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

@Oliversmumsarmy

SchrodingersImmigrant

I don’t think I have ever eaten an apple when it has gone brown and certainly not one that has been sliced into a plastic bag and kept to heat up when you are out.

I rarely use plastic boxes for food and even when I do I line the box with kitchen roll before putting sandwiches in there so the plastic’s chemicals dont seep into the food.

Do you keep your apples in a fridge? Nothing happens to an apple in normal temperature. The brown is a reaction to air, nothing bad. You can have silicone bag? You can have certified plastic which does "seep into the food".

If you can't eat something and other version of it is too expensive, pick something else. Very easy and common sense approach.

Or you can say fuck it and buy sliced apples... In a plastic bag🤷🏻

Seriously people. On one side there are talks of poverty and in a same breath people moan about sliced apples being expensive🤦

I keep my apples out of the fridge and eat them whole.

It wouldn’t occur to me to slice them and bag them if I was going to eat them.
Wash them whole and wrap them in kitchen towel to take with me.

it is the deliveroo culture. People order on phone and only have to get up to answer door. No exercise at all

My view on this is that banning the advertising and deals won't help directly - what it will ultimately achieve is culture change, in the same way that smoking has now become socially unacceptable.

Completely agree OP!! Fresh fruit/veg/meat is expensive compared to crisps, biscuits, processed foods.

The government need to be educating people on calorie deficit. Which can be done eating any type of foods and even whilst enjoying ‘junk’. Weight loss is math. Energy in vs Energy out. Teaching people how to track and correctly measure portions will work way better than made up ‘points’ ‘sins’ and ‘free foods’.

I've been overweight on and off (!) for years. I'm following Slimming World at the moment and have lost 17lbs so far and will continue, to give me a fighting chance when the second wave comes. It seems to me there's a lack of joined up thinking. Item one on the news : the government will tackle obesity by banning junk food ads and encouraging cycling. Item two: leisure centres will have to close because of the economic downturn. Exercise doesn't just burn calories it makes you more aware of how your body looks and feels. Combined with a healthy diet it's the best way to lose weight and stay that way. There is no way I will be cycling but I can't wait to get back to the pool.

Gwenhwfar - how about a healthy sandwich? Salad, protein (cheese , chicken or sliced meat, wholemeal bread, mayonnaise. Put in a chilled bag with some cherry tomatoes and fresh fruit. Voila!! a healthy meal. What's not to like? Add up the calories. Quite modest. Drink water with it.

There are ridiculous numbers of morbidly obese children and adults.... Its called gluttony there's no other way of describing how they've reached that point. Food and drink are their morning, noon and night. They are incredibly difficult to look after in hospital, care etc plus very high risk of complications, infections, mobility, death even. I've seen women brought in so much cakes, sweets, drinks whilst in maternity ward, we've even told them starvation is not a problem here!
Obtaining blood and cannulation is dreadfully difficult at times as fat arms and hands and no palpable veins.
No more sugar coating this awful epidemic.

I agree Id rather have 50% of fruit and veg during August instead of McDs and other crap

@grannieali

Gwenhwfar - how about a healthy sandwich? Salad, protein (cheese , chicken or sliced meat, wholemeal bread, mayonnaise. Put in a chilled bag with some cherry tomatoes and fresh fruit. Voila!! a healthy meal. What's not to like? Add up the calories. Quite modest. Drink water with it.

That would be a meal, not a snack. Plus you're talking about a packed lunch there, whereas I'm talking about things you can buy on the go.

I eat cheese sandwiches almost every day and have been told this in unhealthy and my insides must be disgusting!

@OttilieKnackered

Fruit and vegetables really aren’t that expensive if you buy in season. If you want to keep a large family in blueberries and mangoes year-round then that will cost.

Meat also isn’t all that expensive if you buy cheaper cuts.

And grains and pulses are generally pennies.

So I was a single mum of 4, widowed so no maintenance. If I’d given mine 5 a day that would have cost in the region of £50 a week just for fruit and veg. Add in that wealthier people can reward achievement etc with higher value treats (cue Nigella smashing her kids’ iPads...) whereas poorer people have to treat with maybe a packet of digestives and you might begin to see the problem. I have never had more than £50 a week to spend on good, whether that was for 5 of us or 2 as it is now. It ain’t easy.

@HeeeeyDuggee Teaching people health and fitness, nutrition, basic cooking, food planning and household budgeting would help people better manage their time, money and food, and avoid convenience food, or specialist diets. About the only topic I did at school that's been useful in adult life was Home Economics which taught me all of the above. Less fetishisation of food, freer access to weight loss support, fewer donations to Conservative party by food companies would help as well. It's so complicated . Think I need a piece of cake....

@Liketoshop Gluttony? Small children don't do the family shop. They don't put stuff in the trolley or pay for it, their parents do. Clearly you work in healthcare but making cruel judgements and referring to people as "they" is deeply dehumanising. Jeez, hope I never come across you in a hospital.

I think 6 odd pages in, we have ascertained that this is a far more complex issue than banning fast food ads, haven't we?

And that some people having never in their lives had a weight problem are actually incapable of understanding why others have, let alone the small matter of 'a bit of empathy'.

To me, it's akin to the 'get up at 5am to have 'an hour to myself' where I go for a lovely long run, it's my favorite part of the day / I'd be angry all day if I didn't have that'- being incapable of understanding that there are others out there to whom that would be torture, their worst nightmare.

Personally, because I know that runner exists, I can grasp that it's obviously 'their thing'. I can also grasp the reasons why people become overweight.

And that the 'plan ahead!', 'batch cook healthy vegan curries on Sundays!', ' find time! ' - brigade will never 'get it'.

Mistlewoe "George Orwell has already covered all this in The Road to Wigan Pier. All I’ll say (as a fatty myself), 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."

Yup. That.

A packet of biscuits is going to be a lot cheaper than healthy fresh food because it’s made in a factory out of cheap ingredients on a large scale.
I don’t know why people keep bringing up that crap food is cheaper.
Should it be more expansive? Would that help?
We cannot make fresh fruit and veg cheaper. Look at ways to buy cheaper fruit and veg and use them effectively. Biscuits and other crap food is fine every now and then but shouldn’t be instead of decent food that actually contain vitamins and are good for you.
Besides, plenty of people have quoted prices which shows that some fruit and veg aren’t that expensive.

Cooking healthy meals takes a lot of time and planning. When both parents are in full time work just to afford housing cheap fast food needs be the order of the day for many families. I always find that the longer I spend planning and preparing food the more I savour it and the less quantity I eat.

Hypothesis:
it is the deliveroo culture. People order on phone and only have to get up to answer door. No exercise at all
Test:
The percentage of overweight people would correlate to the amount of Deliveroo.
Result.
The percentage of overweight people has remained unchanged since Deliveroo started.
The lowest percentages of people are overweight in the areas with the largest Deliveroo penetration.

Doesn't seem a likely hypothesis at all.

Giving people the skills to cook cheaply & healthily seems a bit of a no brainer as the way to promote healthier living but sadly seems not to be a priority.
Investing in teaching these skills, as well as introducing a love of exercise, in our schools may be a longer term project but is certainly worthwhile.

Not necessarily - a stir fry takes minutes. I found in the initial weeks of lockdown when all we could readily get was fruit & vegetables we ate better than we had in ages. As a pharmacist I was working all the hours but still managed to have a meal on the table every night within 30 minutes of getting home.
People need the skills & confidence to prepare meals - something instilled in me by both my grandmothers who were domestic science teachers.

The American way is to have processed food at cheap prices. That's why Americans are fat. The European way is to have unprocessed foods at cheaper prices. We should all expect fruit, vegetables and healthy unprocessed foods to be sold at cheaper prices. Processed foods take labour, and are heavy in sugar and salt. Let us all write to the supermarkets and say that we expect fruit and vegetables to be a lot cheaper. It's all about profit margins. Once you get people addicted to cheap, crap food, that's what they expect.
If you compare ingredients of the same foods, the American version are far higher in sugar.

Unless you live in the outer Hebredes there is an Aldi in practically every town in the country.

I can do a whole weeks shop for 8 including household items such as toilet roll/washing detergent/dishwasher tabs/dog food etc. For around £65-£75 per week if I meal plan. Less if I really scrimp so whilst you are right about the government missing a trick it's not the cost of food.

It's willpower. We all struggle in that respect and the pandemic has made our health a frontline issue.

They are also forgetting mental health element

I can do a whole weeks shop for 8 including household items such as toilet roll/washing detergent/dishwasher tabs/dog food etc.
And you carry all that back on the bus? Because they don’t do delivery. And that makes a difference.

Nobody can do anything about being fat/obese,except people themselves. Lots of people eat,and buy a lot of junk food all the time.There is enough information about bad eating habits on TV and magazines etc, to show what too much food and junk stuff will do to your body. Lots of people buy big amounts of fattening snack stuff, as they have so gotten used to snacks between meals, mostly quite unnecessary.

It is possible to eat more healthily, and quite cheaply,if you give this some thought, and wan't to lose weight, and stay healthy.

You often see quite large people at a supermarket check out, their trolly full of fat inducing food,and lots of bottles of fizzy drinks etc,and not a piece of fruit or veg to be seen.

I think you have to train yourself to eat less, and eat better, nobody can do it for you.