Vocal Voices

The geniuses at Public Health England (PHE) have decided hat we are all too fat and want us to go on a diet. Of course they cannot force us to do that so their plan is for producers of such things as ready-meals, takeaways, pizzas, burgers, pies, pasties, fried chicken - you get the idea- to reduce portion sizes and use healthier ingredients to get calorie intakes down by 20%. Notice what foods are being targeted and then try to work out what sort of people eat them. There is no mention of the high calorie sauces and dressings chefs drown their concoctions in at the more expensive restaurants. It is all very subtle. Oh, and there is nothing about reducing the cost of the reduced portions.

Their next plan is for us to follow the 400-600-600 diet plan where we eat no more than 400 calories at breakfast and 600 at lunch and dinner - or dinner and tewa for us northerners. Well, good luck with all that. Like we are all going to calorie count every meal and also survive on 1600 calories per day!

What they fail to mention is food availability. The old cliché "When I were a lad /l ass" is actually true in this sense. We went to the butchers for meat, bakers for bread, newsagents for fags and a paper and the 'offy' for booze. Nowadays 'food' or stuff to eat, is everywhere.

The local Co-op has one aisle for sweets and pop and that does not include the food-to-go from the chiller. Asda has an aisle with biscuits on one side and every sweet and chocolate imaginable on the other side. It also has a cake and bread aisle with pain au xxx and doughnuts etc. Then there is the crisps and pop aisle, not to mention the stuff at the checkouts. The local garage, the place for petrol and diesel, now has a Greggs and a Subway and to get to the till you have to pass about seven metres of chocs and sweets. Veer of to the right to get to the wall of chillers with all sorts of cans of xxxx and you are back to biscuits and cakes. Every parade, everywhere, has a takeaway of some sort, sometimes more.

Sorry, PHE, but portion sizes are not the 'real' problem. Back to your focus groups, and when you can, get out more, but with your eyes open.

I'm quite sure all this latest edict will do is give the larger manufacturers like Cadburys carte blanche to reduced portion sizes whilst still charging the same cash.

No doubt Ossie.

Here is the interesting elephant in the room. Cigarettes are an appetite suppressant. As quite a few of the guys I worked with in the Army found out when they stopped smoking and their times on the Battle Fitness Test nosedived.

My father in law said that giving up smoking was easy. But he had nothing to do with his hands when he had a coffee at his usual break time, so he decided to have a cream cake. When he realised he was getting fat he realised he'd have to give up the cream cakes. That, he said, was pure hell and to the end of his life he was extremely partial to a cream cake.

So in "curing" us of smoking and smoking related disease, they have made a whole load of us into obese diabetics.... Nice!

Where, exactly, does personal responsibility come in and the nanny state end? Granted I can talk, just obese would be nice. Then again I'm not clogging up the NHS because I can't control my eating..

Back to the diet... Again... Although I am still a stone lighter than when I arrived home before Christmas.

I think the modern trend for snacking has a lot to answer for. In days gone by you ate at meal times, and that was pretty much it. It's something to do with blood sugar and insulin levels.

Kaz, you said it in far fewer words that I did, but that is what I was getting at.

The ability to get something to eat, it would be wrong to call it food, is everywhere: 24/7.

Thanks Frank, I try to be succinct and to the point

TheOstrich wrote:I'm quite sure all this latest edict will do is give the larger manufacturers like Cadburys carte blanche to reduced portion sizes whilst still charging the same cash.

Yep! Two words - Wagon Wheels!

Kaz wrote:Yep! Two words - Wagon Wheels!

You remember the song, Kaz? ....

"Three wheels on my wagon,
but I'm still rollin' along ...... "

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RghKdGn8h5A

That was after Cadbury's bought them out, of course .......

I remember it well

I am expecting the government to create a body called the chip police any day now.
Sweeney Todd - Salt and Vinegar Squad!