Healthy Eating
I thought the following was an interesting example of how members of the Lords can pursue issues which might not grab the headlines but do show real initiative in helping people to change their behaviour. In this case it is about healthy eating.
In order to establish whether or not the Government were assisting women in their efforts to lose weight, immediately prior to the recess for the General Election, Baroness Gibson of Market Rasen asked the Government what steps they had taken to work with women’s magazines to inform women about healthy eating and keeping to a healthy weight.
Magazines which would be of obvious assistance would be those of Slimming World http://www.slimmingworld.com/ and Weightwatchers, http://www.weightwatchers.com/ two of the leading organisations concentrating on a healthy and sensible diet for women.
In her response, Minister of Health, Baroness Thornton said that the Department of Health’s Change4Life Campaign http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/MediaCentre/Currentcampaigns/Change4Life/DH_092080 had begun the previous year, with a focus on families with children aged between 5 and 11 years of age. In February this year, the campaign was extended to cover adults in the 45 to 64 age group. The Change4Life marketing strategy is to use the most effective and relevant communication channels to target audiences. While the marketing strategy for the adult campaign does not include advertisements in women’s magazines, the Government does target them via public relations to gain editorial content and media partnerships.
The Food Standard Agency http://www.food.gov.uk/ has also taken a number of steps to work with women’s magazines, which have been a key media channel in the agency’s healthier eating related advertising campaigns. The FSA has placed both advertisements and advertorials covering a wide range of healthier eating topics, such as salt, saturated fat, labelling, cooking/recipes and teen healthy eating. Women’s magazines are also a key target for the agency’s public relations activity on a wide range of diet and health issues.
Baroness Gibson is the Treasurer of the Parliamentary Food and Health Forum. She intends to pursue these issues with the new Government after the Election.
I`d just like to say change4life is a really good campaign it has made people think and actually change.
I find them infuriating. Not just the extremely patronising message that eating less will make me lose weight (wow!) but also that we have this monstrous defecit and they’re spending swathes of taxpayer money on Government propaganda… in an election year.
Now first of all Lord Soley, shouldn’t you be out on the doorsteps persuading every last person possible to vote your way? I saw Baroness Royall on the telly on monday night shepherding the PM through a rather unfriendly crowd; it didn’t seem quite the job for a cabinet minister but I guess it’s all hands to the deck right now.
But to the substance of your blog…feeling very virtuous because I spent a second hour this week in the local gym this morning but then ruined my efforts with a particularly good cheese scone at coffee time. But I wonder about what the Government, any government, should be doing about ‘healthy eating’ and convincing people to stay thin. Some very fine minds have put themselves to this task with little success. And confidant they won’t mind my adding their unsuitability to mine, I must point out that Baroness Gibson, Baroness Thornton and myself are all people who eat healthy foods, but probably far too much of them. All three of us are very bad adverts for staying thin. We are the last people on earth to lecture other people on what to eat. You know, the evidence is women of all social classes know exactly what to eat and why; we can count calories before we can walk but the reasons women don’t stay thin is exceptionally complex. Changing the cultural norm is going to be as difficult or more so than reducing smoking or drug misuse.
It’s a lot easier for men you know!
Many people think that the answer to over eating is more exercise but it may not be the answer.
Eat to get thin is a Food consumerist ploy, which is ridiculous.
If you grew your own fruit and veg the way noble Baroness Murphy does, with her Olives, then you would have nothing to worry about at all.
Anti-consumerism means going out there, growing them, and eating your own produce;
then you never need to worry about how the issues of food miles and all the other consumerist questions affect you; they don’t.
all you need is food; not loot.
Eat less; eat no sugar; reduce carbohydrate intake. Whenever you are hungry plenty of green
veg!
I cut out sugar from my diet some time ago and found that it was worth two fairly large meals a week…. which I did not subsequently need to eat. Sugar is strangely addictive and
causes greater appetite.
All those who would be seen in the gym and would NOT be seen in the vegetable garden/allotment digging their plot, should think about the poor Tutsis in Rwanda, genocidally killed for their…. plots, and because they were satisfied with digging them at 5 acres a piece, and satisfied with their family lives too, whereas big farm landlords wanted to farm with big machinery and big terrain. Net effect millions of dead Tutsis, burgeoning cities, and shanty towns throughout Africa.
The only answer to having a minster for “Food and Health” is yes yes yes!
Get fit by growing your own veg, then you will know where they come from, where they are going to, and the good they do may do you!
How many families today have enough garden to grow anything more than a fruit tree?