Don’t shy from F-word – for sake of our children

THERE’S A familiar scene every morning at the shop near my home where I go to buy the newspapers. It’s full of children on their way to school, and every single one of them is clutching handfuls of cakes and sweets. Packs of four iced doughnuts seem to be a particular favourite, and somebody invariably has a family-sized bar of chocolate. All ready to be washed down, of course, with a fizzy drink. This avalanche of calories, fat and sugar isn’t being shared round. I’d bet my last pound that each child with four doughnuts will polish them off singlehandedly. But this morning feast is only the appetiser. If I happen to call in mid-afternoon when school has finished for the day, it’s the same again. Long queues of children at the checkouts with yet more cakes and sweets for the walk or bus ride home. Do their parents know that this is where the money they give them every day is going? If they don’t, they need to wake up pretty sharpish, and if they condone it, they’re guilty of irresponsible parenting. The amount of junk food these kids are putting away every week is frightening. And it’s in addition to any sweets and cakes that may be on offer at home as part of normal family life. However healthy their diet is at home, this daily ritual is sending their calorie intake through the roof and with all the wrong ingredients. Some of them are, to put it mildly, already a lot chunkier than they should be and a future as fat adults is approaching as surely as Christmas. Except that society is increasingly shying away from that particular F-word. It has become socially unacceptable to refer to somebody as fat, because it’s regarded as a term of abuse or derision that is upsetting. Instead, the clinical word obese is the term of choice, free of any possible offence. That’s a get-out clause allowing people to think of being overweight as an illness – something caught like the flu – instead of a matter of personal responsibility that can most probably be addressed by a change of diet and more exercise. Well, for this growing problem, a bit of straight-talking wouldn’t go amiss. Fat is only a short word, but it’s a potent one. If somebody gets upset at being called it, then it might just spur them to do something, which would be in their own interest. Just how nervously society tiptoes around the issue has been emphasised by television chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s new series, which continues tomorrow. He’s rightly fearless of using this taboo word, but when he suggested it as part of a weightloss campaign to council officials he is working with, they all flinched and pursed their lips. Can’t have that. Mustn’t call folks fat. Not nice, you know. of responsibility for unhealthy products and tempting marketing, especially when they are aimed at children. But there is only so much the Government can do by pressurising those who make and sell food. It cannot police the fridges and cupboards of millions of homes, still less station a commissar in my local shop with powers to prevent a child buying a family pack of doughnuts. Fighting fatness ultimately has to be a matter for individual adults who don’t feel good because they carry too much weight, dislike what they see in the mirror and decide to do something about it. And it’s for parents to do something about their children gorging on junk food on their way to and from school. No responsible parent wants to see their offspring set on the road to possible health problems by bad habits. If the thought that their child is ultimately going to be labelled fat upsets them to the point of being stricter about what they’re eating, then that’s in everybody’s best interests.