Confronting our obesity epidemic

After years spent trying to curb alcohol deaths in Scotland through a minimum pricing strategy, ministers are now being urged to confront obesity, which many regard as a more serious threat to the nation.

Whereas alcohol starts kicking in during people’s teens and the damaging effects can take their toll in later life, researchers believe unhealthy diets can affect a baby in the womb and poor eating habits become endemic in childhood. What do we do? Tax food to put people off eating it? Of course not.

But it is hardly a coincidence that campaigners have reacted strongly to new figures which show cancer cases in Scotland have risen sharply over the past decade.

The trigger factors vary from cancer to cancer, but after smokers unhealthy eaters and obese people are most at risk. Thirteen different cancers are believed to be linked to obesity and overeating.

Cancer Research UK has urged the Scottish Government to attack the “barrage of multibuy offers on junk food” in supermarkets.

Whether or not they have the power to impose such restrictions was not clear, but it has been tried with supermarket drinks offers.

With the rise of food banks and families on tight budgets in the economic downturn, there is a moral dimension too; cheap food offers help family finances stretch further.

Driving the message home to families who eat badly is a mountain to climb – bodies become hooked on sugar, salt and fat to the point where they don’t know or don’t care what is in their food anymore.

“With the rise of food banks and families on tight budgets, there is a moral dimension”