Can see why they're doing it, but education should be what the government are pushing.
The two aren't mutually exclusive.
I remember having classes on healthy eating in the mid nineties. They are part of the national curriculum today. The government claim that the money raised from the sugar levy will also go towards improving children's health.
I rather suspect that a lot of my fellow students don't remember the classes we had, but that's not entirely the school's fault. Clearly we need to keep working on how we communicate these messages and make them stick, but that's only part of the solution.
We're told we need to eat fruit and vegetables but there is seldom an explanation as to why. What child is going to spend twice as much on a product that to them doesn't taste as nice and they don't know the benefits of ingesting said product?
I suppose this is all down to perspective but I would say that the narrative around healthy eating is clearer, more consistent and more informative than it has ever been. If you're looking for a detailed explanation of the biochemistry of nutrition then you're not going to find that outside of a science class, but the information that people need - eating more fruits and vegetables and less sugary foods makes you feel better, live longer and have less chance of contracting a chronic disease - is everywhere.
It would help if there were greater efforts to subsidise fruit and vegetables.
Yes, I'd like to see this as well. I suspect it's unlikely to ever happen with the current government.
2. Anyone who doesn't have kids has no right to comment on what parents should or shouldn't be doing.
That's not how the social contract works. We all have the right to comment on things that affect our experience of the world. We might not have the right to dictate what should happen, but it's not only reasonable but actually important that a variety of voices contribute to such discussions.
All this because people can't take responsibility for what they put in their gobs.
No food or drink company should be expected to protect people from their own bad choices.
Companies spend
billions of pounds trying to impel people to buy their products. They lobby against, distort and misrepresent scientific evidence to show their products in an artificially positive light. Beyond distorting the truth, they don't even want conscious decision making to play a part in your consumer behaviour - companies actively compete for your subconscious mindshare in a widely successful attempt to make purchasing preferences instinctive and automatic.
Having spent inordinate amounts of effort trying to subvert our ability to make balanced and informed decisions, companies have a massive responsibility to work alongside society to undo the health problems that have manifested as a result.
Beyond the corporate impact, we know that individuals (especially but not exclusively children) are poor at making decisions that involve short term 'loss' as a payoff for long term best interests. This becomes even more challenging when we're talking about the interests of other people. Conversely, it's easier for us to agree as a society that it would be better for us all if the NHS was less oversubscribed, if everyone lived happier and more productive old ages, etc.. Some people may take affront to the impact on their 'right' to spend twenty years immobilised on a hospital bed slowly dying of heart disease, but I'm not overly sympathetic.
Maybe today's children wouldn't be fat bastards if modern parents actually took the time to get them involved in physical activities, instead of buying them an Ipad at age 5 and expecting that to bring them up.
Kids/parents these days eh?
Agreed!
