Leading feminist: Obesity crisis is partly down to us

A PROMINENT feminist says she feels ‘partly responsible’ for the childhood obesity crisis because she urged women to stop cooking and go to work.

Rosie Boycott, who chairs the Mayor of London’s food policy unit, launched the feminist magazine Spare Rib in the 1970s.

Yesterday, she said her advice to women not to worry about making meals for their families had inadvertently helped to fuel childhood obesity.

Speaking at the Hay Festival of Arts and Literature, Miss Boycott said: ‘I think we have a lost generation. I don’t think we are getting it back.

‘ I feel partly responsible. I started Spare Rib and said, “don’t cook, don’t type, you’ll get ahead”. We lost it. Schools gave up cooking. Everyone gave up cooking.’

Asked if the obesity crisis was an unintended consequence of feminism, she said: ‘It’s certainly been fuelled by the fact women work and that we changed things, and we have allowed this huge change to happen … women start working, the fast food and the snacks and the takeaways arrive.

‘Yes, on one hand I say everyone start cooking again but I don’t want it to just be women, I want it to be men as well.’ Running from 1972 to 1993, Spare Rib became an active part of the women’s liberation movement, challenging stereotyping and exploitation of women while offering advice on everything from sex to body hair.

Miss Boycott, who attended Cheltenham Ladies’ College, launched the magazine aged 21 with Marsha Rowe and went on to edit Esquire magazine and the Independent, Independent on Sunday and Daily Express newspapers. After leaving the Express, she bought a smallholding in Somerset with her second husband.

Now an environmental campaigner, she yesterday addressed diet-related ill-health, greenhouse gas emissions and record levels of food waste. Miss Boycott, 66, chairs the London Food Board, which has 19 members advising the Mayor of London and Greater London Authority on food.

She said it had been difficult to get former mayor Boris Johnson’s ear on such issues, but added that current mayor Sadiq Khan was more receptive.

Miss Boycott, a supporter of the Women’s Equality Party, also works with hospitals to encourage them to provide healthier meals. She said: ‘In Scotland they outlaw hospitals from selling junk food.

‘But what they told me in Great Ormond Street is that they get £8,000 every week from Coca-Cola vending machines. That’s the cost of keeping a child in hospital for about three days.’

Miss Boycott called for the Government to ‘redefine’ health and safety for food outlets. She said restaurants have to prove only that they ‘won’t kill you today’, and argued that there should be wider-ranging measures.