A NANNY state plot to slap cigarette-style warnings on chocolate bars and crisp packets was last night branded “crackpot” by critics.
Downing Street also distanced itself from the joyless plans cooked up by former government food tsar Henry Dimbleby.
The healthy eating campaigner is calling for sweeping restrictions on junk food including forcing supermarkets to display them less prominently.
He 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 Crave 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.”
Although Labour is pressing ahead with a ban on junk food advertising, Sir Keir Starmer’s processing said “we have no plans” for the smoking-like disclaimers.
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.”
It came as a study found that listing calorie counts next to items on pub and restaurant menus does not result in punters eating less.
Liverpool University researchers studied 3,300 people at 330 eateries in 2021 and again in 2022 after mandatory labelling was introduced by the Government.
Writing in the journal Nature Human Behaviour, they found people said they read the information but did not significantly reduce their calorie intake.
Mr Snowdon added: “Yet another nanny state policy crashes and burns.”
