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

Boris’s little video about his recent weight loss and health drive made me laugh. Describing how he goes running with his dog every morning he says something along the lines of: “and the best thing about going running first thing in the morning is that whatever else happens in your day, it’s not going to be as bad as that”.

Yeah, mate, you’ve really sold it to me.

@Alicay our experience in Lausanne was similar. Plus food in switzerland is expensive - no chance affording junk food, and certainly not eating out frequently.fast food as such doesn’t exist a lot, and mcdonalds etc would set you back £15 - per person, and not for a lot of food. We had good salaries, but eating out was on e per month if that. Similar for alcohol.
Most people brought packed lunches (no crisps in sight, loads of brown bread, little meat as that is really expensive as well).
What was cheap is seasonal veg and fruit, and brown bread. Junk food and meat is very, very Expensive so either not bought, bought as a special treat, or stretched with veg.
And sport is pretty normal, at least long walks

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

But the French men are just as overweight as the English (WHO data, France is slightly lower rates than the whole of UK) The French women are considerably less likely to be overweight, but then if snacking is the cause of obesity then you'd need a mechanism for only French men to snack.

Please, if you're going to say "X causes fat people", please at least don't make up stuff to support this single viewpoint. There's plenty of people on the thread who've pointed to whole raft of things which lead to and correlated to people being overweight. Going oh no, it's the biscuits, really doesn't help anyone, particularly those wanting to lose weight.

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)

Please spare us your political pontifications. The national debt has nothing to do with obesity.

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.

Not once have I said that fat people are lazy, and you have no idea what my opinion of ‘fat-phobic propaganda’ is. Mud slinging is a sign of a weak argument.

Are you claiming that most fat people are NOT lazy and that most fat people don’t have bad diets? Where is your evidence base for that assertion?

Tackling poverty would have a major impact on obesity.

Not read the thread but we are an island and yet accessing UK fish, is woefully poor and difficult and expensive.

Yy to better meat.

@Iamthewombat Actually Austerity cuts have a lot to do with setting up the current socioeconomic environment that effects health and wellbeing. So yes, obesity is linked to national debt.

Massive eye roll on your “mudslinging” and “political pontifications” comments. Imagine the level of privilege you must have to be upset at me bringing politics into a debate about government policy change. The reasons why people are fat are not just down to diet and lack of exercise. It’s reductive and blinkered to suggest so. So no I won’t be trying to unwrap your false dichotomy. Nice try though.

We're a slim family. Dh not so.much I.suppose. we both leave the house before 730..home by 6. Kids did activities. This is how it works:
Monday and Tuesday- kids eat at cm. Dh makes veggie wraps or quite something..in winter it's chilli or curry all week
Mon he runs
Tuesday I do.2 gym classes straight from work. Home at 9.
We'd- pasta and sauce. Kids' activities. Gym for me
Thursday- fish/couscous/ sweet potato wedge
Fri fish, chips, beer
Sat pizza / veggie burgers dh gym
Sun- wild card. Whatever dh fancies making. I.might do spin

Lunches are packed or school dinners.
Dh thinks I have a problem cos I do pudding (anything with sugar like a club or fairy cake) after every meal. I have to watch dh and his portion sizes though. But it is possible to have healthy food and work a lot. It's our more relaxed days when.we. eat shit.

This is an interesting thread. I really don't think blaming and shaming people ever brings change. I put on a load of weight during lockdown, going from an active job where I'd walk a couple of hours a day, naturally, using public transport, to sitting on my bottom working from home. There was also a biscuit availability issue. I have now been using the app 'Noom' for a month, having never seriously dieted before, and it's been great. It really addresses the psychological side of over-eating/eating the wrong things. It turned out my diet was more or less ok but I'd evidently slipped into eating portions more appropriate for my overweight DH (who lost control of his weight in his late 20s when he stopped doing huge amounts of sport but didn't sufficiently adjust his diet). He prefers to get his weight down by doing epic amounts of exercise, which is working for him to an extent, but I hope now I'm being careful with portions it might have a good effect on him too.

I think that the stats show that the UK population are consuming quite a lot fewer calories on average than previous generations, but that we are much less physically active? So that's where I'd start - as previous posters have suggested, with reforming school PE and subsidising exercise facilities and really pushing to get working hours down, providing safer cycling etc.

I was shocked (but not surprised) by the poster whose council-run gym and pool is charging £93 a month. A price comparison I did of my outer London borough for swimming to nearby areas of Kent suggested that Kent was subsidising their facilities about 33% more. So it's always worth shopping around (and I got a great deal once by joining a hotel fitness club - they were much quieter on weekdays than on weekends and the prices reflected that). But when I visited Canada on holiday a couple of years ago, in the local neighbourhoods of Montreal and Toronto, the school swimming pools were open to the public all summer for free or for a nominal donation. Both cities also had neighbourhood splash parks that were maintained by trained, uniformed students who did it as a summer job. We could do a lot more in the UK!

@Lovely1a2b3c

Tackling poverty would have a major impact on obesity.

Only if everyone poor is obese...

Adults in poverty approx 15%
Adults obese about approx 28% overweight approx 35% (total 63%)

@NoMoreReluctantCustodians

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"

I don’t have kids, but I would assume trying to feed your kids healthy meals from scratch would be high up on the priority list...?

If batch cooking on a Sunday works, so be it. I have quite a few 15-20min healthy meal recipes from various sources that I trot out on a busy week night.

I've just seen on facebook that McDonalds and KFC (and possibly others?) are having 50% for the entire month of August.
Not sure that's going to help matters.

50% OFF, that should say!

It's part of the eat out thing. As well as Nandos, wagamama etc.

Well it depends if people are greedy or not. A medium McDonald's meal, a KFC rice box or whatever is fine as part of a balanced diet. Not ideal, but there's not a real issue unless the person also has a calorific breakfast and dinner, and is buying it everyday.

Social Media doesn't help. Idolising food on Instagram.
Is anyone else on a computer and viewing this very thread with a MN video for "Easy Weaning Recipe: Lava Cake"?
Ingredients: 2tbsp chocolate chips cocoa powder, 1tbsp maple syrup , marshmallows , tomato puree , milk. Then a "sauce" of chocolate chips and milk, microwaved and bunged on top.
I mean, what the actual fuck? A weaning suggestion, i.e. for 6mos?

I partly blame this whole high protein vs. high carb war. It has just completely confused people as to what they are supposed to be eating.

Ironically as I am posting on this thread, I believe the thing most likely to put weight on me and cause me to eat more is people talking about food - whether that be about enjoying food, health value of food, diets, food events, food markets, artisan brownies or whatever.

I have lost nearly a stone in lockdown without any kind of diet or exercise because I just haven’t thought that much about food.

I'm confused as to why doctors keep doing research into genes which make people liable to put on weight and liable to crave foods with high fat content, some people having both genes - I mean, why might they research that? I wonder ...

I personally think part of the problem is the “treat” status of so many foods in the uk and the US, and the demonisation of some foods.
I see so much “kids shouldn’t have a treat everyday” from parents referring to the tiny puddings in primary schools. yet the same parents give their kids absolutely massive portions of “healthy” food and equally massive treats for “being good”. and promptly blame their and their kids weight problems on school puddings.
Coming from the behavioural nutrition background, food isn’t a treat, or evil. From a weight pount of view, what you eat is reasonably irrelevant- its how much you eat (from a nutrition point of view , both are relevant). And having a clearly defined “end of meal” ritual like a very small pudding is a good thing as it closes the meal occasion and counteracts the desire for “something different “.
but as usual, its multifaceted

It takes more effort to cook from scratch, and people are lazy (I include myself in this). Why make the effort when it can all be done for you? My DC are home from universityThey know how to cook but it is easier for them to get a delivery -instant gratification /and no waste -it is all eaten. I regularly empty my fridge of soggy lettuce etc that I bought and then wasted. My DC do not have cars and their nearest Aldi:Lidl etc are bus rides away. I can see how they they got the Deliveroo habit. I shop by car, which means that I can but frozen veg in bulk (Heather than fresh veg and less wastage as you use only what you need and the rest stays frozen for another day.

When I was on hospital I was amazed that meals came with a pudding /why??? We never had pudding when I was a child so didn't get the habit, and so never provided it for my DC.
No/one needs pudding after meals, especially not in hospital /waste of money and very poor nutrition for those who most need it. Also normalises sugar consumption.

I think junk food needs to be prohibitively expensive and at the very far end of the supermarket out of sight. In Italy there are virtually no ready meals, just things like mixed frozen veg with a stock cube in ready to make a soup, or a jar of pasta sauce, but not full on ready meals. Same goes for takeaways. There should be a calorie limit per portion.

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"

That was my situation when I was working ft as a single mum with no help but I managed to cook healthily 90% of the time.

You can do pasta bake with plenty of veg and just a bit of cheese in under 15 minutes. You can do homemade pizza in the same time. And yes, I batched cooked some bits over the weekend, one hour at the most over 48h.

What's the point of spending hours to take kids to sports and yet not be prepared to spend 15 minutes cooking something healthy?

I rather knew that I was teaching my kids about healthy lifestyle that would impact on them positively for the rest of their life than having 'me time'. I get plenty of that now they are grown up.

No/one needs pudding after meals, especially not in hospital /waste of money and very poor nutrition for those who most need it. Also normalises sugar consumption
Puddings are absutely fine as long as they are in small portions, and it's once a day only.

Ok for kids too if they are no treats, sweets, etc...and they have an active life.

I would think many people in hospital, especially the frail elderly deserve a bit of a treat once a day.

My kids have 'pudding' every day in the form of an ice lolly! Then a plate of peppers, cucumber, apples and grapes a bit later on.