Key features of health policy
The National Healthcare System (NHS) is the system that helps in providing all permanent
residents of the UK that is free at the point of use and paid for from general taxation. However,
the NHS takes care of the all classes of people. The main objective is to help the students learn
properly the working of the food chain so that they can practically apply it in their real lives and
know exactly who all participants in the food chain are and what products need to consume food
and who all are consuming and who all are the producers. In the National Service Framework for
older people, the Department of Health of the British government stated their goal to improve the
quality of health care service provided to older people:
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Improve standards of care: Generally, the health policy helps in promoting and improving the
quality of in-home care through the new National Care Standards Commission, with the help of
better care and high standard (Barrett, et al., 2014).
Extend access to services: The NHS also focuses on extending the services for the old aged
people aged over 60. These services are extended to improve the cataract services and the
extension of the breast screening program. It is very important to take care of the needs of
Caregivers’.
Ensure fairer funding of long term care: In nursing homes, the care is free for people this year.
Develop services which support independence: This policy helps in developing the services
that are helpful for people to avoid hospital admissions and speed up the recovery programs. The
promotion of the independence grant council helps in retaining the independence till the greater
age.
Help older people to stay healthy: This policy also helpful in providing services not only the
children, but also the old people aged 65 years and over. According to the health policies, some
of the campaigns are helping to prevent deaths from many diseases. Disability Living Allowance
and Attendance Allowance are provided for disabled people. The Disability Living Allowance
(DLA) and Attendance Allowance (AA) are the allowances that are for the people with disability
and they require a personal care and attention. These include extra costs for the personal care and
supervision of disabled people (Peysakhovich, et al., 2011).
This health policy is not helping shopping and housework. The NHS is mainly funded by general
taxation, insurance companies and user charges. A NHS income comes from the drugs and
dentistry services prescription and also from other fee and charges of hospitals.
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How to reduce the childhood obesity
The aim of the health policy is to reduce the childhood obesity within the next ten years in
England. This approach will also focus on the consumer choice and needs and ultimately the
economic realities. According to this plan of action, some of the recommendations are given so
that to reduce the childhood obesity. Some of the steps that can be taken are as follows: -
Introduction of soft drink industry levy
Children are consuming too much of calories with the consumption of soft drinks. The children
are very choosy about their tastes and the consumption of cold drinks and fast foods leads to the
increase of calories in the body and because of the less physical activity and exercise, the
children face a problem of childhood obesity (Musingarimi, 2008).
The first major step taken by the health policy maker is to introduce the soft drink industry levy
in the UK to tackle with the childhood obesity. In England, the revenue generated for the country
will invest in the programs of reducing obesity, encouraging physical activity and balanced diets
for the children aged between 5 to 15 years. The money is invested on the healthy breakfasts in
the schools to give a healthy start of the day for children.
This step is taken for children, but the levy is on producers and importers not on consumers and
this is designed to encourage people to reduce the content of sugar in the cold drinks so that
consumers will enjoy the product taste and live a healthier life. The time is given to the producer
is two years for reducing the amount of sugar so that the levy is not applied on them if
government take actions (Organization, 2012).
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Taking out 20% of Sugar in products
Government sets up the target for the amount of sugar in the products and it is 100g per product
and also there is a cap for the calorie in a single product. This reduction is measured by looking
into the change in the average of sales and this is only for the products sugar content per 100
grams of food and drink and clear shift in lower sugar alternatives. Sugar reductions mean to
reduce the calories and not compensated for any saturated fat.
Supporting innovation to help businesses to make their products healthier
This helps in encouraging the science and innovation and allows the technology to introduce
some of the other alternatives to reduce the obesity and calories in the human body. The
companies also offer some sugar free products for the diabetic people and this is really helpful to
provide healthy and sustainable products. The recently formed Agri-Food Technology Council
provides leadership in areas such as health and nutrition and consumer acceptability (Loring &
Robertson, 2014).
Making healthy options available in the public sector
It is very important to introduce some options in the public sector to reduce childhood obesity.
Therefore, it is important to work with local authority and government association to tackle with
the childhood obesity. The Department of Health is working on this requirement with the
collaboration of PHE, NHS England and the behavioral Insights Team. These interventions help
in the measurement of the behavior of buyers and the effect of revenue from sales.
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Help for the Cost of products
The health policy also provides support in the costing of the products and government also
provides free vitamins to consume at the time pregnancy and early time. This plan of action also
supports in reducing the costs of fresh and frozen fruit or vegetables (Swinburn, et al., 2004).
Encourage physical Activities
As we all know that the physical activity or exercise is really beneficial for the health and the
scheme of the government also helping all children to enjoy an hour of physical activity every
day. The activity helped the students to understand how the food chain works and how the food
is consumed and produced by the animals. It is the basic thing to be understood by the students
to help them making a strong foundation for the learning of science. The students learnt how the
food chain works and what the consequences are if one of the intermediaries is missing (National
Preventative Health Taskforce , 2009). The students learn the names of all the intermediaries and
how the process works. It is important that at least 30 minutes should be spent on the physical
activities, extra-curricular clubs, sports etc.
Healthy rating scheme for primary schools
Basically schools are the place where the children learn and adapt the new styles and the plan of
action of healthy lives is focused more on the schools. The schools have very good connection
with the parents also as they can inform their parents about the instructions for the healthy life of
children. From September 2017, the UK healthcare departments are going to introduce new
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schemes for the primary schools to recognize and encourage the preventions of reducing obesity
so that children eat more and better quality of products (Department, 2011).
Making school food healthier
There are sets of standards fixed for the schools and the main aim of these standards is to provide
healthier food to the students, but the drawback is that some of the schools and academics are not
applying these standards. As per these standards, there is clear commitment of reducing the
childhood obesity by providing healthy food and drinks in breakfast and also check the Tiffin’s
of the children so that they can guide the parents not to feed their children junk food (Troy,
2012).
Encourage CMI (Case mix Index)
CMI is a value which is assigned to a diagnosis related group of patients in a health care
environment. The CMI value is utilized in figuring out the allocation of resources for care for
and treatment of the patients in the group.
Finance departments take into consideration the CMI in order to determine the budget of the
hospital. The finance department predicts the CMI of the hospital and if it goes below the
predicted CMI that means that is not in favor of the hospital and it may suffer loss and earn less
revenue. A slight change in CMI of the hospital impacts the hospital to a great extent. The CMI
helps to determine the costs of hospital based on various factors such as geographical factors and
other costs also come in purview such as graduation in medical courses cost and the patients who
cannot serve themselves and have less money is also included in this. If the CMI of the hospital
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comes down, it is a sign that surgical and medical requirements changing. Similarly, if the CMI
of one hospital is comparatively less than the other hospitals in the same area, it can be an omen
that the hospital is not able to overcome the complications that the hospital has to deal while
working. It must be noted that the hospital cannot indulge itself in the activities which are not
required and are only performed to improve the CMI. The different ways can be adopted to
improve the CMI of hospital for example efficient physicians can be appointed so that proper
documentation can be done (Rudolf, 2010). If people who come to take the services of hospitals
have MCCs and CCs that exhibits an increased level of complications, the hospital can bill for
DRGs which are highly weighted. But the personnel who are involved in coding only reports that
documents which are used by the physician while making patients’ records. It is to be
remembered that CMI only relates to the patients in the hospital. The CMI of the hospital should
be properly calculated as it helps to determine the efficiency of the hospital.
Clearer food labelling
It is very important for the parents to get the full information about the product before buying it
for the children. Only labeled items should be purchased so that they come to know the amount
of content in the product. UK introduces the labeling scheme that is helpful for the parents to
analyze and recognize the product.
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Barriers in the Plan of Action
There are a number of obstacles that can be faced by the health department while implementing
these plans. Planning is not sufficient to get the positive results, the implementation is also
important for the same. As above discussed, they are some of the key features or
recommendation that can take place to reduce obesity across the UK. But the obstacles that can
be possible at the time of implementation are as follows: -
1. It may be possible that the producers and importers do not follow the targets or reduce the
sugar content in the products because every person in business never wants to reduce its
sales and profits. There are many possibilities that they will use some other alternatives
of sugar in the product.
2. Another barrier can be that there are many schools which are not following the standards
set by the government for the schools and they just provide the meal to the children
without taking care of the children’s tastes and quality of the meal because of the
commission grants and less funds (Irish Heart Foundation, 2015).
3. These plans also increase the costs by taking these all activities in action
4. Lack of knowledge among the parents is also the biggest barrier or a negative point
because it is not possible that the parents every time check the amount of content in the
products that leads to the increase in calorie in the human body.
5. It is also not possible to force children to do the physical activities or participate in sports
activities unless they do not have the interests in doing any activity (Magnan, 2012).
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Conclusion
Every city has its pros and cons in every sector and as seen above the health sector of the UK is
performing so well in order to reduce the childhood obesity. The benefits of reducing the obesity
are clear from the health policy- live the healthy life and reduce the inequalities. For the healthy
life, government, people, schools, manufacturing industry and public sector play an important
role in the successful health policy and to bring a change in the society. They all are supported in
making healthy food and beverages and respect the choices of the people or children. The plan of
action if properly followed by the England, then the rate of obesity will definitely reduce by the
next 10 years. The childhood obesity is reduced if the policy will respect the choices of
consumers. The launching of this plan is not the end; it is just a start or the first step. The end
will take place when one could see the difference rates of obesity. After launching this plan it is
very important to monitor the plan and assess the progress and then take the corrective actions if
required at any point of time.
Also, there are some barriers in the way of implementation of policy like some of the schools are
not following the standards that set by the government to reduce obesity. Talking about the
producers and importers, they always focus on their sales rather than to change their
manufacturing habits. Another barrier is that the some of the parents are also very negligent at
one point of time. They allow their children to feed junk food and drinks. The parents sometime
never see the labels and the amount of sugar in the products before purchasing the products and
they are careless about the school meals also. It is very important that the people should
concentrate on the children and engage them with some physical activities like running, any
sports game, dancing, etc. so that these activities helps them to burn their calories in any way.
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http://obesitycampaign.org/documents/StudyAssessingtheEconomicsofObesityandObesityInterve
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