Taxing fast food won’t persuade people to eat lentils and mung beans
DOCTORS are calling on the Government to take urgent action to tackle Britain’s obesity ‘epidemic’. They are demanding ‘bold and tough’ measures aimed at the fast food and soft drinks industries.
This would involve an exciting new range of ‘fat taxes’ and a ban on advertising and sponsorship by the likes of Mcdonald’s and Coca-cola.
Manufacturers would also be required to label their products with health warnings detailing the amount of salt, sugar and calories in everything from pizzas to popcorn.
The idea is that if food and drink companies were prevented from backing sporting events such as the Olympics and football’s Carling Cup, people would stop stuffing their faces with burgers and guzzling beer. Some hope. No one tucks into half-a-dozen Big Macs and fries because they think it is going to turn them into Usain Bolt, or downs eight pints of lager in the vain hope that they will be able to play football like Robin Van Persie. They do it because they are stupid and greedy.
The poverty lobby is already bouncing up and down about the decision to slap VAT on pasties. They have dubbed it a ‘tax on the poor’. So what will they make of a huge, governmentimposed increase in the price of fish and chips and takeaway chicken korma?
As for exclusion zones preventing fastfood chains and burger vans setting up shop near to schools, that’s been tried and has failed spectacularly. When Jamie Oliver attempted to improve the quality of school dinners, parents were queuing up to pass bags of chips through the railings to their ravenous children.
The medical profession is right in one respect. Britain is the Fat Man of europe. We have overtaken our Continental neighbours and caught up with the Americans in the obesity stakes.
It is estimated that by 2030, half the population will be dangerously overweight and at risk of an early grave thanks to diabetes and assorted cancers.
But calling it an ‘ epidemic’ is to suggest that obesity is something which can be ‘caught’, like measles or the flu. Demanding firm action from the Government also implies that the legions of lardbutts waddling the streets are somehow the Government’s fault, the Government’s responsibility and therefore deserving of a Government ‘cure’.
THIS is part of the depressing modern ‘victim’ culture, which strips people of any responsibility for their own actions and wellbeing. In all but a handful of cases, involving glandular malfunction and mental disorder, obesity is not an illness.
It is the inevitable result of uninhibited gluttony and a lack of willpower and self-restraint. Self-appointed ‘experts’ think that if only the public were ‘educated’ about the calorific content of deep-fried pizzas, they’d stop eating them and embrace a virtuous diet of lentils and mung beans instead.
Don’t be daft. People eat greasy fast food because it tastes good and provides cheap, cheerful instant gratification. They’re actively looking for the sugar rush, not trying to avoid it.
Cigarette packets are plastered with pictures of diseased lungs, skulls and crossbones and grim health warnings in lettering the size of the hollywood sign. But millions still smoke and the Government is content to keep ramping up the prices and pocketing the proceeds.
higher taxes on fast food would simply disappear into the vast black hole of state spending, or get frittered away hiring another army of useless, interfering healthy eating co-ordinators from the jobs pages of The Guardian.
Britain’s existing battalions of taxpayer-funded ‘five-a-day’ workers have been conspicuously unsuccessful in persuading the great unwashed to switch from French fries to fruit and vegetables.
When councils forced chip shops to cut the number of holes in salt shakers in a doomed attempt to reduce consumption, the punters simply unscrewed the caps.
As for the other ‘bold and tough’ measures, banning sponsorship and advertising by food manufacturers would be an intolerable intrusion on free speech and freedom of choice.
Driving food and drinks firms to the wall at a time of recession and high unemployment is the economics of the madhouse.
If the state really wants to encourage hideously fat people to lose weight, there’s a simple solution. The easy way to save the hundreds of millions of pounds being spent on treating the obese is to stop indulging them. We’ve all read reports of social workers buying fast food, fizzy drinks and sweets for ‘clients’ too fat to get out of their own beds.
If the morbidly obese were left to wallow in their own filth they might get round to losing weight.
We LEARNED recently that some clinics are widening their doors so that their XXXL patients can squeeze through. Why? Tell them that if they can’t get in, they won’t get help.
The NHS shouldn’t have to buy reinforced ambulances and heavyduty maternity beds to support selfinflicted gutbuckets. Nor should the fire brigade be forced to use forklift trucks and winches to rescue 40-stone monsters from their own homes.
And why should the health Service budget be expected to stretch to fitting gastric bands to people lacking the willpower to lose weight by eating less and exercising more?
Banning burgers isn’t the answer. There’s nothing wrong with a quarterpounder, eaten occasionally and in moderation.
Why should the rest of us have to pay more for our fast-food treats because some of our selfish fellow citizens are slowly, and not so slowly, gorging themselves to death?
Let them eat cake. It’s their funeral.