Government guidelines on obesity should focus on diet as well as exercise, according to the head of the NHS.
Simon Stevens, chief executive of NHS England, was agreeing with comments made by a Conservative peer while giving evidence at a Lords committee hearing on the sustainability of the health service.
“We have a big, big problem with diet and the trouble is that the advice of the Department of Health and Nice [The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence] . . . they are still talking about diet and exercise,” Lord McColl of Dulwich, emeritus professor of surgery at Guy’s Hospital in London, said. “Exercise has very little to do with it. It is good for other things but not for reducing obesity.”
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