Should stores ban you from buying junk food online?
It’s been proposed as a solution to growing obesity in Britain, but...
This idea is less finger wagging, more helping hand
YES
AFAMILY bag of toffee popcorn; a supersized packet of chocolate buttons; a 12-pack of cola: add to basket! Now that so many of us are doing our food shopping online, there is even more temptation to pile our (virtual) trolleys high with naughtybut-nice things.
If you were in an actual supermarket, you might think twice before lobbing in another packet of biccies with your gluttony on display. But not so when calorie-laden snacks are just a click away.
So bravo to Will Quince MP and KPMG policy-maker Mark Essex, guests on a podcast which discussed a smart idea to stop us all rolling out of our houses come the end of lockdown: supermarket shoppers online should be able to opt in to a system that blocks them from putting junk food in their baskets.
Try to sneak in that pack of Krispy Kreme doughnuts and the website will give you a virtual slap on the wrist. Cue cries of ‘nanny state!’
I can hear the wails now: ‘Why won’t politicians butt out? Why can’t we be free to eat what we want?’
But how free are we, really, when powerful forces conspire to get cheap calories down our throats: the advertising cajoling us to indulge, the offers on junk food that make it extra tantalising, the food scientists devising ever more delicious products to keep us scoffing.
We’re familiar with Big Tobacco, the web of commercial interests that has pushed cigarettes on a coughing, wheezing world for decades, but what about Big Food, the multibillion-pound juggernaut that makes us yearn for artery-clogging fare? In the battle between Big Food and British willpower, it’s clear who’s winning. Today, 62 per cent of the UK population is overweight. A third of teenagers begin adult life carrying too many pounds. Diabetes cases have trebled over the past 25 years.
A crisis of this scale needs more imaginative solutions, so why not let people sign up for curbs on their supermarket shop if it helps them avoid bad choices?
I write this not as some spinach-gobbling health nut, but as someone who is driven weak-kneed by certain foods. Right now, half a Victoria sponge cake is making cooing noises at me from the kitchen. It’s incredibly hard to resist temptation.
If a simple switch on supermarkets’ websites could help a few of us eat healthier food, why not?
This isn’t a wagging finger, but a helping hand.