Workers in Britain are less productive than their counterparts in the US, France and Germany, according to the Office for National Statistics.
Its latest figures show that for every hour of labour, a typical French worker produces almost 20pc more than their British equivalent. The gap rises to just over one-quarter when comparing British workers to Americans.
Mr Dimbleby called for a crack down on junk food to bring down obesity rates and address the problem.
More than 25pc of adults in the UK are considered obese, according to government data from 2021, while a further 37.9pc are overweight.
Mr Dimbleby said: “The fundamental [question] is – are people fit and ready to work? Food is a huge part of that.”
Mr Dimbleby, the son of the veteran broadcaster David Dimbleby, was hired by Michael Gove in 2019 to lead a major review of the UK food system when Mr Gove was the environment secretary. The result was a series of policy recommendations called the National Food Strategy.
These included calls to: introduce a tax on sugar and salt and use the revenues to provide fruit and vegetables to low income families; make it mandatory for large food companies with over 250 employees to report annual data on their sales of junk food; and extend the availability of free school meals.
However, Mr Dimbleby resigned from government work last year, criticising what he called “insane” inaction from ministers and an “ultra-free-market ideology” that he claimed made it impossible to enact change.
He said. “I was incredibly frustrated on health. More people die every year as a result of diet than died during the worst Covid year. But because it’s a slow moving problem, we find it impossible to do anything.”
He criticised one of the few policies the Government has introduced – mandatory calorie labelling on menus – as “a bad policy for good reasons”.
He said: “What a policy like that does is creates a lot of bureaucracy, p***** everyone off, doesn’t have an effect.”
Since leaving the Government, Mr Dimbleby has set up Bramble, a new £50m venture capital fund which will invest in companies and technologies working to improve sustainability in the food system.
He said: “I have done all I can do on the regulatory stuff, so I’m going to try and direct more money into the space, both on environment and on health and food security.”
