Sense and sensibility...

[Workingman]

... with a little stupidity thrown in.

This month's attack on junk food, sugar and preventing [child] obesity is out. The great and the good of the Commons health committee, with a little help from sleb chefs, have come up with their answers.

* Banning junk food adverts before the 9pm watershed during TV programmes

Not the worst idea ever, but what is "junk" food? A legal definition will be hard to find, so expect food producers to take to the courts.

* Greater controls to stop supermarkets offering buy-one-get-one-free deals on unhealthy food

Another good idea, but what is classed as unhealthy food?

* Warnings on drink bottles to flag up how many spoonfuls of sugar they contain

No problem. The information cannot hurt.

[b]* A 20% tax on full-sugar drinks with the money raised going towards preventing childhood obesity[/b]

A tug at the heart strings re where the tax goes. But shouldn't there be research done into what effect(s) the cocktail of chemicals and other ingredients used to replace the sugar are having on our health?

* An outright ban on supermarkets placing sweets and other less healthy foods at the ends of aisles and checkouts

This should have been done years ago.

* The use of cartoon characters and celebrities in children's advertising should be restricted

It cannot hurt but the effect will probably be minimal. Advertisers will find ways around it.

* New guidelines on what constitutes a healthy school packed lunch.

Good luck with that one. There are so many things that can go in a packed lunch it will be almost impossible to control.

These things are a start, but the problem for me is that there are so many other things to consider such as exercise, portion size, the overall variety of a child's diet......

[Aggers]

To me, this all seems to be a waste of time and money.

Education is the only sensible answer to obesity.

Other thoughts, however, comes to mind -

When I was a lad, everyone laughed when they saw a fat man, either at the cinema or at the circus.
Perhaps if the few remaining normal people started to do that it might have some effect. [I often
feel like doing it].

I know that obese people come up with all sorts of excuses, but obesity is caused by taking in more
food energy than is necessary for their level of activity. There is no valid excuse for it.

Perhaps it might be a good idea to punish for cruelty those parents whose children are obese?

I wonder how many people who are categorised as living in poverty are obese? Is that possible?

Food for thought ?

[Workingman]

Aggers, they have to be seen to be doing something, and some of the suggestions are not that bad.

However, I do agree that most of the problem lies with the individual and, for children, the parents. Punishing the parents of obese children is not the worst idea I have heard.

[Suff]

I have been classed as clinically obese for years now. I struggle to try and keep my weight down but never seem to get there. Yet all my children and grandchildren are in perfect health. As I was until 23 when I wound up separated from my family and with unlimited access to Army cookhouse food.

Carbohydrates are, essentially, cheap, fast use high power fuel for the body. Sugar is just the most refined form of carbohydrate. Proteins are expensive and boring but are a slow release fuel and non addictive. Carbohydrates are addictive and cheap and the body turns them into fat if you don't use them all.

Don't believe me? Go watch Super Size Me. Watch the documented reactions of someone who OD's on carbs for One Month Only. There is one shot in that documentary which shows the amount of sugar he has consumed. That's not just in the drinks it's in the chips, the buns and the sauces.

He, quite brutally, documents the process of how he is virtually poisoned by the food. Leading, eventually, to addiction and classic addictive habits. The medical results, quite literally, shook the doctor and the medical team which was monitoring him. The doctor thought that the fat would be the issue and that all that "fat" would harm him in predictable and known ways. So confident of this fallacy were they that they made predictions which were simply ridiculous.

When, half way through, the sugar had attacked his liver, given him the symptoms of an alcoholic in his blood and liver tests, the doctor advised him to stop as he was running serious risk of impaired health and damage to his liver.

So much for the medical fraternity's understanding of how the body works and the fuels it uses and their side effects!

In the end, however, the body adjusted. As it does to all abuse otherwise all drug addicts would die within months and we wouldn't have a drugs problem.

The biggest problem was that he was hooked. Could not leave it alone, needed his next "fix" and just kept piling on the weight.

Remember this was just One Month of living out of McD's. It took him nearly a year to get rid of the weight and the last half stone cost him 6 months of diet and exercise. Literally the fat cells refused to go away and were just waiting to swell up and bloat him again. In the end he had to exercise on low fuel input to switch his body to fat burning and burn the cells away.

So when we talk about punishing parents for allowing their children to turn into large slow moving blobs (btw I may be large but I'm anything but slow moving... ).... We must also look at the entire food industry and what these children are addicted too. Cigarettes have to carry a warning that smoking kills. Do sugary drinks carry a "This may destroy your liver" warning? Of course they don't. We talk about packed lunches but the Schools are serving pizza and chips with sugary drinks on their menu.... How can you even think of punishing the parents when this is going on?

The weekend before last I lost 5lb in weight. Last weekend I put most of it back on again, mainly due to boredom and availability of food. No fizzy drinks, no chocolate, no biscuits. However lots of porridge with a teaspoon of sugar on top, paella, Rosti burgers, Chinese and Indian starter packs and most of a whole cooked chicken. Coffee and water with Vitamin C in it and one can of beer. 5lb put on, no problem. This week I have to lose it all and get rid of some more. No food after lunch time, no really bad stuff, limited portions, no drinking alcohol....

It's an addiction. If I'm busy I can avoid a lot of it. But if I'm sitting doing very little (trying to rest my recovering knee), I eat. And eat. And eat... Mainly because I'm trying to reduce the carbs and my body is going mad trying to get more. Which is why the rest of the porridge oats are in the bin and I'm not buying anything but protein this week or eating other than the protein in the freezer.

[Workingman]

Suff you have, sort of, encapsulated the whole problem.

It is not carbs or proteins or fibre to blame, it is the overall mix. The mix is wrong. Go any particular way and you will get problems. We humans are omnivores. We can eat just about anything, but we have to be careful to get the mix right. We do not do that.

Sugar, to most of us, is relatively new. Go back to the Middle Ages and the only sweeteners were honey and beets; herbs and spices were the flavour enhacers of choice. Fast forward to the 18thC and sugar is king, and has been ever since.

I am not a fan of the stuff, but many of us are, and I am not against ways of breaking our addiction.

To me most of the committee's suggestions are sensible. They might not all work, but they are worth a try, and running them in conjunction with an information campaign would not be a bad idea.

Banning and taxing? They do not work for me.

[Suff]

Banning and taxing? They do not work for me.

Nor for me. Americans found out that with prohibition, we are finding that trying to ban smoking just does not work.

Education, common sense. They all work. School meals in France are mandatory unless your child is picked up from school by an authorised adult. Meals are planned in advance for a period (1 or 3 months, don’t remember). The Education department has a department that deals specifically with nutrition, the chefs of the area all get together to decide on the meals and there is public consultation at an open meeting. If a school needs to use a local bar or restaurant for some meals, the establishment commits to delivering the agreed school menu for the day.

Contrast the total shambles in the UK. We start out badly and it goes downhill from there.