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

To tackle obesity:

Deal with inequality and poverty.

stopping advertising before 9pm isn't going to solve anything.

What needs doing is taxing junk food to subsidise healthier foods.

They also need to overhaul the curriculum.

Teach PROPER cookery at school, everyone should leave school knowing how to cook a repertoire of filling, healthy meals so they dont go through college/university living off pot noodles and ready meals.

They also need to sort out PE lessons and change them from the traumatising horror that secondary school PE is, to something that actively nurtures and encourages teenagers, especially the girls to love exercise.

There are SO many horror stories of the dehumanising, bullying and trauma that most girls felt at the hands of the PE curriculum.

US sugar producer Tate & Lyle sponsored the Tory party conference in 2017.

Deal with inequality and poverty

Ah yes as everyone poor is fat.

What the Government needs to do is reinstate Home Economics in schools. As a child at senior school in the 70s cookery taught me everything I needed to know on how to feed a family. Our exam consisted of putting together a menu, budgeting, nutritional values and then cooking it. 3 courses. When my son did his GCSE cookery he made 1 dish. I learned to gut a fish and make every kind of pastry from scratch.

I don't think fruit and veg can be made cheaper, unless the government subsides it.

As always the government fails to realise that obesity is a very complex issue, and cutting advertising and special offers on junk food will make fuck all difference. What's needed is access to mental health support from trained specialists, nutritionists and affordable access to gyms/swimming pools/bikes.

There is literally no excuse in this country for not cooking from scratch. Not one.

This comment is coming from a position of privilege. You need to recognise that.

Access to decent exercise is also an issue I’ve found. When I lived in the states nearly all gyms including the cheaper ones had childcare. Living here in the UK I’ve been unable to exercise regularly or decently since no childcare.

There are so many free YouTube workouts you can do in your living room whilst the kids are in bed. But exercise is (surprisingly) good for kids too. Go on long walks, get to the park and run around with them. I don’t know how old your kids are, but my friend has her 5 and 7 year old joining her on (quite slow) 5km runs.

It is definitely a challenge for low income families to access good quality food though. We need to find ways to support this better.

YABU. The people who buy nuggets and chips do so for convenience, taste and habit and in some cases ignorance of good nutrition. There are plenty of you tube videos on living well in a low food budget.

Aldi and Lidl and other budget supermarkets sell plenty of fruit and veg at low prices. Meat can be low cost. Chicken thighs are not expensive. We don't need to eat a lot of meat anyway.

And it's not the nuggets and chips that are the real issue, it's the cakes, sweets, biscuits and continual snacking which is such a normal part of life. I know people who don't think they can do a one hour car journey without a bag of snacks for the kids and themselves.

[quote astuz]@valkadin has hit the nail on the head, based on my anecdotal observations

Emotional eating
Alcohol
Perceptions of what is overweight
Snacking between meals
Perception of portion size
Eating out

I'm slim, but have to work really hard to stay this way. Whenever I eat with family/friends/work colleagues, most people:

1. Eat around twice as much as I do (particularly noticeable in eg. indian restaurants, where I always leave half and take the rest home, whereas everyone else eats all of theirs at the restaurant - and immediately, right there, I've halved my food costs)
2. Drink more of either alcohol or sugary drinks.
3. Snack more between meals (I notice this at work mainly).

I have met a couple of people who just seem to be able to eat what they want, and are very slim, but it's unusual and some I know are marathon runners anyway, which seems to be the only exercise that makes a lot of difference.

On the subject of cost, if people halved their portion size, stopped eating snacks between meals, and drank less alcohol/sugary drinks, then they'd save a ton of money straight away.

There are things the government could do:

1. a massive advertising campaign so people get used to seeing what a real portion size is
2. Work with restaurants to halve portion size, or keep main meals below a certain number of calories.
3. Some kind of public education campaign around feeling hungry i.e. fasting can be good for you, when done correctly, and feeling hungry is a normal healthy thing to experience once in a while - this would have to be tackled in a very sensitive way though, to avoid normalising eating disorders.

I went to wetherspoons the other day, and some of the burgers and chips meals were 1500 calories! That's pretty much my calories for a whole day - it's no wonder I can only ever eat about half of it. But many people won't stop at eating half, they won't even realise that it's a ridiculously large portion for an average person.[/quote]
I agree with lots of what you said. Being hungry isn’t a bad thing-I am always hungry at meal times and sometimes a little bit hungry when I go to bed but I know (generally) to half a glass of water and ignore it! My kids moan about being ‘Really’ hungry half an hour before dinner but I tell them that’s a good thing-they should be hungry by then!

I often leave food on my plate when I’m full-DH doesn’t. He has no cut off point. He is overweight.

Do they teach nutrition and good health in schools?

Ah yes as everyone poor is fat.

Didn't say that.

Inequality - in time, education, mental health, physical health, childcare, etc

Approx 15% of adults in UK are in poverty. It's important to know that there are different levels within that.

Approx 63% of adults are overweight or obese.

Poverty is NOT the main obesity issue.

@SecretSpAD If 2/3rds of the population are overweight or obese, are you saying all of those live on £5 worth of electricity a day? Frankly that's nonsense.

If you look at numbers for the last decade or so, the number of overweight people seems to remain pretty static. It's the number of obese people that rises - something I find very odd in itself. If it's just about people not knowing how to cook or being lazy then this is a very weird result.

Once people become obese, it is statisitically unlikely they will ever not be again.

Someone with a BMI of over 40 has a 1:700 chance of ever being a healthy weight again. If they DO manage to be the 1 in 700 that loses the weight, they only have a 15-20% chance of keeping it off for 3 years or more.

We are never going to solve the problem of obesity by banning BOGOF deals or encouraging people to buy a bike. The approach needs to be much more ambitious than that. It needs to focus heavily on prevention.

Where 'cure' is needed, the advice needs to be better. Someone upthread mentioned the NHS dietician being next to useless. I have heard this a lot, most recently from a family member who was diagnised with T2 diabetes. They left their initial consultation believing there was no hope in ever putting their diabetes into remission and accepting metformin for the rest of their life. They were also told to eat a fair amount of starchy foods every day, such as pasta.

This is shocking when there is such strong evidence that these foods make the problem worse and low carb can have a very positive impact on T2 diabetic health.

They were also told to eat low fat, despite the mounting evidence that low fat diets bring problems of their own and high (healthy) fat diets make it much easier for people to ditch the sugar.

A total overhaul is needed.

What I eat in my meals really isn't the problem, it's what I eat between meals. Banning all chocolate might help!
It's interesting there's so much talk about cooking from scratch, everyone should have time for this etc - in most households, who will be the one person in charge of shopping and cooking? No surprise women are to blame again, and have the burden of making the changes.

Random ideas:

• A 35 hour standard working week rather than 37.5 or 40;
• Daily Mile at every school;
• Proper, lockable showers and changing cubicles in every school and time to use them so that kids make an effort in PE instead of worrying about getting sweaty;
• Complete rethink of how public transport is funded. It should not be cheaper to drive.
• A total ban on special offers or loss leader pricing for alcohol and junk food.
• Decent walking and cycle infrastructure: a certain number of showers mandatory at workplaces according to size, changing/showering hubs for groups of smaller workplaces, proper footpaths and cycle lanes, paths at parks tarmacced smoothly so they can be used for kids' scooters and rollerblading;
• Cookery lessons online as part of BBC Bitesize, Oak Academy etc.;
• Proper kitchens required at temporary accommodation.

Yanbu at all, and whilst I agree that eating a non meat diet is cheaper at point of purchase, you need to factor fuel poverty into cooking too

It’s only at the start where you have to work on not overeating though, once you get into the habit of smaller portion sizes that is what your body will accommodate, the same as larger portions.

I remember years ago going to Florida and we went to Dennie’s diner for breakfast. There they had something called the grand slam which contained two eggs, two sausages, two rashers of bacon and two pancakes, “all for just 2.99.” The first day I had one I actually felt quite ill when we left, but we’d decided on a big breakfast so we didn’t have to buy food in the park. But by the end of the week I could actually tuck into that plate quite easily, and it would be easy to see how you could progress from that to the triple slam, which is the same except three of everything. .

it works the same in reverse, if you eat less then your stomach starts to expect less, and you reach a point where eating more isn’t actually a comfortable experience....

I don’t actually have to work on staying slim not because I have to watch everything I eat, but because I can only eat so much and not any more. I do have to watch things like my salt intake (serious heart condition with fluid retention) but in terms of portion sizes I don’t have to think about eating too much because I know how much I can eat and that the rest of a portion will be wasted if I have more....

Supermarket meat and veg is dirt cheap. Just buy frozen, much cheaper than fresh.

I think the real problem is that lots of people can't be arsed to cook from scratch. If eventually you can make your own pasta/curry sauces you're laughing. You just cook up a small batch of sauce on the weekend and pop it in the freezer. Eventually you'll build up a stash of sauce. Saves time in the weekday evenings. Can do it even when working long hours, shifts etc.

Even the cheapo curry/pasta sauces are 30-60p in Tesco. They're decent enough and you can add some chilli powder etc if you like.

My brother lives on frozen food and I cook all dinners. His shopping is easily twice the cost of mine. The reality is that he just wants to stick something in the oven because it's easier. It definitely doesn't work out cheaper. He's also the type to shun healthier, cheap bulk foods like beans and lentils so that might have something to do with it I sneak beans into everything because they cost nothing and are really good for you.

Slow cookers and instant pot type things can make cooking from frozen much easier!!

You can also buy bulk fresh stuff and freeze it. What helps to save time and money in our house is buying a kg of fresh onions, carrots, celery. Cost about £2. Chop it all up into an Italian 'mirepoix' (sauce base) and whack it raw into a tall tupperware in the freezer. Can take a couple of spoonfuls to fry up whenever you need it.

@AlternativePerspective Its about three years since I last went to Dennys, I just ordered dry toast with egg (vegetarian and dairy free). My boyfriend at the time ordered pancakes and syrup, it didn’t say on the menu but pancakes and syrup came with basically a full english breakfast and a beef burger in a bun.

@Redlocks28 yes, I believe store managers have discretion over some pricing so prices will be different locally as well as regionally.

What I eat in my meals really isn't the problem, it's what I eat between meals. Banning all chocolate might help! it’s the sugar in that chocolate, and well everything else really. It’s one of the reasons why the government introduced the sugar tax, but tbh that’s a controversial one of its own because the alternative to sugar in lots of instances is aspartame which has health implications of its own.

People need to learn to moderate for themselves rather than being banned from having x or y. And there people do need to take responsibility for themselves.

I don’t eat chocolate but that’s because I didn’t eat any when I went into hospital nearly four years ago, and by the time I came out I just no longer had a taste for it.

I will have the occasional biscuit etc but they’re incredibly rare, sweet things just don’t do it for me any more. There’s no doubt that will have made a difference to some of my weight (although I was never overweight), but people need to decide to moderate, we can’t make willpower mandatory, people have to have that one for themselves.

I’ve been a healthy weight and I’ve been obese. The main cause for my obesity was/is mental health, being fat was a symptom of that. I’m not stupid, I know what I need to do to lose weight. I need support to do so, more funded support E.g. prescribed weight loss classes, actual proper access to mental health services, more work life balance to enable time to plan, prepare and cook proper meals and exercise, rather than being out of the house from 6am - 9pm coming home starving and reaching for junk. These are the things that would help, not a ban on advertising and making junk food more expensive. Excessive eating is often a crutch or addiction like smoking or alcohol. People need to recognise that.

Is the poverty the biggest link with obesity?
Maybe try to reduce poverty and obesity will naturally fall?

I know Tories have increased poverty massively since they came to power so that strategy probably goes against everything they hold dear. Remind me what JRM said about food banks? Something about how great they were?