Weak on junk food, weak on the causes of junk food
July 8th, 2010Do the Tories really care about obesity, alcoholism, rubbish food? Apparently not? Lansley, who disgracefully calls himself Secretary for Health, is quite content to let his corporate friends in the lucrative Food and Drinks Federation poison the health and well-being of the population so long as they pay for the government’s advertising campaign which is a cover for inactivity. It costs the NHS £17bn per year to deal with alcohol misuse, another £17bn to treat obesity, while junk food – deliberately corrupted with high fat and salt and sugar content by the food industry – hugely damage health partucularly among the poor. But the government turns a blind eye.
The government response is bland, complacent and irresponsible. It favours voluntary admonition, which has never worked, over proper regulation because its big business allies would lose out from any serious attempt to give priority to health. The so-called Department for Health is the means to mediate the continued flow of profits to the food and drinks industry under cover of ‘partnership’, ‘social responsibility’ and other worthless euphemisms that the industry can always wriggle round.
New Labour was of course little better with its voluntary Change4Life PR campaign. But the Tories are taking this feeble approach further. Even the £75m spent on Labour’s campaign (bcaked by Tesco, CocaCola, Nestle’ and Pepsi – need one say more?) is now being chopped back so that the commercial sector can pay – to regulate themselves – as well as charities and local authorities, neither of which has any pennies to spare.
Industry is being listened to, not the doctors: for example the BMJ recently announced that cutting the intake of trans fats by just 1% would prevent 11,000 heart attacks in the UK, being far more damaging than other saturated fats. Result – silence. Why? Not because they improve taste or disirability which could affect consumer purchases, but because they increase manufacturers’ profits by extending shelf life, whilst being highly injurious to consumers.
July 9th, 2010 at 12:08 pm
Of course they care, they also care about stupid governments telling us what we can and should eat, what to wear and what to do a problem for New labour