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 always baffled me that it's cheaper to buy a Mars bar than a banana or an apple

Single banana in tesco costs about 13 p, mars bar 60p.

It's always baffled me that it's cheaper to buy a Mars bar than a banana or an apple

Except that it's not. A banana costs about 10-15 pence. Apples might cost a little more, but you can get some of the cheaper varieties of apples for maybe 20-30 pence each. Even in multipacks, Mars bars are never less than 25 pence each.

It's a very complicated issue, made up of lots of factors. Fresh, home cooked food can be very cheap, but it takes planning and effort.

It's too easy to eat cheap junk instead, but cheap easy food doesn't have to be rubbish. If you need a quick, easy, cheap meal, you'd do a lot better to have something like beans or egg on toast rather than nuggets and chips. Probably use less fuel to cook than having the oven on for 20 minutes too.

Veg is cheap. You don’t need to buy expensive meat either or any meat at all. Tinned fish and frozen fish is cheap. Crack down on delivery of junk, it’s everywhere in the last few years.

"It's always baffled me that it's cheaper to buy a Mars bar than a banana or an apple!"

This is absolute nonsense. A Mars Bar is 60p, a large banana is around 17p, even an "expensive" Pink Lady apple is less than 50p and a regular apple is about 25-30p. All in Tesco today.

I suspect the real answer is to offer cooking lessons!

You're right OP. For those in difficult circumstances it can be a real struggle accessing affordable fresh healthy food.

We need to ensure people have enough money coming in for the essentials. Higher wages, increased benefits (with no sanctions). And if we must have food banks, they should offer healthy fresh food (I'd rather people were given enough to live on).

We also need prompt NHS treatment. So many people gain weight because of ill health or injury. People can't take up cycling on prescription when they're made to wait (in pain and with decreased mobility) 10 months for an operation. Poor mental health is another major cause of obesity. We need to fund good MH care.

That the government is focusing on punishment (sugar tax, etc) rather than making healthy options more accessible suggests their 'war on obesity' is nothing more than victim blaming poorer and mentally ill people.

The thing i found when we went through a tight patch is the 'cheap' version of my habits tended to have more calories - specifically sugars and somstimes were less filling.
An easy example would be the normal soup and bread i buy versus the economy versions i bought when money was tight. If you look at a serving by volume of tomato soup theres a huge variety in price and calouries and other nutrients. The same with bread. I ended up cosuming more calories in what was basically the same meal. This was repeated on loads of meals.
So you get people saying you need to change your habits but actually you can keep the same habits but spend more!
Obviously you can torally change your diet to a different way of eating too and live off porridge and lentils.

Fruit and veg are extremely cheap in this county. A carrot costs 10p, an onion about the same. You can get at least 5 portions of fruit and veg for under a £1 a day.

For me I'm a healthy weight but don't exercise anywhere near enough and am unfit. There literally isn't the time for me to do it and shower until about 9pm when I will then resent it eating into my precious hour or two of 'free' time before bed and it starts again.
I'm very privileged but if I can't find the time to do it properly then I have no idea how people working long hours and with more responsibilities could do it. And I'm talking about a free Youtube workout, not going to the gym etc.

It's not so much BOGOFs, it's the crap "food" multipacks that need to be banned. The ones where you can get 4 kitkats for a pound but they cost 79p sold singly. Same with crisps - 60p per packet or 10 packet multipack for £2.

(Yes, I know some multipacks are smaller, but lots aren't, and even the small pack sizes don't make up the huge difference in price).

It just promotes buying more than you need, which in turn leads you to eating more than you need.

The multipack prices need to be regulated, so that it becomes more realistic, i.e. a 4 pack for the price of 3 bought separately.

It's just pure profiteering by the food industry to charge 79p for a single kit kat but only £1 for a 4 pack of identical size.

‘If everyone loses five pounds in weight we’d make x millions of savings for the NHS’
God, you couldn’t make this nonsense up.

If you want to change a generation start in schools. Make PE fun for all and not just for those that are good at it. Sack off netball/football etc for those that have no interest, and get them to decide what they want to do clubbercise/hiit etc or bring in the mile before school, Same with sports clubs outside of school, coaches only celebrate the quick, often because coaches are volunteers and only do it as their child is good or paid coaches that live vicariously through their students.
I am involved in a running club, there are all abilities up to age 11/12 and all abilities aged 20+ but only good kids 13-20. We've been investigating the drop off and thinking it was due to school or peer pressure but the main reason is they didn't feel good enough as they were constantly being entered into competitions. We need to find a balance between those that can compete and those that just want fitness as part of their lives. All this costs more money than banning a few bogoffs and adverts.

Fresh veg is cheap, knowing how to meal plan and cook it is what's needed. I know someone who claims to cook everything from scratch and by that they mean using a tin of Dolmio. It takes longer but costs less to make a similar sauce from scratch.

I could cook healthy meals on a budget but that's mostly because I honed the art without a budget.

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.

It's not just prices although I agree that is a major issue.
It's time. 2 adults need to be working to support a family so when they get back they cba to cook (understandably)
Too much misinformation about what is healthy and what isnt too.

They should tax the junk food and use the extra money to subsidise fruit and veg. It’s not rocket science.

Fresh fruit and veg isn't expensive. I can easily buy a single piece of fruit for 30p - far cheaper than a bag of crisps or chocolate bar.

If you buy loose and only buy the fruit and veg you actually need, i.e. just 2 carrots rather than a bag, it's very cheap. It only becomes expensive when you bag a bag of carrots and end up throwing most away.

Just go to shops/supermarkets which have a good range of "loose" fruit and veg and just buy what you need. Even our village Spar shop has most of it's fruit and veg loose.

Fruit and veg is already very cheap.

For £14.17 from ocado you can get
Six apples
Five bananas
1.25kg sweet potatoes
Three large onions
3kg white potatoes
1kg carrots
Broccoli
Mushrooms
Four leeks
Four peppers
One iceburg lettuce
One savoy cabbage
725g frozen peas

Thats ocado prices, it will be cheaper elsewhere. Decent food is not expensive, we really need to stop with that lie.

Education and confidence in the kitchen is a problem, we also need to consider that for many people consuming excess calories can be a symptom of more complex issues such as poor mental health, high number of ACEs etc.

What I notice whenever I go on holiday is that their supermarkets are completely different to ours.
They have more raw ingredients and fresh fruit and vegetables.
Whereas we have aisle after aisle of processed junk.

This is an incredibly complex issue and no single change is going to make a significant difference. Contributing factors include:

Poverty - money, time,
Lack of food education/understanding
Confidence/ability to cook
Housing quality and cooking
Fresh food deserts
Comparative cost (time and money) of healthy vs unhealthy food
Processed food
Hidden sugars & sugar addiction
The food industry lobby
Availability of unhealthy food - e.g. Au Bon Pain in every train station
Social and cultural norms
Sedentary lifestyles fuelled by car use, screens, modern work design, concerns for children's safety that keeps them indoors
Cost and availability of fun sport and physical activity - a YouTube workout is pretty joyless for many
Public health policy and resources focusing on cures rather than prevention
Inability/lack of confidence of health professionals to be honest with patients about their lifestyle and how it's making them ill.

And loads more.

There's a certain "start up cost" to cooking from scratch. It's easy to have a store cupboard of dried herbs and spices, even things like oil, salt, garlic when you aren't living pound to pound.

Yes! This. How much would a free £20 box per low income household help with a relatively small start up cost?

Exactly Mistle there are no quick fixes, it needs a a change to the social contract.

Limiting advertising, putting restrictions on the food industry and supermarkets is looking at from the wrong angle.

You don't need to subsidise fruit and veg, they're so cheap already

I think one of the things the government could do would be to stop allowing high streets to be full of fast foot outlets. Some streets are literally 80% fried chicken places!

Cooking skills is such an important part of life, sadly we should have addressed this a generation ago as we now have parents who were shown how to cook not able to teach their children.

I have been a guide leader for 25 years, and the cook skills of the youngsters has dropped dramatically over this time. I barely used to have to teach them the basics like chopping a carrot, maybe one or two out of a group of 20, 10-14 year olds. Now it is lucky if I get 1 or 2 who I don't have to teach.

When I have spoken to parents a lot say its not safe for the kids to be in the kitchen with them, or they want them out of the way when they are cooking.

I was taught to cook by family, both parents and grandparents, I can open a fridge of random stuff and create an edible meal from what I have in.

Not sure how this could be addressed, not enough time in an a hours Food Tech lesson and quite hard to teach 30 kids at one time how to use a knife which I personally think is a parents job.

Time poor society is also to blame, for what ever reason - rushing to clubs or no time after working long hours - the perception chucking nuggets etc into the oven is quicker than cooking from scratch.