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

I disagree. If you eat in season and more local, then fruit and veg are not that expensive. Apples, pears, plums, carrots, potatoes, cauliflower, lentils, spinach I can go on and on. Berries are expensive and so are tropical fruit. Bananas are cheap and filling. And hundreds of thousands of people are being used for borderline slave labour across Europe to pick veg and butcher meat so that your food is as cheap as possible.

You also need to treat this as a priority when you budget. I think people are used to food being super cheap whereas it really wasn't that cheap when we were growing up.

Although the price of food and veg might be a factor, in my opinion it’s really only a very small part of the problem.
I think the much bigger problem is people’s attitudes to food. For so many, food is about convenience and ease and is perhaps for some even an inconvenience that they have to prepare three times a day. It shocks me that people go to the supermarket without a meal plan and shopping list. I tried this once and it was so difficult to work out what to make and if I though of something, I couldn’t necessarily remember all the ingredients needed (I cook everything from scratch) so the alternative would be to buy a jar or something frozen. I guess it makes it easier for me as I really enjoy cooking but like many, in the week I don’t have much time as I’m out the house from 7am until around 6pm and am usually shattered when I get home. However, I have lots of recipes that me and DH cook that take 30 mins or less for midweek.
Meal planning also helps to keep costs down as you can see what’s on offer and plan meals around that.
Finally I think what some people do with fruit and veg needs to change. It’s not just a case of plonking a bit of brocoli at the side of the nuggets and chips but rather building it into the meal. For example we often have chorizo and tomato tagliatelle. This uses a whole pack of tomatoes for the base of the sauce, frozen peas and rocket. Three different veg in one meal but I really only notice the chorizo and the nice sauce!

I actually don't believe it's cheaper to buy unhealthy foods. I think people are overweight because they can't be bothered to cook healthy meals, and put in the effort to cook fresh, healthy food (I'm one of those people a lot of the time) lots of thin people do this too. Also cutting back on meat and switching to pulses and beans for a lot of meals would significantly cut costs (not something I do either) but not many people want to do that.

I think the nhs guidelines are a really good starting point.
If everyone aimed to get at least 5 portions of fruit and veg a day and do some kind of physical activity a day, as per the guidelines, quite a lot of people’s health could be improved.
I know when I eat 5-6 portions of fruit or veg a day, I end up eating less junk food and my portions on my plate are less to make room for the veg.
Even if you’re having chicken nuggets and chips, if you make space on your plate for a good portion of broccoli and sweetcorn, do similar with other meals and include some fruit as snacks, that’s going to have an effect on weight and health in the long term.
It doesn’t have to be much more difficult than that.

For the majority, time and skills are a greater issue than raw cost.

There are communities that struggle with access to affordable supermarkets and fresh food and are dependent on local, dear convenience stores. A food box delivery service would be helpful to reach those communities, similar in principle to the boxes that Morrisons launched in lockdown.

Developing skills through Sure Start has been a good way to get young families off to a good start. That needs reinvestment.

Portion control is a major tool. Plates tend to be large these days. When I'm having a cut-back phase, I use my plates from the 80s with bigger rims and smaller centre space.

Alcohol is the big underrated factor affecting large swathes of the UK population.
It's probably also not a coincidence that obesity has increased as appetite supressing smoking has declined, not that that's something to be encouraged either!

The government would do better to look at the ways junk/sugar food companies push billions of pounds into targetting children, through advertising and links with events, that create a link in their minds between happy childhood memories and shit food. The result is that once they are an adult, those same food stuffs become reassuring because they have such a strong link with times they were happy as children.

It's psychological warfare and needs to be stopped. We tackled the way alchohol and cigarette companies did similar things - there is no reason why we couldn't stop junk/sugar companies too.

With the greatest respect is Boris in any position to be preaching about obesity.

Buying in season veg is not expensive at all in the UK. As others have pointed out education in schools is sorely lacking when it comes to healthy eating or food prep. It makes me sad when I see a trolley down the supermarket filled entirely with ready made meals and jars of sauces.

The government really missed a trick with the lockdown supplies boxes - they should offer a month of weekly "healthy recipe ingredient boxes", like HelloFresh but fairly basic healthy food.
Essentially like rationing during the war, heres ingredients for x people for a week with the recipes for them.

I dont think a lot of it is "they could pay people to lose weight!" because theres already more than enough day-to-day fat shaming where people would choose to lose weight if they could. I think its more that people have no idea what cooking is like, or how to start going about it, they just know it needs skills and time they dont think they have.

Also, free or subsidised exercise that fits around a job - my local council gym has free classes for residents of the area but theyre all at times like 11.30am on a wednesday - no use unless youre unemployed or retired.

I think people are overweight because they can't be bothered to cook healthy meals, and put in the effort to cook fresh, healthy food

As someone with an interest in nutrition I must have read a hundred or more studies on obesity. Not once was this the conclusion.

I totally agree that this is as much a skills issue as it is an access one. The cuts we’ve seen in education and in early years mean than parents get less support, and children get poorer education.

Sure start centres were the perfect place to teach families life skills like cooking, budgeting, nutrition, but they are gone. Proper cooking classes in school, from primary age onwards, are seldom seen.

Banning KFC adverts is not a suitable replacement.

From a personal perspective, I was obese, bordering on morbidly obese at one point. I was referred to an NHS dietician who was useless. Normal diets just don’t work for me and the 1700 calories I was told to eat by the dietician were more than I was already consuming. She also gave me no guidance at all on WHAT to eat apart from vague advice. I think my baseline is more like 1200 calories.

The only way I could lose weight was by intermittent fasting; avoiding alcohol completely and avoiding refined sugar (although in my case this was limited to one or two cups of tea or coffee with sugar).

I lost 8 stone over nearly years. I am now 8 stone.

In my case I cooked from scratch as I am vegan. However over a long period of time, being married (to a greedy male) and matching his larger portion sizes, along with treats like crisps and wine, made me put on weight over a long period of time. I also undertook VLCD which made me a lot heavier after initial weight loss. I was 12 stone when I undertook my first one and 16 stone after cycles of getting weight off and putting it back on.

I think the NHS should take a holistic approach. Offer psychological support when appropriate and bariatric surgery even to the non morbidly obese.

Ps not a fat persons bashing thread

They are always fat bashing threads @HeeeeyDuggee

No matter what your intentions when starting this thread, they only ever go one way

The one thing that would really help me is if I could buy fresh ingredients in single portion sizes. Not such an issue with meat, as it’s easy to portion and freeze, but literally everywhere around here only sells fruit and vegetables in multipacks, and large tins of tomatoes / pulses etc. I can’t eat frozen or tinned vegetables (sensory issues), so end up not bothering much with veg - and eating way too much fruit when I get it - because there is too much waste.

It's the snacking that's a problem and to be fair it is much easier (and often cheaper) to buy a 5pack of iced gems than a packet of apples if on a tight budget. Yes, you can get kids' garden gang for 90p but often the child won't eat it and then it is wasted, whereas the child will eat the junk food so a person on a tight budget would go for the option which is less likely to be wasted. Dried fruit is expensive as is low salt/low sugar snacks. I often struggle to know what to give my children for snacks as they get bored of apples and bananas and other fruit costs too much. A packet of strawberries will last two snack sittings for two children whereas as a pack of apples would three snack sittings for two children. This is hat people mean when they say fruit is expensive.

From my experience, i actually don't think fresh fruit and veg is so expensive that it is out of peoples reach.

I think that some people aren't organised enough to meal plan or shop around, which in my experience will keep costs down.

Buy frozen veg and add to meals to bulk up
Buy cheaper cuts of meat - for example, 1kg of chicken legs from asda is £2 in comparison to £10 for 2kg of chicken breasts 😐
Meal plan for the week and bulk buy so you can take advantage of deals

Also, I think we are so used to eating big portion of foods now, bigger than is necessary and we live much more sedentary lifestyles than ever before.

It's about so much more than cheap fruit and veg, it's about changing your lifestyle to introduce more fruit and veg and moving more. Well, that's my opinion anyway.

@Wolfff

Out of interest, did you have bariatric surgery?
It seems like a very extreme and expensive solution.

I actually really like this idea. Like the Scottish baby box, but for food. It could have olive oil, balsamic vinegar, good quality salt, black pepper, and then jars of the most commonly used herbs and spices. Just to get people started, then they could replace things as they ran out and it would be much more manageable than a huge initial outlay.

I very much doubt that families living in poverty would want balsamic vinegar or good quality salt. The reality of poverty is that it impacts across the whole of life, so quality and availability of food, decent homes and clothing, poorly paid jobs offering zero hours, insecurity of finance, home and employment, lack of education in its widest sense and lack of choice and opportunity. It means balancing all these aspects of life constantly - and one unexpected fall of the dice sets you back. Properly alleviating poverty will do more for the physical and emotional health of the nation than any starter box of store cupboard goods.

I also think time is a huge issue particularly in those better off households where maybe adults are working long hours with long commutes and eat out or buy in rather than start cooking at 8/9pm.

Fruit is more expensive than veg here (but shouldn't make up the majority of your 5 a day anyway), but veg is really cheap; especially frozen. I'm not really sure if making it cheaper is feasible or whether it will have much pay off.

I must admit I am envious of those who live in areas where they have access to local markets and a range of shops so they can buy small amounts of seasonal foods / cut price items a few times a week.

I live in rural Scotland and the only shop available is a Co Op. Nearest supermarket is 16 miles away - £10 by bus (single adult fare). So, the Co op it is: BUT...It's quite expensive. A whole chicken is around £6, a pack of 2 salmon fillets is £4, a pack of 4 pork chops about the same.
More importantly the range of veggies, salad items and fruit is really really limited and again quite expensive. Limited range of spices, oils and storecupboard basics and again relatively expensive.

Yet, for £5, I can buy a 'freezer deal' which will typically include pizza / chicken nuggets, white garlic bread and ice cream - all of them loaded with fat salt and sugar - but I could stretch that over 2 days to make 2 main meals, so, £2.50 per meal instead of, say, £4 for the fish, £3 for veggies / rice / potatoes to accompany it. So, I buy it once or twice a month. BUT with the nuggets we will have homemade ratatouille, with the bread we'll have homemade lasagna, with the icecream we'll have fresh fruit so I don't feel so bad about feeding them filling cheap crap.

I agree that it is up to each person / family to take responsibility and not want the Govt to 'fix everything' for them. I think banning junk food ads is a good idea. BOGOFS less so. I tend to use one and put one in the freezer for those. I'd like to see more 'sugar tax'. I don't buy any fizzy drinks for example (my kids have ASD and dont like the fizz) so there are certain aisles in a large supermarket I simply wouldn't go down. Equally, they are not keen on trying different things (again, ASD) so to get them into Quinoa for example would be difficult.
However, during the early days of lockdown I told them it was the Corna Diet ie it was all we could get. So, it was brown rice and wholemeal pasta (i mixed half and half where I could) and they ate it.

Veg here is very cheap - broccoli, carrots, cucumber etc all unbelievably cheap. Tinned veg very cheap. Frozen veg cheap.

The problem I found is if I tried to make say a lasagne from scratch it would cost much more than buying a £1.99 one already made.
Firstly the pre made one would taste better, secondly it would cost less and thirdly it would be quicker.
I totally agree with this @Oliversmumsarmy

Farmers receive little enough for fresh produce anyway. Unless a tax on junk food can be used as some kind of fresh veg subsidy somehow.

That is an excellent idea. Much better than fat-shaming and making life more difficult for people.

Thinking about it though, I have not seen a food buy one get one free over for ages. Plenty of half price or down to the nearest pound etc.

I find fruit and vegetables cheap to buy but it does depend on what you buy. If you buy more exotic produce like raspberries/mango/cherries, especially when not in season then it will be costly.

Apples, pears, bananas,tangerines tend to be quite cheap. I can buy 6 apples for less than a pound.

Same for veg, generally carrots/cauliflower/broccoli are fairly cheap.

I keep most fruit and veg in the fridge and it will last a week,possibly longer depending on what it is.

Good quality meat can be expensive I agree. I buy my meat from an independent, local butcher and it is slightly more expensive than a supermarket. You can get some cheaper options though. His bacon is lovely and not expensive and I found a great pasta recipe that uses bacon. A beef joint will do more than one meal if you have it with veg.

Also, meat doesn't have to be eaten every meal. Fish (places like aldi/lidl do good, reasonably priced fish -things like cod and salmon fillets), eggs etc. are all good.

I think part of the issue is education around food/knowing what to buy and how to cook certain things. I came from a family of good cooks so learnt from being young but not everyone does.

Exercise can be free -walking/running for example. It doesn't have to be a gym/special class.

Portion control is a massive problem I think. If you go out for a meal, portions are often huge! There is an Italian near us and their pasta dishes would easily feed two people.

Maybe time is an issue as well? Many people work full time, often both parents, and/or long, unsociable hours which cause them to turn to junk food/ready meals.

I don't think it's a quick fix unfortunately.