Government tackling obesity missing a key element

[HeeeeyDuggee]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-53546151

Government have announced measures to tackle obesity

AIBU to think that although it’s all well and good banning buy 1 get 1 free and advertising before 21:00 what they really need to do is make fresh fruit and vegetables and good quality meat cheaper for people to buy.

It may be a regional thing but buying enough veg for the week here costs a fortune and it goes off within days. Where as you can buy a massive packet nuggets and chips for much less.

Pre covid it was bad enough for lots of families but given the ramifications on jobs and the economy I think lots more families will struggle to afford decent healthy food.

Ps not a fat persons bashing thread I myself am over weight

It's interesting. I've only just started thinking about it all, promoted by Boris's 'war on fat' and this thread.

The modern SSRI and SNRI anti depressants are linked to weight gain ironically.

I think it's about having portion sizes right and including plenty veg.

Examples
We had chicken Kievs tonight. Not very healthy but we had grated carrot/coriander salad, broccoli and new potatoes with it.

One Kiev each and we're all adult size. That won't make us fat.

Portion size is important-for example our burritos for six would only have 750g mince as I'd put beans and veg in there mix and there'd be salads.

If I did pizza we'd have half a pizza each-thin bases homemade and salad.

If we had roast chicken it serves six, again with plenty veg and we'd have soup from it the next day.

With curry I'd do one bag of frozen chicken thighs (about 1.5 thighs each) but add chickpeas, veg, and have make a lentil dhal. Small naan or half, or rice.

If portions are sensible day to day you can eat some puddings, or biscuits or crisps occasionally and not put on weight.

Cooking, like everything else gets quicker and easier the more you do it.

I always have some plan for the next few days as I'm cooking for six so spontaneous would be harder!

It's not always that people are cash poor, many are time poor, or just sheer exhausted.
I am very overweight. I know that. I also know how to eat healthily, and how to cook.

However, after a whole day at work on my feet, then caring for DS with adhd, and finally getting him to sleep at around 930pm, I am far too tired to begin cooking.
So a microwave meal, or take away, or oven chips, is all I have energy to make.

I always have good intentions of batch cooking at the weekend, but never really get the time.

I signed up for weight management sessions with the gp a few years ago.
Then I found that in was expected to attend every week, and the clinic was only run twice a week at 10am-11am. So absolutely no use for someone working full time.

Tried slimming world etc, but it's all v patronising, I know what I should be doing, it's just having the time and energy to do it.

To be honest, the best thing the government could do to help me lose weight is offer some proper respite care for my ds, then I could do some exercise and not be so shattered all the time.

I think the same might be the case for those on low incomes. They know what to do, but after a whole day of physical, low paid work, they are too tired to start cooking.

Hello squirrels

It really less about food and more about getting enough sleep and managing stress.

You can’t tell someone who works 10 hours a day on a zero hour contract, can’t say no in case they’re not asked next time, has caring duties either side of their hour long commute and can’t get a gp appointment or an hour for an exercise class even if they want them that the actual issue is the multipack kit Kat they had at lunch and pack of crisps on the way home.

The government can actually do one

Someone mentioned anti-depressants and weight gain, and there is something in that. I gained a shitload of weight on Citalopram, and to a lesser extent Venlafaxine, and it's taken a while to lose it. Luckily I'm on Sertraline now and it hasn't caused me to gain weight, but it does make me wonder if there's an alternative to meds that cause weight gain.

But Freddo if you do a full day's physical work, it's probably not exercise you need. You are clearly active. Weight gain is mostly about what you eat, not exercise. I get that it's hard to summon the energy to cook healthy food after work, but eating badly (and the resulting weight) will give you less energy and make you more exhausted. There are healthy meals that take barely more time than choosing and ordering a takeaway.

if you want people to be both mentally and physically healthy, first give them good lives. Things which would make an actual difference: well paid jobs, lower actual working hours, good mental health support, safe communities...These are the things which need to be fixed first.

Oh come off it! Two thirds of the country are thought to be overweight. Are you saying that nobody can lose weight and be healthier until we live in Utopia? Because that is bobbins.

why the government are trying to tackle obesity on one hand and giving half-price meals at fast-food restaurants with the other.

You can buy a salad you know! Or regular sized meal instead of super-sized. Or water/tea/cofee instead of a sugary fizzy drink.

People really need to start taking responsibility for themselves and stop blaming everyone else.

twitter.com/bazzacollins/status/1287756600904646657?s=20

Barry Collins
@bazzacollins
·
4h
Jamie Oliver on TV, saying he’s been campaigning against junk food for years. Here’s the menu from Jamie’s Italian at Gatwick, where of the two kids’ desserts, fresh fruit costs twice as much as a "jumbo scoop” of ice cream and chocolate sauce.

nothing open on a Sunday!

Except the shops that were! Granted, many types of shop were closed on Sundays, but others were open. We had a newsagents shop. We were open 7 days. Sunday was our busiest day as the other shops on our parade were closed. It was a steady stream from 6am to 6pm of kids buying sweets, adults buying chocolate bars & pop, (and cigarettes, newspapers etc). At the end of a typical Sunday, our shop looked like it'd been hit by a plague of locusts and we'd spend Sunday evening re-stocking the counter and shelves. The only area that wasn't emptied was the greeting cards stand as it was then illegal to selling greetings cards on a Sunday!

Its so much easier for government to let people think its all down to their own laziness/ lack of willpower rather than accepting any responsibility and making big changes in policy.

And then there is always the massive public outcry when any govt tries to bring in "draconian" rules to prevent our freedom of choice!!!

Just look at the way parents would pass burgers/chips through school fences when "the nasty government" brought in healthy foods into school meals.

@Iamthewombat there’s a huge difference and distance between setting provision for a basic level of wellbeing in a “first world” country is setting people up for success and creating “utopia”. We can definitely do the first and create better support and working conditions as standard, support workers over of businesses and reverse some of the worse impacts of the government’s austerity cuts (which by the way have had no effect what’s so ever on national debt, and the magic money tree is alive and well when they need it to be) but sure, if you really want to believe fat-phobic propaganda about how fat people are lazy and have bad diets then go ahead. Divide and conquer has always been their way. Shame to still be falling for it though.

I think we have lost self pride. Someone up thread described Switzerland, they don't snack as much, they buy healthier food, eat seasonal food.
In my life time people used to be looked down on if they stood around eating chips, looked down on if they were fat, looked down on for not feeding their children well, (someone upthread wrote about the women feeding turkey twizzlers and chips through the school fence when Jamie Oliver introduced healthy school dinners), I'm not talking about people too poor to eat well, you would pity people in that position - somehow we've lost any shame. Nowadays everyone can do as they please with no shame, no criticism, on MN if someone dares to criticise another they are slated.
We get criticised for daring to fat shame - I'm sure some of the reason French people and, from the sound of it, the Swiss have standards they choose to keep is that being fat, not exercising is looked down on. Whereas in the UK we somehow are proud of our lazy unhealthy ways. How did that happen?
I think its partly laziness - it's quicker to put oven chips in the oven and fish fingers in the pan than it is to peel and prepare veg, wash salad, plan a meal so that it is ready to go on the table at a certain time. A proper meal also takes more thought eg having everything fresh in the fridge to cook.
We need to reintroduce pride. It takes willpower, effort, planning, a wish to hold standards, that won't happen by magic.

Except obesity in Switzerland is rising Blue, the pp in Geneva is speaking about what she personally observes. The OECD stats say something different.

I think the Gov has been in the pockets of the supermarkets.
Tony Blair changed the drinking laws so that people could drink all night rather than stopping at 10, so that people could chuck their beer and wine in the food trolley.
That was not right imv. Alcohol is addictive but the Gov makes so much from tax on it that they WANT people to drink it.
Likewise huge supermarkets meant the end of local food shops.
Because of the difficult times Tesco (I think it is) is cutting what it is paying for food, so screwing the farmers and veg growers even more. How can animal wellfare be maintained if the supermarkets just squeeze the famers. Supermarkets are worried about their share price, not providing good value food.

the clinic was only run twice a week at 10am-11am. So absolutely no use for someone working full time I really strongly feel this is a major issue with many nhs services - only available during “office hours”. Personally it was an issue for me with mh as very few employers will let you have a couple of hours (inc travelling time) off every week for therapy! I’m not saying nhs staff should work more hours, but more suitable hours? Eg why can’t some work 10-7 instead of 8-5? It might even suit some of them! In fact thinking about it if they have partners/spouses who work office hours it could mean they need to use less paid childcare and have more time with dc at home? Eg nhs person works 12-8, office hours person collects dc from childcare and is covering the evening?

Yes a few shops were open on sundays but supermarkets and other food retail generally wasn’t, it was seen as a day when the shops were closed so people planned around it.

Now people shop for them being closed Christmas DAY as if an apocalypse is coming!

I think some kind of help to tackle emotional eating and food addiction is needed

@Bluemoooon i can assure your that there are plenty of overweight French and Swiss people, and people are just as arrogant about being free to do as they like in those countries. Hell in my DMIL village 70 years ago children would be given a shot of calvados in the morning in midwinter to keep them warm on the way to school. So let’s not go about putting the French and Swiss on a pedestal, and using a very narrow selection as representative of the whole population. Again you’ve bought the “lazy and bad diet” propaganda and added a moral dimension too. I tell you what, I’ll bet you actual money that this time next year the general population will not have lost weight from the BYGOF offers being removed. But supermarket revenue will be up, despite earnings being down in the post-Covid, brexit-induced recession.

Why do we have so much snacking food around - which is hard to resist, when eg the french don't do that to the same extent as us. Why do we do it.
I think the difference is the availability of yummy food and snacks and a lack of stigma for being fat. Or that is my problem. I hate being overweight and attempt to cut back on sugar but usually fail to.

Again you’ve bought the “lazy and bad diet” propaganda and added a moral dimension too
Someone must be buying chocolate chip hot cross buns or my local supermarket wouldn't be stocking them.

[quote florascotia2]tootired You are quite right that the junk food industry uses clever marketing strategies, but people 2 or 3 generations ago honestly DID have a different attitude towards food. I don't think that will power was the main issue, however.

1. Habit and custom were extremely important (and society was probably more conventional then). People generally did not snack, or take food to (eg) the cinema etc , and it was seen as uncouth to eat on public transport or in the street, except pehaps for ice-cream at the seaside.

2. Deprivation of food was also used as a punishment. Children were denied (eg) pudding for bad behaviour or sent to bed with no supper. Today, we would not approve, of course. But my point is that the experience of long gaps between meals and even outright hunger was quite a common one. Some children did try to be fussy, but the attitude was much more likely to be 'eat up or go hungry - there is no alternative'. I'm not saying that was good, but it was a common point of view.

3. Availability was also a major factor, both for supply and demand:

• In the 1950s and 60s many people could remember World War II rationing, and the very limited - but adequate - range of foodstuffs available then. They honestly were grateful for whatever was around. They did not expect heaped plates or anything fancy. Wasting food was abhorrent, even sinful. I remember older relatives telling me this, very clearly.

• As I said in an earlier post, fast food was simply not available three generations ago - the first UK burger chains and chicken fryers and pizza places did not open until the 1960 and 1970s. The number of UK coffee shops increased 800 per cent in the 1990s. Shops did not stock shelves full of crisps and snacks until the 1960s; UK crisp consumption doubled in that decade. Around the same time, supermarkets' cheap wine and beer made alcohol much more widely available. Consumption of alcohol at home skyrocketed. Sweet fizzy drink consumption also increased rapidly around that time. In the 1950s, it was most unusual.

The result of all the above was that a lot of the food 'temptation' that people have to cope with today simply was not there two or three generations ago.

4. There was not so much food available in peoples' homes:

• Most ordinary houses did not have fridges until around 1960. Freezers and microwaves came much, much later. There was just not the opportunity to open a fridge door and graze on snacks, or to put an instant meal in the microwave.
• Shopping habits were different, too. Supermarkets were not widespread until the 1970s. Small local shops closed at 5.30 pm, on the whole. Garages etc did not sell junk snacks day and night. If there was no food in the house - or the butter had gone rancid or the milk had gone sour (no fridge etc) - people simply had to wait until the shops opened again.

5. Food was proportionately much more expensive for most ordinary people. It was valued and not wasted. Budgeting and portion control was an economic necessity. There was very, very little spare money to pay for extras. Here are some figures: " In the 1950s we spent a third of our income on food shopping, but in 1974 this had gone down to 24%. By 2016 food shopping accounted for just 10.5% of our income." source: www.which.co.uk/news/2019/11/heres-how-our-food-prices-compare-to-30-years-ago-and-you-might-be-surprised/[/quote] They also had different attitudes towards medication.

A standard prescription for a mum that had put on weight in the 1960s was one for amphetamines. And then another in a few weeks' time for Valium so they could go to sleep/deal with the comedowns.

My mother was on them (along with almost everybody else she knew) and, combined with smoking, she was slim - not skinny, just slim. Because, in her words 'You didn't eat, you had loads of energy and, even if you didn't have a huge pram, you didn't catch the bus because you couldn't bear to stop moving'.

Her osteoporosis was diagnosed at age 38.

Why do we have so much snacking food around - which is hard to resist

That's subjective though, isn't it? I'm not a big snacker (I'll have fruit / veg in the main, if at all). I'm not overly bothered by snack food, if I don't have it. If I do have it, I find it's a slippery slope.

I had to find willpower to lose baby weight (waaaaaaay too much ) and I've tried to keep it going since. The longer you do it, the easier it is, I find (that's how habits form, I suppose).

@SheepandCow

Fewer people smoke nowadays. We no longer have easy access to valium. People struggling with grinding poverty need something to make life slightly more tolerable. They turn to one of the few remaining available small pleasures. Something to forget, just briefly, the relentless struggle. A cake or a bag of chips or an iced bun.

We all need some kind of treat. When you have almost nothing, when life is a constant struggle to afford the essentials, when you worry all the time about how to house and feed your kids. Day in day out. They can't afford holidays, they can't afford beauty treatments or massages, they can't afford day trips or new clothes. Now they have to live on a diet of porridge, lentils, tinned fish, and cheap apples. Healthy diets and lifestyles for the poor are not quite as they are for the more privileged.

There’s a scene in one of Helen Forresters memoirs (Two pence to cross the Mersey series) where her parents in 1930s Liverpool, utterly broke spend half the weeks housekeeping on cream cakes, and she makes exactly this point there. They take their pleasure where they can as a relief from the absolute relentless daily misery. Plus ca change?

@Bluemoooon If you’re struggling with weight and snacking, try eating more protein, slightly less carbs and getting your 8 hours sleep and even more if you can. Then, add some exercise where you can and build muscle, as it keeps burning calories even at rest. I guarantee this will help curb mindless snacking. Please don’t internalise fat-phobia, guilt and self loathing as it just leads to bad mental health and not treating yourself as kindly as you should. You’ll find it much easier to be healthy overall if you’re happy and forgiving of yourself.

Havent RTFT.but i think time is a real.problem. if both parents work/ commute around 10 hours a.day and have children's homework to supervise, bedtimes to do, school uniforms to wash/iron how is there any time to make healthy meals from scratch every night? Unless its somehow okay for them to spend most of the.weekend in the kitchen making meals for the week ahead between ferrying DC to swimming/football/ dancing or whatever.

Seems a bit of a joyless existence to me with very little if any "me time"