We must all do our bit in helping win the war on obesity
WHAT are we to make of Boris Johnson launching the most ambitious anti-obesity campaign ever mounted by a British government? To his detractors it will provide yet more ammunition to be used against him. They will accuse him of hypocrisy and say he will never be taken seriously because of his own excessive weight and his past utterances on the subject.
After all, it was Boris who mocked Jamie Oliver’s do-gooding bid to make school dinners more healthy, telling a Tory conference fringe meeting in 2006: “If I was in charge I would get rid of Jamie Oliver and tell people to eat what they like. Why shouldn’t they push pies through the railings?”
And it was Boris who reportedly tipped the scales at 17-and-a-half stone during his Covid brush with death. There is no denying that for someone 5ft 8in tall, that would have put him firmly into the obese category – though he has lost more than a stone since.
Yet there is another way of looking at it. If I’m going to be lectured, educated or otherwise instructed by the Government about diet and exercise then I would much rather hear it from someone who appreciates a pie and a pint as much as I do than from some thin-lipped, beanpole, quinoa-munching, public health commissar.
IF EVEN the naturally libertarian Mr Johnson – in favour of having his cake and eating it – has concluded, as he tells the Daily Express today, that the coronavirus is a wakeup call for him and the whole country to get healthier, then the case must be pretty strong.
He is not normally “a believer in nannying, or a bossing type of politics,” but as he puts it himself: “Extra weight puts extra pressure on our organs and makes it harder to treat heart disease, cancer and – as we have found – coronavirus.
This was true in my case, and it’s true in many thousands of others.”
Anti-obesity measures we can expect to see rolled out over the coming months include more calorie count labelling on food and alcohol packaging and even restaurant menus; a ban on fast food advertising on television before 9pm; GPs being encouraged to direct patients to “healthy weight coaches” and to prescribe cycling as a treatment for conditions associated with obesity.
With statistics showing that Britain is the second fattest nation in Europe (only Malta has higher obesity levels) and evidence pouring in suggesting that excessive weight is strongly correlated with the risk of being killed by Covid, it is clear that something has to change.
It is also the case that obesity runs at much higher rates in deprived communities, with many children in effect sentenced to a lifetime of ill-health because of poor dietary and exercise habits acquired at an early age. And that clearly isn’t fair. In the 19th century being large of girth was a status symbol – in her later years Queen Victoria was famously as round as she was tall – while the impoverished struggled for calories. By the late 20th century that pattern had reversed.
The disparity has only got worse in recent years and is now a major factor behind diverging life expectancy between rich and poor.
And as the Prime Minister also reminds those of us who took part in the claps for carers on Thursday evenings during the worst of the pandemic, we collectively possess the power to make their lives easier through enacting some modest tweaks to our lifestyles, which is why his government is bringing forward an obesity strategy. So, welcome are measures that furnish us with extra information about the food we eat, as well as those that nudge us towards healthier options by increasing their visibility at the expense of less healthy ones.
But ultimately there is another essential ingredient that the Government is helpless to provide and which can only come from us: a sense of personal responsibility.
SO THAT is why the PM says our health depends on our own choices about how we live our lives. If people do not really want to change and instead expect the NHS to sort out all obesity-related issues for them then the new measures will fail, no matter how carefully thought-out they may be. And that will be our fault.
As we anticipate more photos of our PM in his eccentric running gear in the weeks ahead, it will no doubt be easy to mock. But at least he has always had a go, whether as a jogger in tropical shorts and dark socks or as a cyclist in the days before security considerations made that difficult. If he can redouble his efforts, then surely so can we.
‘Statistics show Britain is the second fattest nation in Europe’