Certainty needed on the impacts of UPFs

In a year long UKRI and Sciencewise public dialogue HVM designed and delivered a process support people across the UK to make sense of UPFs. The aim of the dialogue was principally to ensure that the views of people across the UK feed into UKRI research and innovation research priorities and programmes on UPFs at an early stage.

Our report is published today. It highlights key messages from the 132 public dialogue participants from across society, broadly reflecting the UK population. They:

• Are surprised and shocked at how embedded UPFs are in UK diets - particularly when compared with other European countries;

• Call for greater awareness of UPFs and their impacts, particularly in relation to child

• Share high ambitions for research to bring certainty in this complex area of our food system;

• Including urgent research on areas they feel have the potential to cause greatest harm;

• Strong concern that society has left decisions on food availability, affordability and accessibility to the market;

• Scepticism on industry-led messaging on UPFs;

• A high-level of trust is placed in publicly funded researchers, scientists and specialists, collaborating, including with industry, to provide credible and transparent information on UPFs;

• A call for a redistribution of power informed by scientific evidence;

Participants see this as a vast topic. They believe the dialogue was a foundational piece of deliberation from which much more work should flow to make sense of UPFs, including for research, policy and action.

“We need specific evidence to support government policy development and decrease the impact on everyone’s health.”

To find out more about how we conducted the public dialogue read the Technical Appendix.