Seòmar agus comataidhean

I have loads of questions, some of which are based on what the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee discussed yesterday.

I will direct my first question to Dr Gillian Purdon. The population health framework talks about health-harming products, and we know that the framework is supposed to align with the good food nation plan. Health-harming products include tobacco, vapes, alcohol and gambling, but health-harming foods are not mentioned. Many people will know that I have been following the work of Henry Dimbleby, Chris van Tulleken, Tim Spector and now Dr Stuart Gillespie on ultra-processed foods and ultra-high-processed foods. I am curious to know why ultra-high-processed foods are not included in the population health framework.

I have a wee supplementary question on data, and I also have a question for Gillian Purdon.

Yesterday, the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee took evidence on the good food nation plan from the Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs, Land Reform and Islands. We are having a discussion about it in this committee today, and the good food nation plan is about local government as well.

I was interested in what the cabinet secretary said about data evolving. We might not know what data we need to collect, and it is complex, so we need to reach out to the people who are part of analysing what information we will need.

Lisa Hislop-Smith, what needs to happen on the ground to engage with food producers—who are our farmers, and even the small market gardeners—to acknowledge their contribution to the good food nation plan? Does there need to be more direct on-the-ground engagement? That goes back to what Adam Forrest said about the people on the ground being the food producers.

David Thomson just mentioned that there has been a calorie reduction due to the reformulation of products, which is welcome. That makes me think about how the good food nation plan can be implemented if there are challenges with advertising. Some policies are reserved to Westminster and cannot be delivered in Scotland, and I am not sure whether that has been considered. There are things that we can control in Scotland, such as advertisements on bus stops, but we cannae control advertising on television, for example. Does the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020 impede or enable the delivery of the good food nation plan?

Does the food commission need to help by providing a template for each local authority and health board to follow, which would provide guidance?

I have a supplementary on ultra-high-processed food. I am thinking about the work of Henry Dimbleby, in which he talks about reformulation of the foods that we are buying—that is, reducing the salt, the fat and the sugar. I am thinking also about Pekka Puska’s work in Finland to add mushrooms to sausages as a population health strategy, which was done by working with the processors.

The whole system is complicated, and there are things that can be done. Is reformulation part of the plan to support there being less fat, sugar and salt in food?

Loads of questions are going through my head, but I will just stick with what you said about local authorities and health boards. Each local authority and health board has to come up with a plan, which should reflect the Government’s proposals in its good food nation plan. Might there be conflict between a local authority’s land use strategy—we have been looking at issues such as building houses on greenfield sites—and a health board’s plan, which might be focused more on health than on land use? We are trying to support changes to our food system locally, but how will we avoid such conflict? I will stick with local instead of global.

I know that Carlos Monteiro in Brazil has come up with the Nova classification, although it has had criticism and is not quite right. We talked earlier about sausages and heard that even putting a stock cube in soup makes it processed but might reduce the salt intake, for instance. I know that we need to work on the definitions.

I want to ask about the links to poverty and to imposed austerity, which has led to poverty. How is that covered in the plan to support better consumption and maybe reduction of foods that are high in fat, sugar and salt and ultra-processed foods?

Good morning, cabinet secretary, to you and your officials.

Before I ask my questions about ultra-processed food, I am interested in the language in the foreword of the national plan. At the very bottom of page 2, it says:

“without the full powers of independence we do not have the complete control of all the levers of food policy.”

I am interested to hear about the powers that we do not have. Is it related to the impact of the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020 and our ability to lever supermarkets or cross-border trading? What do we need in order to have all the levers to deliver a plan?

Thanks for that clarification.

I am interested in ultra-processed foods and the emerging research that says that they are not good for you. In the national population health framework, health-harming products are listed as tobacco, vapes, alcohol and gambling, but ultra-processed foods are not listed. Is that because we are too early in the research to pin UPFs as a problem and as a health-harming product?

I am also interested in the tension between localised food availability, food processing and the role of major supermarket chains, and in what role the national plan plays in addressing some of the tension between the big, global producers and the whole supply chain. How will the national food plan help to address some of the tensions that we see?