SCOTS are well used to hearing and seeing healthy eating messages; our schools, workplaces, health centres and community hubs, after all, are full of them. We all know what “five a day” means and understand that eating too much fat and sugar is making us the most obese generation in history.
The depressingly familiar problem, however, is that we seem unable or unwilling change our eating habits, as the latest worrying research highlights.
Two new reports from Food Standards Scotland (FSS) make for grim reading. Despite a litany of public health campaigns over the last seven years it seems there has been no improvement at all in the health of the nation’s diet.
Two out of three adults and almost a third of children in Scotland remain overweight or obese. Around half of the sugar and a fifth of the total calories we eat still come from unhealthy sources such as cakes, confectionary, biscuits and pastries. Indeed, the research indicates that a welcome decline in sugar intake from soft drinks has simply been offset by increases from other sweet foods.
Elsewhere in the research it’s our long-standing unhealthy relationship with alcohol that raises eyebrows, with average Scots drinkers of both sexes consuming the equivalent of an extra half a day’s worth of calories every week.
FSS also makes clear that retailers are doing little to help, instead bombarding us with cheap promotions on unhealthy foods – a staggering three quarters of confectionary is apparently bought by us this way.
If we keep going down this road, getting fatter and more unhealthy, our already creaking NHS will buckle completely under the weight of the obesity-related illnesses - such as cancer and type 2 diabetes – that are already costing an estimated £600m a year. The implications for the wider Scottish economy, meanwhile, already struggling with skills and productivity, is also frightening.
On the plus side, the statistics suggest that public attitudes to obesity are changing, with more people showing awareness and concern over the problem than ever before and a rise in support for action to be taken that would improve our food environment and make it easier to opt for healthier choices.
But. as the FSS makes plain, what is needed now is real and sustained behaviour change to accompany a shift in attitudes. And, as the failure to achieve any progress over the last seven years highlights, improvement will not be easy.
The Scottish Government must, of course, play an important part, and is right to pursue an ambitious anti-obesity strategy - still in consultation - which includes action on food marketing and £42m over the next five years to expand weight loss services.
But the time has also come for the food and hospitality industries and retailers to play a much bigger role in helping people make healthier choices. Well-meant but easily ignored healthy eating messages are clearly not enough in a society that is unable to stop gorging itself to an early grave; radical action is required.
It’s time, for example, for restaurants and fast food outlets to start displaying the calorie count of the meals they serve. It’s also time for supermarkets to curb their promotions on products like confectionary, offering deals on a wider range of healthy foods instead.
At present, it often those most in need of help to lose weight who fall prey to supermarket promotions and the sort of cheap fast-food feasts and takeaways we see all around us. These days it is expected that the business community will have a duty of care towards society. And since no societal issue in Scotland is more pressing than obesity, they must work closely with Government to help us help ourselves.
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