What should the government do to reduce obesity at the societal level?

[waistchallenge]

We're the fattest country in Europe and the upshot is what you see here: people posting threads in desperation about their weight loss struggles. I think we can probably all agree it would be easier to never have gotten overweight in the first place and to never have had to go through these weight loss efforts and experiences.

Apart from the sugar tax, I cannot see that the government has done much, if anything, to reduce obesity in this country; it's higher than ever.

I'm asking here because we all have experience of this to be on here, what-if anything- should the government do to reduce obesity in this country? What would have helped you? Or is it all just ultimately a question of personal responsibility?

I don’t think anything the government did could have helped me to be honest. I’m fat because I eat too much and don’t exercise enough, but that’s on me. I eat well, just too much. I have time to exercise but I don’t.

I agree. It's not the Government's job to tell you to eat less and exercise more, it's every individual's choice.

One relatively easy and cheap option is to skip a meal regularly (intermittent fasting). Not only reduces weight but also extends lifespan and reduces costs!

My daughter went to her school disco recently.
Included in the ticket price was a chocolate bar, sweets , a sugary drink and a packet of crisps. She didn't want any of it. She's used to dancing for 1-2 hours most evenings and we were both a bit baffled why the PTA dished up that much food for a 90 minute disco.

I used to volunteer for the PTA but stopped after getting fed up that they spent so much of the money raised on things like "sweets for the panto trip" and ", chocolate bars at Easter. Baffling

This thread shows how little people are willing to take responsibility for what they put in their mouth and how much they exercise.

Maybe because it's easier to blame food manufacturers or the government? But I agree that we should all take more personal responsibility!

The other thing I've noticed that has changed over the last half century is that there is food available absolutely everywhere at all times day and night.

If you go to A&E there is a machine dispensing crisps and chocolate for example. Every station platform has kiosks and buffets and vending machines; bus stations ditto; airports are literally like food halls , just one food outlet after another after another after another as far as the eye can see.

In workplaces and waiting rooms and lobbies everywhere there are vending machines or kiosks selling an array of calorific drinks, sandwiches, pastries, muffins, doughnuts etc

As soon as you get on a plane they come to you with drinks and snacks. As soon as you go on a train someone comes with a trolley with cakes and biscuits and crisps and fizzy drinks and milky coffees.

All the takeaways and deliveries which are available nowadays on apps and at the end of a phone were not available 50 years ago. Once you had eaten your dinner that was the end of your eating for the day.

As a nation, we have developed a very unhealthy attitude towards food .

We have at least two generations of people/children who will only eat fish if it's covered in batter or a neon crumb.
Chips, rice or pasta always being on the plate and in unhealthy portions.

We generally only steam, boil or air fry veg as a side when vegetables can be beautifully and tastily turned into a meal in their own right or with properly cooked fish or meat.

Having seen so many children at school in KS1 only choosing fish fingers, macaroni cheese , bread , chips , pizza and calorific desserts , I'm no longer surprised that that obesity is viewed as normal these days.
It broke staffs' hearts to see all the salad and vegetables thrown away after lunch , yet they have to be provided.
So many children wouldn't even eat anything at all but you're not allowed to encourage them.

There needs to be a sea change in attitudes to food, particularly with children.

About 8 years ago when I was a carer I had a service user who was extremely obese. That was the sole reason they had funding for care - one of my tasks when i visited was to prepare their meal and then FOUR hot chocolates for the evening. 2 in normal mugs and 2 in insulated lidded cups. Full fat milk. I refused to do it and made one each time they put a complaint in about me but I couldn’t justify it as it was enabling them and making me the feeder !

Make leisure centres community based abd free in the same way libraries are.
More cooking at school and growing own food where possible, with those meals fed ti the children at lunchtimes.
More education around meals and food as part of the curriculum .
More gov funded community kitchens.

NHS weight management service needs reform. There seems to be very little acknowledgement that psychology has a part to play in obesity. The hoops you have to jump through to get any proper help are ridiculous and punishing. Putting people on yet another diet when they have quite clearly always failed is just pointless.

I just read an article about all the stores that have closed over the past year including Paperchase, M&Co, Wilko and all the ones that have opened which were Costa and Greggs and pizza takeaways. Says it all.

@shearwater2 yes. My great grandad (born 1892) apparently weighed 10st all his adult life. He lived on fry ups, pies, yorkshire puddings etc. But from the age of 12 he was working in extremely physical hard work jobs - ag lab etc.

A sugar tax wouldn't have impacted me, unless they are going to levy it at a bag of spuds, cooking oil, pasta, bread of the nice variety, butter and wine ? Its perfectly possible to get very fat very easily by eating far too much of the above and not eating sweets, biscuits, crisps etc.

I think one issue with sugar tax is it hits poorer people rather than stopping people eating the sugar

It’s highly addictive food and if you look at the lengths we’ve gone to with other addictive items such as cigarettes you can see how much it takes

A white label, blank packet of biscuits (for example) behind a gate, with artery pics at huge mark up still probably wouldn’t do it

People would have lower amounts of money left after buying them though

The decision to change has to come more from the person wanting to

Yeah I’d need a cheese tax.
As I said above, I don’t eat ‘bad’ food. I eat good quality, home cooked meals with good ingredients. I just eat too much of it, and don’t move enough. I also have a disabled child and only get 2-3 hours sleep a night, so I suspect that contributes to the issue. Essentially though I just eat too much, and no amount of ‘sugar tax’ would make a difference.

Full fat milk is fine. More vitamins in it. Probably depends on amount of hot choc powder in each drink. Was that on top of an evening meal?

Manufacturers swapped sugar for artificial sweeteners which have their own problems.

That's 800 calories worth of hot chocolate (assuming cadburys drinking chocolate, recommended serving size of 18g + 200ml milk). It doesn't matter if it's on top of or instead of an evening meal. It's absurd.

@Lalupalina i agree, I am just In the overweight category in BMI charts (I don’t have much faith in them mind), the reason for my weight gain is the contraceptive I am on, I haven’t changed how I eat or what I eat and the extra stone only went on then so I’ve narrowed it down to that. I eat my 3 meals a day sometimes I skip lunch depending on how busy I am with work, I rarely snack and I don’t eat again after my dinner at night at about 5.30. My kids follow the same pattern, they dont skip lunch but they don’t over snack either, snacks are usually fruit. They eat the same meals we eat, rarely is it chicken nuggets or other fried things. I think my mindset comes from how I was brought up though, my parents motto was everything In moderation, we didn’t snack really, we all ate the same meals etc

@coureur i would actually prefer to go back to bicycle but unfortunately it wouldnt work where i am, we cover 3 bases sometimes i can do 60 miles in a day, its the sheer amount of people we have to see as well, im in a very elderly dense area and the government want more and more hospital at home type services. It’s the same for home carers and this won’t change unfortunately

A white label, blank packet of biscuits (for example) behind a gate, with artery pics at huge mark up still probably wouldn’t do it

As an overweight person, actually yes this really would help.

Sugar addiction has been proven to exist, so why can't it be addressed in the same way as nicotine addition?

Just like smokers were incentivised to stop smoking by tarred up lung photos, not all, but many.

The main obstacle to warnings on unhealthy UPF food in the UK, including photos of furred up arteries etc, is the power of the food industry here, with lobbying and donations to certain political parties etc.

Huge issue in people being offended. In Germany or the Netherlands they are much more direct about it - the culture of shame and denial here is wild. People are more worried about upsetting people than they are about them dying prematurely or living restricted lives

I don't think the government have our best interests at heart in reality.
Farmers are struggling and food is by design becoming less and less real.
This was interesting to me
Watch the Frenken Farming section just before six minutes, it worries me.

If I were PM I'd promote whole foods and try to make them affordable, maybe I'd extend the red diesel scheme to food distribution of farm produce to get the price down a bit. Encourage more community allotments and incentivise people to grow food. Something tells me that's why I'd never make it to PM though, my priorities would be peoples health. The government works in the interest of corporations not the electorate.

@anxioussister yep, seeing more and more fashion brands using morbidly obese models and comments applauding them for it! It’s absolutely ridiculous. The offence thing is real and it all comes down to everything has to be inclusive now, people don’t want to think about their health or death and the very real risks of heart attacks and strokes which would leave them with no quality of life etc

I think child benefit is an outdated benefit now we have universal credit to keep people above the poverty line. We should scrap it and use the money saved to provide healthy school lunches free of charge to all children,
The food offered at my dc high schools is awful. It’s all beige carbs, toast, hash browns, sausage rolls, bacon baps, pizza and home bakes. If we could just give all dc a free meal cooked from scratch, like I remember from my primary school, it would help.

I can only see the problem getting worse as we are also bringing up a generation of children that are being fed terrible diets and taught that snacking on processed foods is entirely normal.

I work in a primary school and see the snacks that parents allow their children to bring to school as daily part of their diet. In the morning break time we only allow fruit which is provided, but in the afternoon break time Parents can send the infant children with a snack. They often send 2 or 3 items for their afternoon snack which is had only 2 hours after their dinner. It's usually Squeezy yogurts, fruit winders, cheese strings, cereal bars, soreen bars, biscuits, pepparami etc. We don't allow crisps or chocolate. Lunch boxes often have crisps, cake bar or chocolate biscuit and a yoghurt.

The older junior children can bring a morning snack and are told a list of healthy options which are allowed. However, it's a constant battle against the chocolate bars, biscuits and crisps. They seem to think that not allowing these is an infringement of their rights and parents even ring school to get special permission for their child to be allowed to have things like those Nature Valley bars or cereal bars or Cadbury's brunch bars.

Nothing. People need to sort out their own shit.