The government has released a four-pronged approach to reducing obesity, because of the condition’s links with coronavirus complications in older people. 

As someone who works in child and adolescent mental health services, I generally find myself braced when there is a public health initiative on obesity. Often, these initiatives provide black-and-white standards for behaviour and food, which can be immensely triggering for young people with a susceptibility to an eating disorder, or who already are suffering from one. 

However, looking at this latest initiative, I find much to applaud in the fight against obesity, and little to potentially exacerbate eating disorders. 

Avoiding fat-shaming

I am pleased to see an implicit acknowledgment at last that it is an obesogenic society - and not individual failures in willpower - that has contributed towards the obesity epidemic. 

The government has avoided fat-shaming, which is great, as guilt is generally counter-productive in weight-loss approaches. James Corden famously and eloquently outlined this dynamic.

Humans are triggered to eat in the presence of food: we are naturally attracted towards high-fat and high-sweet food, like the milk we first feed on. Our bodies find it easy to overeat mildly on a daily basis, which generally feels nice and rather comforting. By contrast, we find it very difficult to mildly under-eat: we will experience hunger-including cravings, headaches, low energy and crankiness. 

Crucially, being in calorie deficit reduces willpower, making “a diet” a perfect storm, where we will be triggered to overeat if food is easily available. This is why 80 per cent of diets fail, and indeed are predictive of future weight gain. 

I am therefore pleased that the government focuses on reducing the triggers to eat, by banning special offers on high-fat and high-sugar food, and avoiding high-profile placement for these foods.

Tackling obesity in schools

What are the implications of these changes for schools and colleges? Well, schools and colleges have a role to play in starting children off on the right path to avoiding obesity. But, crucially, this is not about knowledge: this is about behaviour change.

Schools are used to imparting knowledge to children about...well, everything. But what we know about health education is that it is poorly associated with future health behaviour. We know that telling people that smoking is bad or that they should wear seatbelts results in remarkably little behaviour change. 

What does result in behaviour change is a barrier to make a behaviour more difficult, and habits to make a behaviour easier. In psychology, these are the “friction”, which is stopping the behaviour and the “habit” to do it. 

Healthy eating should not be taught; it should be practised. When you want to teach children to line up nicely in Reception or pay attention in class, teachers are only too aware that they need to use all their behaviour-management techniques. You know that telling them to do it is not enough; you have to set up the environment for them to behave in a particular way. 

Getting into good habits

Starting children off on a good relationship with food means getting into good habits: exercise; moderation; few triggers to overeat. Crucially, there should be no banned foods, which make us crave them more, but plenty of opportunity for nutritious eating. 

We need to start children on the path of neither dieting nor overeating. Dieting is unhelpful in the fight against obesity, and puts children at risk of eating disorders. 

I have written before about the importance of exercise for mental health, but it also plays a crucial role in the avoidance of weight gain. Finding a source of movement that a child loves is potentially the most important job a school can do in maximising their future wellbeing. 

I would encourage schools to think outside of the box here, and in particular to ask whether there is an unconscious sex bias in the provision of school sport that is offputting to many teenage girls.

I do have some reservations about the government’s initiative, however. I wonder about the effectiveness of calorie labelling on restaurant food consumption. That seems again to be linked to the idea of personal responsibility and willpower, which has been clearly disproved as a strategy for preventing obesity. Worse, it is potentially triggering for those susceptible to an eating disorder. 

Overall, I give the government B+ for the initiative: better than usual, but still room for improvement.

Dr Tara Porter is a clinical psychologist in the NHS and private practice. She also works at the Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families, and is Tes’ mental health columnist. She tweets as @drtjap. The views expressed are her own