(1) Making food preparation and consumption the high point of everyone’s
day
(2) Making treats into treats once more
(3) Offering every fat person the chance to earn cash/rewards for losing
weight
The pandemic has turned normal life on its head. We have all been ready to
change attitudes and behaviours and have been receptive to multiple
instructions from government. We are perhaps uniquely ready to embrace a
very different approach to our health going forward. But we need to act soon.
As memories quickly fade, the sense that we need to take more responsibility
for our own fitness, to deal with unexpected and life threatening disease, may
be overtaken by the previous mind-set that our health is the responsibility of
the NHS.
(1) Making food preparation and consumption the high point of everyone’s
day:
Firstly, we need to start with families and communities, of all shapes and
sizes. During the pandemic, meal preparation has been fun as families have
taken time as a group, to share preparation and then eating together. We can
keep this going if we embed some of those pleasant memories before
convenience ultra-processed food reasserts a grip on our kitchens.
One key to this changed behaviour is children and their attitude to helping
with preparation and enjoying conversation at the dinner table. The evidence
suggest that they have during the last year, even the teenagers:
Researchers found 60% of young people thought more shared family meal times
were positive for health and wellbeing. Young people in the study said they
wanted to keep having meals together: Guy’s and St Thomas’s Charity and the
Bite Back 2030 from 1,000 14 to 19 year olds.
Are there policy initiatives that will encourage this?
A good example would be the national savings initiative that worked well
during and after the second world war: while this promotional film
(https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-down-our-street-1942-online) looks
very dated and unacceptable today, there are many socially cooperative
attitudes that have been changed by the pandemic. Just as children in the 50’s
and 60’s bought weekly savings stamps at school, children now, post
pandemic, are ready for new attitudes to food and meals which can shape our
society in the years to come with one simple, bold and achievable policy:
Every child in the country grows an edible green plant each year.• This becomes a joint home and school project (contributes to maths,
geography as well as food lessons), is distributed free by supermarkets
(super keen to embellish their social credentials).
• Children’s television embraces the grow your own food idea with
formats, outside broadcast, child participation, competitions. The notion
of seeing your food grow from seed to plate takes root as parents enjoy
being part of the enthusiasm.
• Communities make space for communal growing with the children.
• Allotments come back into wide scale use: Figures released on Monday
by the National Allotment Society (NAS) reveal that 40% of English
councils that responded to a survey reported a “significant uplift” in
applications to join waiting lists during April, with a 300% increase in one
case – Hyndburn in Lancashire.
(2) Making treats into treats once more.
Food manufacturers (and retailers) have been spectacularly successful in the
post war years as the real cost of food has plummeted and today, in the UK,
food is less than 10% of total household expenditure, less than half what it
was in the fifties.
This decreasing cost has been particularly evident in highly processed food,
where production scale and efficiency have made what were once weekly
treats into everyday snacks: in the fifties, a family might share a chocolate bar
on a Sunday; now this can be readily bought “within an arm’s reach of desire”
(Coca Cola chairman’s ambition 1923).
Every street now has a treat emporium – convenience stores with every kind
of chocolate, biscuits, crisps, soft drink…..all with their bright packaging and
attractive advertising, to be passed multiple times per day.
We cannot turn the clock back to the grey, choice free fifties, but we can for a
moment consider whether there were aspects of a previous age that can help
us make policy choices in this perhaps more open and receptive post
pandemic environment?
With so many of us being fat, government has a simple choice: accept this
and pump endlessly more into the NHS or use fiscal measures to influencefood expenditure away from the more obvious obesity contributors.
Food manufacturers are right to argue for their businesses but they perhaps
also need to be encouraged to find a new role for their products in a world
where constant eating is discouraged in pursuit of lower weight and better
health.
This proposal is for an extension of VAT (already on many snack foods) to
other non-meal categories and a significant increase in that VAT rate over the
coming years, with a view to at least doubling the price of these items.
To sweeten what will be a bitter pill, the revenue raised by the VAT could be
ring fenced to fund Proposal 3 below.
(3) Offering every fat person the chance to earn cash/rewards for losing
weight
This part of the 3 pronged strategy moves back to incentivise.
“It’s the economy stupid” is not just a good political catch phrase, it’s a good
reminder that people / voters are heavily influenced by their wallet.
Policy makers on obesity have relied on education, action of specific “thought
to be” bad ingredients and exercise promotion as key tools. Success if
achieved has been fleeting e.g. the Olympic Games in London as a driver of
grass roots sport.
A cash or near cash incentive could be a powerful incentive to action if it was
(a) large enough to motivate and (b) seen as achievable.
Exact figures to be tested but this proposal submits “£500 for 10 kilos” as a
start point for consideration:
• Prize would be part cash and part sports equipment, membership, club
fees.
• Companies would be asked to partner with the initiative to provide the
near cash elements at cost.
• A High Street presence e.g. Boots the Chemist would provide the
weight measurement service and governance. They would also
adjudicate a given body mass index as a qualification for entry into the
scheme.
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