TEN IDEAS THAT CAN SAVE THE NATION FROM AN EARLY GRAVE

1) Teach our kids to cook: A MORI poll found that just 27% of working-age people cook for themselves, going down to 17% in the most deprived areas. Many parents now simply don’t know how to cook so can’t teach their kids. Home economics should start in junior school and be a compulsory exam subject up to National 5 or GCSE.

2) School lunches: Ban children from leaving school premises at lunchtime, leaving them more time to play and removing a key opportunity to consume junk food. We should provide school lunches that are healthy (ie: contain no processed food and as little salt and sugar as possible) and affordable. School dinners cost an average of £10 per week (£130 per month for a family with three children); we should consider scrapping child benefit and diverting the money to free school meals, as in France where pupils eat a restaurant-quality four-course lunch alongside their teachers.

3) Be more inventive in schools sports provision: In New Zealand, every child has a compulsory afternoon each week when they must play sport, but the sports are not confined to team games like rugby or football. Children get to try many sports and if they settle on golf, dance, yoga or spin classes (all sports they can keep up after they leave school) then they can pursue that interest. It may cost money, but the longterm saving to the NHS easily outstrips the

outlay.

4) The Daily Mile: When Elaine Wyllie, the headmistress of St Ninians primary school, in a bluecollar area of Stirling, first made it compulsory for her pupils to walk or run a mile a day, she had a normal cohort of children (on average 1 in 3 primary school children is overweight and 1 in 10 is obese). Three years later St Ninians had no overweight children and levels of concentration and academic achievement were notably higher. So let’s make the daily mile compulsory at all primary and secondary schools.

5) Make all sports facilities, including gyms, tax-exempt: The Cycle to Work scheme shows that tax policy can boost participation levels, so let’s make gym membership subject to salary sacrifice and boost levels of participation. Also, give tax breaks and speed up planning to build five-a-side pitches so that the thousands of overweight middle-aged men in the Central Belt who want to play football but can’t find pitches at sensible times can become more active.

6) Annual prediabetes screening for employees to be tax deductible: Nearly one in three Scots has prediabetes, which means their blood glucose (sugar) level indicates they are on the road to type 2 diabetes and are already at increased risk of a stroke and heart disease. Prediabetes is reversible if diagnosed, and that diagnosis is often the kick needed to change behaviour and avoid full-blown type 2 diabetes. It is cheap and easy to check for prediabetes: companies should be incentivised to get employees checked and it should be compulsory for public sector employees.

7) Tough love from doctors: In Finland and through New Zealand’s Movement Prescription Project, overweight patients whose ailments would benefit from a less sedentary lifestyle can be prescribed a compulsory exercise regime aimed at making them fit for work, which includes free gym or pool time if necessary (it’s backed up by removing benefits and/or conventional medical treatment if they refuse). This initiative increased patient activity significantly, especially among older patients who became on average five times more active.

8) Ban the placement of chocolates and sugary treats at supermarket checkouts: Needs no explanation.

9) Show Westminster how it’s done: The UK government stepped back from a sugar tax and banning junk food advertising, Holyrood should pick up that baton.

10) Standing desks: Everyone using a standing desk burns off 3.3 calories a minute, so if you stand for half your eight-hour day you will burn off an extra 650 calories, equivalent to a 10km run each week or 11 marathons a year. ‘Transitional’ desks that allow you to stand or sit cost slightly more than conventional desks, so companies should be incentivised to use them, while public sector workers should be required to.