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Fitness & Health

12th Oct 2018

Pizzas to be made smaller or lose their toppings under new Government health plans

Marc Mayo

Does that include pineapple?

Savoury foods including pizzas and pies could be shrunk down as part of a fresh government initiative to tackle obesity in young people.

Following the introduction of a sugary drink tax in 2016, the next shelf of our fridges to be hit are the easy-to-cook meals sold by supermarkets as well as in restaurants.

This includes ready meals and sandwiches with the plans centred around reducing their calorie content, reducing pizzas to under 928 calories and savoury pies to under 695 calories, according to draft proposals due to be announced in the spring.

As you might have guessed, this is well under the current size of most takeaways and could force them to remove the number of toppings on each pizza or even shrink them by 20 per cent to meet these requirements.

The government has long been formulating plans to reduce childhood obesity across the United Kingdom, which are currently at record levels with youngsters found to be eating around 500 calories over the recommended amount.

And representatives of McDonald’s, KFC, Domino’s Pizza and Deliveroo have been meeting with government officials to discuss what they can do to tackle this growing problem.

Recent figures from National Child Measurement Programme labelled 34.3 per cent of ten to 11-year-olds as ‘overweight’ with those categorised as ‘severely obese’ now over four per cent, having been around three per cent ten years ago.

It was also revealed that Camberwell Green in South London became the first UK borough where more than half of children are considered overweight, with the capital, in particular, struggling to keep its youngsters healthy, as well as the Midlands.