{"id":1798,"date":"2011-10-17T11:59:03","date_gmt":"2011-10-17T10:59:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.zoeharcombe.com\/?p=1798"},"modified":"2016-07-01T19:26:58","modified_gmt":"2016-07-01T18:26:58","slug":"englands-obesity-strategy-not","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zoeharcombe.com\/2011\/10\/englands-obesity-strategy-not\/","title":{"rendered":"England’s Obesity Strategy (not)"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Thursday 13 October, 2011, the Department of Health issued this press release<\/a>, optimistically called “Government calls time on obesity.”\u00a0 The government has done anything but.<\/p>\n

We need to remember that the UK health service was devolved in 1999, with England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland managed separately from this point forth. Hence, this Department of Health announcement was for England only.<\/p>\n

On 15 March 2011, the Department of Health issued a press release <\/a>on what they call “The responsibility deal.” The government believes that\u00a0 partnering with the food and drink industry “can be the most effective way of tackling some public health objectives.” The purpose of the food and drink industry is to sell as much food and drink as possible. The government believes that we need to be consuming less food and drink to lose weight. How these aims can be compatible, therefore, baffles me.<\/p>\n

The pledges announced in the March press release include:<\/p>\n

– Calories on menus from September this year;
\n – Reducing salt in food so people eat 1g less per day by the end of 2012;
\n – Removal of artificial trans-fats by the end of this year;
\n – Achieving clear unit labelling on more than 80 per cent of alcohol by 2013;
\n – Increasing physical activity through the workplace; and
\n – Improving workplace health.<\/p>\n

We know that putting “Smoking kills” and “Smoking will harm your unborn child” on cigarette packets makes no difference, so why would putting a calorie number on food make any difference? It won’t and we know already that it won’t – here is an article <\/a>about a study done in the British Medical Journal to prove this.<\/p>\n

The October ‘new’ news<\/strong><\/p>\n

Health secretary, Andrew Lansley, and England’s Chief Medical Officer, Professor Dame Sally Davies, launched the ‘new’ proposals, but there really was only one thing new:<\/p>\n

1) Davies called for everyone to be more\u00a0 honest about their eating and drinking habits – so, not only are we greedy and lazy, we are now liars too!<\/p>\n

2) We have been told to “slash” five billion calories a day. If the population of England approximates to 50 million people, that’s 100 fewer calories per person per day. No knowledge whatsoever of the difference between calories has been demonstrated with this headline grabbing number.<\/p>\n

3) Astonishingly – this was the only new bit – the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition (SACN) – advised that the recommended daily calorie intakes for both men and women should be raised. We are told to eat less, but our intake guidelines should go up? Davies tried to explain this by saying – our daily intake should be raised but we are still eating more than this, so we still need to cut back. This is confusing at best and ludicrous at worst. I do not <\/em>think that we should be raising calorie recommendations in the midst of an obesity epidemic. Not because the obesity epidemic is about calories (because it isn’t), but because it sends the wrong message. If health were going to suffer by not <\/em>raising these calorie limits then raise them – but at a completely different time, so as not to confuse the public. However, I am far from convinced that anyone’s health would suffer if we did not raise calorie limits – health is about what we eat and the vital nutrients that we consume – not the amount of petrol we put in our tank. Putting petrol in a diesel car is the worst thing we can do to a vehicle. Putting sugar, transfats and empty calories in a human body is equally harmful.<\/p>\n

The calorie intakes, just for the record, have been increased from 2,550 to 2,605 for men and a whopping 1,940 to 2,079 for women.<\/p>\n

The chair of the SACN working group, Alan Jackson, has declared interests in Nutricia (a specialised unit of Danone food company) and Baxter Healthcare (see page 32<\/a>). The full list of members of the energy requirements sub committee is on p19 of that link. Ian Macdonald has declared interests with Mars Inc, Mars Europe, Unilever, Nestle and Coca-Cola – just what we want on a Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition! Andrew Prentice, also on the group, ‘only’ has connections to Tanita Scales and Danone. His wife, however, (see p34) has the most extraordinary list of declared interests: Beveridge Institute for Health and Wellness, Diabetes UK, Institute of Brewers & Distillers, Milk Development Council, Optimal Performance Ltd, The Rank Prize Funds, Tanita UK Ltd, World Cancer Research Ltd, Weight Watchers UK Ltd, B Kassardjian Fund \u2013 Zurich, Dee Caffari Ltd, Mars, BBC, Rosemary Conley Diet & Fitness Club, National Trust, Coca Cola, Outsights, Nestle, Emap, Kelloggs, Almond Board California, Nunwood Consulting, Pepsico, GlaxoSmithKline, British Institute of Sport, The Pelican Buying Co, National Institute of Nutrition and J Sainsbury. Go girl!<\/p>\n

The bottom line<\/strong><\/p>\n

The bottom line is that the English government thinks that people just need to eat less and do more and they will lose weight. As I detail at length in my book The Obesity Epidemic <\/em><\/a>this has been Plan A for more than three decades and we have continued to get more and more obese. We have known since Benedict’s 1917 study that eating less leads to short term weight loss and then regain to beyond the starting weight. This was confirmed in the definitive eat less experiment – the Minnesota Starvation Experiment <\/a>– initial weight loss, followed by regain plus 10%. At least 9 out of 10, if not 19 out of 20, of the personal consultations that I do start with the explanation “I didn’t really have a weight problem until I went on my first diet. I lost weight, regained and more. I went on another diet, lost weight, regained and more.” When they say ‘diet’, my clients mean a calorie deficit diet – the eat less\/do more that the government thinks will get us out of this mess.<\/p>\n

Here’s an interesting statistic for you:<\/p>\n

The MAFF (Ministry of Agriculture Fisheries & Food) National Food Survey\u00a0tells us that we were eating 2,290 calories per person per day in 1975 and, by 1999, this had fallen to 1,690 calories per person per day. If we apply the 3,500 calorie formula (notwithstanding that this formula is also wrong, but it’s the one that government and all calorie advisors rely upon), to the change in annual average calorie intake, all other things being equal, we should have lost<\/em> an average of 62.6 pounds per person during this period. Instead obesity rose nearly ten fold during this time.[i]<\/a><\/p>\n

The DEFRA (Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs) report notes the continual decline in calorie intake. The Family Food Survey\u00a0for 2001-02 comments on the short term: \u201cEnergy content of the household food supply has decreased considerably over the last 5 years.\u201d The Family Food Survey for 2002-03 notes the same trend over the longer term: \u201cAverage energy intake per person in the UK is unchanged in 2002-03 compared with the previous year, although it has been declining since 1964.\u201d[ii]<\/a><\/p>\n

The Food Standards Agency\u00a0(FSA) web site also acknowledges the above conundrum, \u201cSince the 60s we’ve been consuming fewer calories from household food (this doesn’t include eating out). However, there are an increasing number of people who are overweight or obese. The reasons for this are not clear.\u201d[iii]<\/a><\/p>\n

We need to eat better, not less. We need to return to eating real food, not the empty calories dominating the eatbadly plate<\/a>. We need to eat naturally produced meat, fish, eggs, dairy products, vegetables and salads to ensure that our bodies can use the calories that we eat for our basal metabolic needs. We absolutely cannot afford to eat the empty sugar and flour calories, which we are eating.<\/p>\n

World Health Organisation\u00a0data tells us that the average UK citizen consumes 38 kilograms of sugar per year.[iv]<\/a> Statistics from the Flour Advisory Bureau note that UK per capita flour consumption reached 74 kilograms in 2008\/9.[v]<\/a> This represents a few calories short of 1,150 per person per day from those two ingredients \u2013 when did that become a healthy balanced diet?<\/p>\n

What the government should have done<\/strong><\/p>\n

I set out in Chapter 16 of The Obesity Epidemic <\/em>what should be done to reverse the obesity epidemic. Here are the headlines:<\/p>\n

1) Tear down the eatbadly plate from every surgery, hospital and school in the country and never allow it to be shown again. Tell people to eat real food from now on and nothing but real food. If nature provides it – eat it; if food manufacturers provide it – don’t. That’s the only healthy eating food message that the government needs to have\u00a0 to start to reverse the obesity epidemic.<\/p>\n

2) Ban trans fats. In the unlikely event that we were bold enough to ban sugar, trans fats and sweeteners, this one step would be sufficient<\/em> to reverse the obesity epidemic (whether such bans are necessary<\/em> is a matter for debate). Trans fats should be singled out for an immediate ban (as has happened in Denmark and Switzerland). The National Heart Forum\u00a0summed up their position on trans fats in the opening to their paper calling for a ban on these substances: \u201cIndustrially produced Trans fats (IPTFAs) are harmful to health, they have no nutritional benefits and there is no known safe level of consumption.\u201d[vi]<\/a><\/p>\n

3) Fiscal policy (taxation). I cannot conceive of any government having the courage to ban sugar, trans fats and sweeteners. Hence, if we lack the leadership qualities to ban nutritionally void substances, the minimum that we need is a deterring and punitive tax on each of them. We need to be very specific about the targets. In May 2009 Dr. Tim Lobstein\u00a0called for a \u2018fat tax\u2019,[vii]<\/a> while talking about junk food and pizza. The reiteration of the notion that \u2018fat is bad\u2019 is incessant. We must stop this forthwith. Here is a blog on the October 2011 Denmark fat tax and <\/a>how misguided this is. The target of fiscal measures needs to be processed foods and no real food should ever be demonised again. Again, although this step may not be necessary, it would be sufficient and we are almost expecting the impossible from our populations to tell them to avoid processed food while the food manufacturers are simultaneously promoting BOGOF\u2019s (Buy One, Get One Free) on biscuits, cakes, confectionery and all the things that we need help to resist. David Kessler\u2019s book,\u00a0The end of overeating,<\/em> gives full details of what humans are up against in terms of food industry tactics.[viii]
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

Taxation would merely be a return to previous public policy, albeit from centuries ago. Adam\u2019s Smith\u2019s The Wealth of Nations (1776) noted \u201cSugar, rum, and tobacco are commodities which are nowhere necessaries <\/sup>of life, which are become objects of almost universal consumption, <\/sup>and which are therefore extremely proper subjects of taxation.\u201d Just under one hundred years later, the sugar tax was repealed. If sugar is not banned, the tax needs to be reinstated.<\/p>\n

The objective of such taxation should primarily be to reduce consumption, but any revenue generated can have an added benefit of subsidising real food and\/or the health services that are impacted by such consumption. Using sugar as an example, I would put a minimum 100% (double the price of the product) tax on any product containing non naturally occurring sugar (any added \u2018ose\u2019).[1]<\/a> This would immediately discourage food manufacturers from adding sugar, completely unnecessarily, to ham, cottage cheese, tins of chick peas, kidney beans and other healthy products. I would put at least a 200% tax on any product where all sugars added together are the majority of the composition of the product. For any product (e.g. children\u2019s sweets) where the entire product is essentially sugars (with a bit of crushed animal innards, gelatine, for bonding), we should multiply the current price by four or five fold. The proceeds from taxes on sugar, trans fats and sweeteners should subsidise real food for people who are currently least able to afford it. We cannot hope to solve an obesity epidemic when we can buy ten doughnuts or<\/em> one cucumber for the same price.<\/p>\n

Other fiscal measures should be considered. Corporation tax can be raised on companies that make processed food and lowered, or eliminated, on companies that provide completely unadulterated natural food. The local butcher must become the provider of choice for meat, not McDonald\u2019s. Today, I can buy one pound (454 grams) of grass fed steak for the same price as a regular cheeseburger and<\/em> medium fries and<\/em> mayo chicken and<\/em> a McFlurry original and<\/em> a medium drink and<\/em> a double cheeseburger.[ix]<\/a> This is not conducive to healthy eating \u2013 particularly in the sections of our population who can least afford, and most need, real food. Kessler\u00a0details some of the most contemptuous examples of fast food: \u201cOne of the signature hamburgers at Hardee\u2019s is called the Monster Thickburger, which famously contains 1,420 calories and 108 grams of fat.\u201d \u201cYet even that pales in comparison to a slice of Claim Jumper\u2019s Chocolate Motherlode Cake … 2,150 calories a slice\u201d. (Note the use of the word \u2018mother\u2019 to imply approval). Such inhumanity to man should be met with an \u201cInhumanity Tax\u201d. It\u2019s not far away from manslaughter, if you are familiar with the legal definition.<\/p>\n

If this sounds extreme, how does \u201c90% of today\u2019s children\u00a0being overweight or obese by 2050\u201d <\/em>sound?[x]<\/a> And, why would this be considered extreme? I am merely suggesting that we return to eating what we used to eat before we got too obese to function as human beings.<\/p>\n

England has one of the worst obesity epidemics in the world. Thanks to the conflict of interest and ignorance of the English government, they now have one of the worst obesity strategies in the world. Relying on the profit motivated organisations that want us to eat ‘fake’ food instead of real food, to lead a return to the real food that would signal their demise, is naive at best and fatal at worst.<\/p>\n

\n

[1]<\/a> As an example, fructose in a whole apple is fine, as this is the form in which nature intended us to eat fructose. Fructose added to sweeten other products is not necessary.<\/p>\n

\n

[i]<\/a> I calculated this mathematically year on year and analysed the average calorie intake for 1975 and then that for 1976 and used the 3,500 calorie formula to work out what the average person should have gained\/lost between these two years and repeated this for each year between 1975 and 1999 to calculate the overall number of pounds that should have been lost on average. The overall number was calculated cumulatively, as some years people should have gained weight and most should have produced weight loss \u2013 all according to the calorie theory.<\/p>\n

[ii]<\/a> http:\/\/www.defra.gov.uk\/evidence\/statistics\/foodfarm\/food\/familyfood\/index.htm<\/p>\n

[iii]<\/a> http:\/\/www.eatwell.gov.uk\/healthydiet\/seasonsandcelebrations\/howweusedtoeat\/ changingtastes\/<\/p>\n

[iv]<\/a> http:\/\/www.whocollab.od.mah.se\/expl\/globalsugar.html<\/p>\n

[v]<\/a> http:\/\/www.fabflour.co.uk\/content\/1\/31\/facts-about-bread-in-the-uk.html<\/p>\n

[vi]<\/a> http:\/\/www.heartforum.org.uk\/Policy_Consultations_2093.aspx<\/p>\n

[vii]<\/a> http:\/\/www.medindia.net\/news\/British-Expert-Calls-for-Fat-Tax-on-Unhealthy-Foods-to-Save-Children-51144-1.htm<\/p>\n

[viii]<\/a> David Kessler, The end of overeating<\/em>, published by Rodale, (2009).<\/p>\n

[ix]<\/a> Rump steak was \u00a314 per kilo (\u00a36.36 per pound) and McDonald\u2019s had the first five items listed for 99p and the double cheeseburger listed at \u00a31.29 (June 2010). http:\/\/www.mcdonalds.co.uk\/food\/saver-menu\/saver-menu.mcdj?dnPos=0<\/p>\n

[x]<\/a> One of the forecasts of the Foresight Report: \u201cTackling Obesities: Future Choices\u201d<\/em> (October 2007).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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