THE fight against junk food and dealing with the growing obesity crisis is likely to take 30 years, the new chairwoman of the Food Standards Agency said yesterday.

Dame Deirdre Hutton thinks that it will take a generation because people only accept simple messages. Meanwhile, she will target companies that can do most to improve diets.

In an interview with The Times, she said that her mission was to shake up the ready meal and convenience food sector and “to achieve a competitive market in healthy food”.

“Of course, I would love people to cook more but you have to recognise the time pressures on people today. Anyway, when people have convenience food, it does not have to be unhealthy.”

She said food companies and supermarkets had already recognised that healthy convenience foods were their fastest-growing sector. However, she wants them to do much more. Food companies have been pressurised to cut salt levels in recipes. Even more salt cuts are now demanded and reductions in fat, saturated fat and sugar are also on the agenda.

Dame Deirdre recognised that it was easier to cut out an additive, such as salt, than fat and sugar, which are often integral parts of food. Nevertheless, she wants to find sensible levels of fat and sugar in diets.

For the moment, the main message to consumers is to continue to cut salt. The Sid the Slug campaign has spurred six million people to cut down. The recommended daily amount for an adult is 6g a day, although the daily average intake is still about 9g.

Dame Deirdre likened her aim to the “Clunk Click Every Trip” seatbelt campaign. “This was a brilliant campaign. It gave one clear message and it was repeated over and over again for 30 years. By dealing with one message at a time, it is more likely to get across. It is giving people something they can achieve,” she said.

Fast food outlets and the big foodservice companies are in her sights. A ban on junk food advertising during children’s TV is likely to be a first objective. This issue is still being discussed by Ofcom, but the agency has devised a formula to help it distinguish between healthy and junk food.

This nutritional methodology has outraged the food industry. Oven chips and a spaghetti bolognaise ready meal may qualify for an advertisement slot but foods popularly considered healthy such as cornflakes, bran flakes or a Caesar salad with low-fat dressing are branded less healthy.

Dame Deirdre is adamant in supporting the formula. “If it did not produce surprising results, it would not be right. This formula identifies the levels of sugar and fat in food that people thought was healthy.”

She has also rejected the call for the formula to be based on portion sizes instead of 100g amounts. “There is no certainty in portions at all and it depends on someone’s sex, greed, weight and all sorts of things.”

She said, however, that the formula would be reviewed after its first year.

A proposed traffic-light system of food labelling to help shoppers choose more healthily has also irritated food companies. Manufacturers and supermarkets have condemned red, amber and green warnings on food as simplistic. Most have imposed their own version of a healthy label. Dame Deirdre insisted, however, that she would choose the labelling system that most consumers understood.

“When you look at the number of people medically affected by poor diet in terms of ill health or early death from a diet-related disease, we have to do something about it. If you look at the level of obesity in kids and the way it is growing, it’s terrifying.”

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