Obesity can be tackled by educating consumers, says nutritionist

Poor nutrition among UK consumers could be improved if they had a basic understanding of how their food worked, a leading public health nutritionist has insisted. 

Speaking to FoodManufacture.co.uk for this exclusive podcast, Alison Lennox, Professor of Public Health Nutrition at the University of Surrey, said consumers needed to understand more about what’s in their food to stem the obesity crisis.

“They don’t have the basic nutritional knowledge to realise what’s good information and what’s bad information.

Good information and bad information

“When we have an obesity crisis like we have, you have to remember it’s a balance between what we take in and what we expend.”

Lennox was speaking at the Leatherhead Food Research’s Nutrition Day earlier this month (March).

She added that consumers needed to find a balance between eating enough food to gain the right amount of nutrients, whilst expending enough energy to prevent weight gain.