Kathy Foley has a piece on obesity in yesterday's Sunday Times that is balanced, mildly amusing, informative and avoids the scare-mongering hysteria usually associated with the topic. She rightly concludes that it doesn't really matter if you are a bit overweight so long as you avoid the processed rubbish as best you can. It's all about making choices and muddling through. So far not much to argue with. But obesity is becoming an issue about which the media is getting a little obsessive so it needs to be put in some sort of political context.
There is a large literature that strongly suggests connections between poverty, inequality, food insecurity and obesity even if there is some room for argument about the direction of causality. The dilemma is a personal one. As a social democrat I believe in regulation and intervention by the state to, at the very least, curb the glaring inequalities that leads to poorer people suffering from dietary-related illnesses that reduces the quality of life and, in some cases, ends it prematurely. On the other hand there is a cussed libertarian streak in me that recoils against the excesses of the nanny state.
Promoting healthy eating and information about food in general as part of the school curriculum is a good idea. But forcing people to eat the healthy stuff while removing the burgers and chips from the school premises will only backfire, as happened recently in Britain. Despite all the Jamie Oliver inspired healthy school meal regimes, it was reported that school meal consumption had dropped by nearly one fifth in Glasgow, has lead to the rise of the junk food smugglers, and a group of mothers introduced their own alternative meal delivery service of burgers, pasties and chips to the gates of a school in Rotherham. This is the sort of thing that would make your typical hi-co react with horror about the fecklessness of the proles.
I was a feeling hungry last Saturday afternoon and pulled into a garage where we ordered a panini with chicken, and peppers and some mayo. Bloody fine it was too and I was impressed that you could get something that good for under a fiver that consisted of real food. I know that before the month is out I'll be calling into the Noggin Grill in Sallynoggin and will be ordering a quarter pounder with cheese, smoked bacon and fried onions. At least they'll be real burgers, well, sort of. Not McDonald's or Burger King anyway.
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