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?

@TheDarkHouse

I think people have lost respect for authority too. Doctors, HV etc can’t say “look the whole family is fat, your child is fat because they eat the same processed crap you do” there’s this drive to be accepting and inclusive, but some of that comes at a cost to your health.

It also doesn't help when your GP and diabetic nurses are obese themselves, so they aren't really going to be taken seriously if they start giving diet exercise to an overweight patient.

This is what I was going to say - @BIWI is absolutely right. Children need to learn the basics of food, and how to prepare it, and also how to read a recipe and what the different terms mean. There are loads of recipes available on the internet, but you need to know what the recipe means when it tells you to saute something, or to simmer gently, or whatever. I liken it to learning the vocabulary and grammar of a language - you need the basics before you can become more fluent.

Food in schools needs to be well made, healthy and with as little highly processed food as possible - which doesn't mean it has to be foods the kids won't eat - home made pizza with a tomato sauce rammed with extra veg, and some good quality cheese on it need not be a dreadful choice. Same tomato sauce with wholemeal pasta and lean chicken - also something kids will probably eat and enjoy. Potato wedges instead of chips, chicken nuggets made with good quality chicken and cooked in the oven. But that will cost more, and I doubt the Government cares enough about childhood obesity to spend the money necessary to give kids a good school dinner.

Is there a risk of backlash, though?
Look at how Jamie Oliver's popularity was dented by his school meal campaigns. Are we at a point where an government can't risk taking such a hit to their approval among the (majority overweight or obese) electorate?

Make cars unaffordable/unacceptable

Great for London and SE. They have excellent infrastructure.

Meanwhile in the North of England we have Stevenson’s Rocket on a good day, bus services slashed to non existent, and struggle to travel between our major Northern cities. I believe the state of the trains in the north is now affecting the economies of some cities.

So yeah really good idea…..

The biggest problem is population

We could ban processed foods and make fruit veg, meat, dairy cheaper and more accessible but if everyone swapped to eating fresh we would not have enough to go round.

The cheap bulk processed calorie dense is needed to bulk out the non-processed foods.

Thin countries aren't thin because cookery is taught in their schools FFS! It is completely socially unacceptable to be fat in Korea and Japan, they work some of the longest hours in the western world and they do not have an obesity problem at anywhere near the same level as the UK.

What popularity?!

Yes - even somewhere like an M&S Simply Food, many of the options which look 'healthy' aren't that great in practice.

That's literally the point - because public transport is so shit in many places, people have to use options which contribute towards obesity and sedentary lifestyles.

It’s the responsibility of the employer to help with weight loss/gain and is embedded in targets in the workplace.

If they could make hot cross bun and butter less delicious I know at least one person who they'd save from the fate

Partly at least growing obesity rates are a symptom of everything being a bit crap so needs huge societal change.

Partly it's because food tastes a lot better than it used to, there is a lot of it about, yet we are still programmed for feast and famine.

I mean christ, who could have been fat in the UJ in the 1980s. Pizzas were made in the same way as scones and olive oil was something you bought for your ears from the chemist. And everyone smoked.

More outside play at school.Proper healthy school lunches.Cooking lessons all the way through school.Better public transport and cycle paths.Subsidies on whole foods.Scaling back the extent to which the NHS treats lifestyle diseases.

Why don't we use the "traffic light" system on foods to actually ban anything that is in the red category? The system is already there of green, amber, red, so just needs a brave government to say the only things that can be sold must be green or amber in all the categories. Could give, say, a 2-3 year warning period to allow time for food manufacturers to change recipes/product ranges to adapt.

But they’d need to sort transport out before they made cars unaffordable.

While this may be true we aren't Korea or Japan and so what works there will not be the same as what would work here.

Basically, I'm not sure that sticking us fatties in the stocks and having thin people throw mouldy cake at us would be all that effective tbh. (Edit. I am not suggesting that the Koreans and Japanese march their obese onto village greens, lock them in wooden restraints and throw rotten foodstuffs at them. I was making a joke around shame and socially 'punishable' things)

You have to start by looking at what the society you wish to change is like, not the society you want to be like is like iyswim. Different attitudes require different solutions.

I think the 15minute towns are a great idea. If it is easier to walk to work, shops, school etc rather than take the car that has got to help.

Probably not a vote winner though as people love to drive everywhere.

Affordable housing so people can live where they work and have more time to exercise/cook. Community facilities run as services not for profit. Swimming in other countries cost a couple of euros for a day pass, here it's several pounds for a timed session. More outdoor free lidos. Stop dumping shit in our waterways. Open beaches at lakes and rivers.

I always think supermarket meal deals get a bad press. My supermarket meal deal today was a sweet potato and falafel grains salad, vegan sushi as the snack and a costa latte for £3.50. 450 calories in the food plus the coffee which Id’d of had regardless. Completely possible to make healthy choices with a meal deal.

Fresh, Uk grown fruit and veg needs to be cheaper.
The needs to be investment in local health facilities, parks need to be better lit and maintained, gyms and pools updated and affordable.
Finally , education. Kids need to be taught about food - touch it, smell it and learn to cook it. School dinners are a disgrace - needs a massive overhaul.

Get everyone back on the fags

They may be a good idea in principle but you have to develop their infrastructure before restricting cars. And it's highly unlikely you can structure things such that peoplem(especially both of a couple) can walk to work,

Cooking/food technology is on the school curriculum. The pupils in the secondary schools where I have taught love it and take it seriously. My dc did cooking weekly in their special schools.

My dc (young adults now) learnt about healthy eating and ‘five a day’ from when they were three.

There was a long thread on here a year or so ago where people were asked why they were overweight. Lack of cookery skills or lack of knowledge about fruit/veg was not the issue. It was more complex than that.

I really don’t think it’s lack of education.

I'm sure you are right about this, @shockeditellyou - but in the UK, a lot of people do lack the basic skills and knowledge necessary to eat a healthy diet - those skills have been lost over recent decades, and I think it is, at best, difficult to eat a healthy diet, cooking from scratch, without those skills.

I also forgot to mention the 'Daily Mile' in my previous post - schools that are doing a whole-school run every morning, aiming at about a mile for all the kids before the school work starts. I believe that, in schools that are doing this, they have seen a big reduction in obesity in the children. And the fact that there is no cost to the schools/Government, ought to make it a no-brainer.

Free very high quality school meals for all children. No upf and given time to eat them using a proper plate.