“But I’m reasonably confident that most of us try, where possible, to incorporate it into our lives, so long as we possess the cultural & financial capital to do so, and it doesn’t detract from the pleasure of eating.”

Really? You must live in a different Britain to me. I think most of us will ignore it, or at least, will feel guilty about not doing anything about it even if we make a few small gestures in that direction.

Although what we ought to be doing is punching anyone who works for this quango on the nose and telling them to butt out and mind their own business.

“But it seems to me that all these people can do without eliciting angry, defiant responses, is just put the information out there and let the rest of us decide what to do with it.”

But that is hardly the point is it? The people doing this, of course, want the rest of us to consume their products and give them money. But more importantly they are jumped little pathetic little creatures who need to boss the rest of us around and make us miserable in order to feel their lives have any meaning at all. And we allow them to do so. Simply being helpful and informative negates their reason for being. We need to find out who is giving them our money and take it away from them until they learn to shut up.

I have very little sympathy for the Lunch Box brigade. On this issue the nutritionalists are right (even if I believe the entire industry is based on the simple “eat your greens” premise).

Listening to the examples on the radio yesterday, I was utterly horrified. Daft parents were listing out the contents of lunchboxes whose nutritional value was absolute zero.

Then, without irony, they’d whinge about the standard of school meals as the driver behind the “choice” (such an abused term these days) to provide their kids with packed lunches.

Now, school meals have, like all else these past three decades, been victims of the wrongheaded “market” fetish where the drive for lower prices has crowded out quality. But even the greenest of slop served in the school canteen has far higher nutritional value than the list of party food which some of the witless parents were admitting to yesterday.

One sandwich (I bet on white bread), fizzy drink, crisps, and yoghurt is no substitute for a plateful of mince and dumplings, or even the Friday standard of Fish, chips and peas.

Kids need a balanced mix of protein (to drive growth), complex carbs (to sustain energy) and healthy fats (which are entirely substituted for unhealthy trans fats in most lunchboxes). Most parents haven’t a clue about these requirements and instead just fill up lunchboxes willy-nilly. I’d ban lunchboxes tomorrow for the sake of the children (only joking of course!).

There’s only so much the state can, or should, do.

Remember those lovely looking mums feeding their no-doubt charming kids chips through the school fence…?

“whose nutritional value was absolute zero.”

Really? They were sending their children to school with empty lunch boxes? Well, I agree that needs addressing. Maybe we need a “lunch boxes: for putting food in” campaign.

“Most parents haven’t a clue about these requirements and instead just fill up lunchboxes willy-nilly.”

Parents 20-30 years ago were doing much the same. I don’t recall any of my school contemporaries suffering from malnutrition as a result.

Remember that the nutritional value of food that is eaten is better than the nutritional value of food that is not eaten. If putting the sandwich on white bread rather than brown bread gets the child to eat it at all, that’s a good thing. If putting the sandwich on supermarket value white bread rather than more expensive brown bread means that the family can afford to make the sandwich in the first place, then that’s also a sensible decision to make.

That post was an oddity at Lib Con in that I found it strangely heart warming and a wonderful morning read.

But it seems to me that all these people can do without eliciting angry, defiant responses, is just put the information out there and let the rest of us decide what to do with it.

Or we could perhaps try to address some of the structural issues in the food system which make unhealthy food cheap, and healthy food expensive… Admittedly difficult, as it’s a global issue, but we could at least try thinking about it.

What me or my kids eat is none of the governments bloody business

@3 “There’s only so much the state can, or should, do.”

The one thing the state can and should do is the one thing the totally captured New Labour & Tories will never do.

Which is to regulate the arse off the industrial junk food conglomerates who have literally fed us shit* for years. (* OK it’s actually wallpaper paste, salt & sugar.)

The money wasted on these programmes to persuade the consumer is a drop in the ocean compared to the industrial scale propaganda system which is the TV ads and marketing budgets.

It takes a trip to USA (which is far worse than we are) to make you realise how Britain looks to say the French ie horrific. The honest British Greggs doughnut is a relatively healthy meal compared to the satanic abortion that is the Krispy Kreme donut.

The best thing the EU ever did for us was to make those bastards list out the shit that they put in our food.

“What me or my kids eat is none of the governments bloody business”

Correct. It’s the business of a load of massive corporations who have taken control of your body and brain (to the extent that the latter exists, dickhead)

BenM,

“I have very little sympathy for the Lunch Box brigade. On this issue the nutritionalists are right (even if I believe the entire industry is based on the simple “eat your greens” premise).”

So they are right? Probably yes, but does that give them the right to stop me sending my (as yet unborn) son Athelstan to school with some nice things in his lunch box as a gesture from me to make up for the bullying he is receiving for some idiot naming him Athelstan?

Scientists may be right. That does not mean what they say is the correct thing to do. Unless the aim is to live a long healthy and productive (in terms of doing your job) life with no fun, enjoyment or excitment. Because science is accurate is describing almost all things we enjoy as more dangerous for us than many we do not (although I must admit to enjoying Spinach, which rather bucks this trend). Just because a scientist says something is right does not make it best for a human, who being a rational creature can make their own choice.

As for children, if their parents are feeding them so badly it is dangerous to them, why are we tinkering with the lunchboxes? Would not taking them away from those harming them be a better response? Children are not property, so if you are so convinced bad diets are harmful to children (and being less facetious for a moment, they are certainly likely to be part of the problem for neglected children) then why leave the children with the clearly inadequate parents? Tinkering does not solve a situation, so if there is a problem, at least solve it properly.

“What me or my kids eat is none of the governments bloody business”

Unless you poison them.

Strategist,

“Correct. It’s the business of a load of massive corporations who have taken control of your body and brain (to the extent that the latter exists, dickhead)”

I assume you have checked Matt Munro is not a self-sufficient farmer then? Me thinks you may be making strategically unviable assumptions here.

Of course, Matt could be under the control of corporations. A kind of cyborg consumer. But wouldn’t it be much easier for them just to produce things people want to buy, and to adjust to changing tastes and demands. Kind of like they do.

Anyway, got to report to my corporate masters for lunch. Think the corporation that is the local farm shop would be ideal…

Good Lord.

“But it seems to me that all these people can do without eliciting angry, defiant responses, is just put the information out there and let the rest of us decide what to do with it.”

What’s happened to this site? How on earth did you manage to find an honest to God liberal to come and write for you?

The State and the experts may well know more than the populace but the choices are for the populace to take, not the State nor the experts. Has someone been reading Mill again or something?

@ 9 Strategist – I’m well aware of the vested interest from both politicians (control, tax and regulate) and big food (profit maximise, condition the next generation of the consumers) but as a parent (and a reasonably well informed persons) I wish to make the choice myself. I do not want caroline flint telling me to grill bacon, avoid salt, drink 300 litres of water a day and 200 portions of steamed broccoli.
Short of trurning my garden into a farmyard/vegetable garden, a pragmatic balance has to be struck between what is reasonable/affordable and convenient/healthy. What I do not need is big government, or sanctimonous lefties telling me things I already know.

@12 “wouldn’t it be much easier for them just to produce things people want to buy, and to adjust to changing tastes and demands. Kind of like they do.”

You simply don’t understand the industrial & propaganda process.
Some food additives are mildly addictive – it’s a milder form, but it’s the same principle as pushing heroin,

“sanctimonous lefties telling me things I already know”

But the point is, that there are lots of people out there who don’t know.
However, I’m not defending the government’s approach here.
They should be leaning heavily on the manufacturers with a big stick ready to beat them with.

Yes there are lots of people who just don’t know whats good for them, so you should tell them what is right ?

Would that include perhaps not knowing that any govt other than the present one is not good for them ? So perhaps you shouldn’t let them vote for anyone else, or maybe just do away with elections altogether because they are incapable of voting for what is good for them ?

What’s happened to this site? How on earth did you manage to find an honest to God liberal to come and write for you?

Ah, but Tim, I’ve been here nearly two years! Besides, I’m pretty sure you’ll find plenty to disagree in some of my previous posts. Nobody’s perfect

“You simply don’t understand the industrial & propaganda process.
Some food additives are mildly addictive – it’s a milder form, but it’s the same principle as pushing heroin”

Too right – KFC just isn’t the same since they took the transgenic fat out. And whatever you do, don’t start on curry. Statistics show that 99% of vindaloo addicts started with the milder version, korma. There’s a curry house near me where they give it away just to get you hooked…………….

Part of the problem is that middle class labour voters have dominated state education for the last 50 years and removed much the practical aspects . Domestic science used to be commonly taught but has become much rarer. The result is that many mothers have not been taught domestic science at school.

@17 “there are lots of people who just don’t know whats good for them, so you should tell them what is right”

I am arguing that the focus should be on the producers not the consumers. The companies know precisely what they are doing, they know it is wrong.

“You simply don’t understand the industrial & propaganda process.
Some food additives are mildly addictive – it’s a milder form, but it’s the same principle as pushing heroin,”

So you mean the kids running heroin shipments graduate to be the guys on the mopeds delivering pizzas, and should they survive that get to be supermarket lorry drivers, all in the same line of business?

Sugar is more than mildly addictive (just ask my office mates about my addiction). So I presume adding it to cake mix as say my local bakers does is making me come back for more? Should be banned.

I am fully aware there are unhealthy foods around and these are promoted by manufacturers. But unless you can prove that additives are working like heroin (have you seen the effect of heroin on someone? I doubt that any food additive works like that) I would be careful with the assumption. It is fine to add things to food to make them taste nicer/activate pleasure sensors. This is legal, and normal. Chefs do it. I do it when making a sandwich (actually in this case it is normally cucumber, but that’s just me). If there is the problem you say, rather than just the tweaking of recipies to improve the effect on audiences, go ahead and expose it. I would support you.

But in the meantime bear in mind the fall from grace of the Turkey Twizzler. Loved by kids, once its contents were revealed to parents most stopped buying it. Education triumphs over industrial and propoganda process. Without any government intervention I should add (hmm, Jamie Oliver for prime minster…).

“I am arguing that the focus should be on the producers not the consumers. The companies know precisely what they are doing, they know it is wrong.”

Ah. Controlling the producers. That would be the means of production then? After all, state control of food is so much better isn’t it. Look at all the successful examples.

If it is wrong, I am surprised about the lack of whistleblowers, court cases etc. Or legislation. Or by wrong do you mean you do not agree with it?

@20 Charlie, that is indeed part of the problem. The practical aspect was taken away in the 1980s because it was deemed sexist by the leftist/feminist education establishment. What we are seeing now is the children of those children, whose parents can only operate a microwave.
The feminisation of education is is also the reason why competitive sport and physical edication generally have all but disappeared from state school cirricula, with many parents, inclusing me, forced to give up part of their weekend to get their kids some exercise at an external sports club.
One of the things that irks me is that there is so much empahasis on diet and “health eating” (a female way of approaching fitness) and so little on exercise. It’s completely unbalanced and childhood obesity is increasing as a result. I was regularly given spam fritters (don’t ask) at school but because we ran around all the time it didn’t really matter. Nu labour, by contrast, are nagging everyone about their kids lunchboxes, but building schools with no playgrounds.

@22 “unless you can prove that additives are working like heroin (have you seen the effect of heroin on someone? I doubt that any food additive works like that)”

If you read what I said, I said that the broad principle was the same, not that they were the same. However, come to think of it, I’m not so sure that some of the fast food-addicted lardarses wobbling round the place haven’t spoiled their life quality in a way pretty much as profoundly as an alcohol, tobacco or heroin addiction.

What makes me laugh about you thick libertarians with your “you’re going to have to prise my cheeseburger out of my cold dead hands” is that you don’t realise how totally your worldview has been formulated by others for you. You give a free pass to any powerful media or corporate actor in society to control your brain in any way they like, so long as they are not the government.

All I’ve been saying is that to be effective, the thrust of efforts to address the obesity timebomb should be as much at the production end as at the consumption end, but New Labour are far too captured by big business interests to contemplate that.

“the thrust of efforts to address the obesity timebomb”

What “obesity timebomb”? Numerous pieces of research in several countries show that the relative risk of having a BMI in the 30+ range (which is how the government defines obesity) is not statistically different from the relative risk of having a BMI in the 20ish range, and in any case is not particularly large when compared with other risk factors. (That’s not to mention the numerous well-documented problems with BMI as a measure, or the complete lack of known methods for effecting long-term changes to people’s weight, or that there’s no moral requirement for people to be “healthy” anyway, or numerous other problems with the government’s “obesity epidemic” panic)

Strategist – And I could just as easily say

“What makes me laugh about you thick lefties with your “you’re going to have to prise my nhs direct/leaflet from quango out of my cold dead hands” is that you don’t realise how totally your worldview has been formulated by others for you. You give a free pass to any politician, powerful media or state agent in society to control your brain in any way they like, so long as they are not the big business .”

You think that big government is preferable to big business, some think vice versa, most libertarians would argue that neither fully represent their interests and are to be at best mistrusted and critically scrutinised. It is in fact arguable that what the left promote is a merging of big govt and big business such that the 2 are virtually indistinguishable (just look where we are with the banks).
The difference is I can choose to (not) buy a McDonalds, whereas I cannot silence then endless white noise of big govt, or opt out of paying for it.

“What me or my kids eat is none of the governments bloody business”

So who are you expecting to provide your health care when you get diabetes / suffer high blood pressure / have a heart attack? Thought so.

Strategist: actually that’s balls. Libertarians are perfectly content with the idea that many of our preferences are formed by our environment. We just don’t mind as much since we don’t attribute the same degree of agency to those dark forces that supposedly manipulate us all. Honestly you sound like a left wing equivalent to a fluoride obsessive.

Nothing wrong with cheeseburgers. The problem is the lack of a little self control. Without that it doesn’t matter whether so called junk food is kept under lock and key, you’ll still be able to find something to ruin your body.

Neil: excellent post. Just like our agreement on the drugs issue.

“The feminisation of education is is also the reason why competitive sport and physical edication generally have all but disappeared from state school cirricula”

Actually it was more to do with tory cuts forcing the selling off of school playing fields, allied with the conservative party’s dislike of football in the 1980s. It was one of the first acts of Labour to reverse that trend, and make PE a higher priority.

Spicy: the NHS would be considerably cheaper to run if it only treated people who followed all government health guidelines, I admit, but it would rather defeat the point of having it.

@ 28 – Spicy. The tax I pay is collected on the basis that it will provide public services, some of which I may use some of which I may not. If I get ill then I expect the NHS to provide the service which we collectively pay for and treat me. If they aren’t going to do that, they have no justification for collecting that tax and should stop taxing me and let me look after my own health. There is no contract, real or implied, that being a UK citizen carries a moral or any other kind of duty to be “healthy”
Lots of things are potentially dangerous/unhealthy. On the basis of your argument no one should do anything remotely dangerous (like getting out of bed every day) and then it wouldn’t cost the NHS anything. I mean why pick on eating, when the NHS offers treatment to all manner of “self inflicted” illnesses and “lifestyle treatments”. Government exists to serve the citizen, not vice versa.

@ 30 You are joking. If/when your kids start school ask a question like “And what competitive sports do you do ?” be prepared to be treated like an idiot and/or subjected to a lecture on the alledged psychological damage done by competitive sports (incidentally based on one pice of 1980s research by a Canadian psychologist who clearly got bullied at school but that’s a whole other thread).
It’s a myth that schools don’t have playing filelds, most do, but they don’t use them.

@ Matt & Sim – I don’t believe I was arguing for restriction of the provision of health services to those who do not follow Govt guidelines so your responses to me are somewhat bemusing..

I was making the point that the Government does indeed have an interest in informing the general public about healthy eating – as indeed do we all given that we pick up the tab when people don’t. I don’t think they are doing so effectively but I do think it is their business.

Spicy,

Your point only makes logical sense if government exists as a corporate entity (who we shall call Government?) which owns the NHS and therefore has a legitimate concern about its use.

I was of the belief government (not capitalised as it is not a proper noun) was there to serve the people. And I am often told it is my NHS. If this is true, I am entitled to use it as I like (within the reasonable limits of using it to get better (although I can tell tales on that front)), and government’s job is to ensure this is possible. If this is not the case, and Government owns the NHS for Government’s own end, or the NHS does not actually belong to me, why the hell should I pay tax for it?

Liberatarian, possibly. Thick, I doubt. Government (only here capitalised by convention due to sitting at the front of a sentance) has to serve the people or it is a tyrant (however kind and doting on its subjects, still a tyrant). And I doubt any of us want to be tyrannised.

30. Plane shift , if you look at many of the academic institutions dominated by the left – LSE, Inst of Ed, Sussex and York, very few of them have good sports teams. Very few middle class Labour MPs appear to have played sport at university or for other teams. Of ourse, many working class labour MPs have been keen rugby league, rugby union, fooball, boxing and cricket players.

My experience of comprehensives is that far fewer teachers take competitive sports seriously. Just look at the sports standards between grammar schools and many comprehensives . Many grammar schools select teachers who have played at university level in preference to those who have not. At my comprehensive, most teachers refused to take sports and left such activities to the male and female sports teachers. Private schools expect most teachers a to be involved in some sort of supervision of sports activities.

Sort is relevant beacuse hard exercise can do much to over come a poor diet . Polar explorers take 7,000 calories a day , or thereabouts.

This criticism of competitive sport is very much a product of the left wing middle class white collar types. Where heavy industry and agricultural have dominated employment, the working class labour members have been keen supporters of
competitive sport- cyccling, rugby league and rugby union( the rural areas, Cornwall and Wales)football, cricket and boxing.

Once again this is an example of how middle class white collar labour voters have imposed their cultural hegemony on working class labour voters with industrial and agricultural backgrounds. After all, Cornish miners went to work with a pasty and farmers took a ploughman’s lunch( bread, often wholemeal, cheese, onion and an apple). Dishes such as lancashire hotpot, stew in the many varieties, peas and faggots, pea and ham soup( made with a ham knuckle and split peas), pork pies, oxtail, black pudding, cock a leeky soup were all staple working class food. Many people had allotments where they grew food, competitions for growing vegetables was common.Pies were often cooked by women in the bakers’ ovens once they had finished. In Lancashire , Yorkshire and the Potteries , many women worked in the factories. Consequently stews were placed in the oven, which was part of the fire and left to cook during the day. For pudding, all sorts of steam puddings were cooked or there were fresh apples. Coxes Apples, if kept cool, dry and dark can last from September to March/April.

We have the absurd situation that a Cornish miner and/or a farm labourer was probably sent to work with a more nutritonally balanced meal than many school children today.

Charlie2,

Much as I’d like to agree with your critique of left-wing philosophy and sport, I think it misses something. Sport is a problem for modernist thinking (where every action is to a purpose – sport is not) but modernists are found everywhere, including on the right (hence sales of sport fields). Hence also its downplaying in the comprehensive movement, which was modernism made flesh.

We do after all have a government which managed to procure the Olympics and encourage lotary funding of athletes, so they can’t be totally against sport. And they are damned socialists (well, readers of this site can dispute that happily, but they are often also, which is worse, damned modernists).

Charlie, that’s an interesting childhood experience, but it was almost the exact opposite to mine at a comprehensive school. At mine, sports were taken very seriously and most teachers gave up their spare time to be involved in running sports teams.

Which is why personal annecdote is trivial at best.

Charlie 2 – I’m not disagreeing with you but an observation – a lot of middle class professionals (doctors, lawyers, management consultants etc) dominated rugby union as players, at least when it was an amatur sport, whilst bricklayers, welders etc dominated rugby league. Rugby union is largely a middle class sport, as is cricket, squash, tennis and, to some extent, golf. Vist any gymn and you’ll find it full of white collar workers and professionals.
So I’m not sure it’s the middle class per-se who are anti-sport, but the soft-left wing of the middle class (teachers, social workers, psychologists etc) who are both more likely to be women (and hence less inclined towards competition anyway) and more likley to be involved in childrens development. They have persuaded some in the middle class that competitive sport is a bad thing. Even so organised competitive sport outside school is booming, with many clubs struggling to meet demand. In my experinece middle class parents will pay lip serevice to the anti-competitive creed, but on the quiet will enroll their kids in competitive activities

Matt.

“but the soft-left wing of the middle class (teachers, social workers, psychologists etc) who are both more likely to be women (and hence less inclined towards competition anyway) and more likley to be involved in childrens development.”

Psychologists are soft-left wing? Really. That’ll be news to most of the ones I know (hard left or true liberal, or even Christian Democrat types).

And women are not competative? Really again. Not my experience, even if gender stereotyping has not given them strong sporting roles to fill as children (when do you see street games of netball for example).

And children’s development is relevant how?

There is an institutional bias against sports, felt perhaps more strongly in some professions, perhaps amongst women (is there a link to feminism – might be worth a look?) and perhaps on the left. But there are plenty of male right-wing businessmen who see no point in sport, and I regularly compete against bearded left-wing teachers who seem to enjoy the process. So the generalisations do not work and do not help push what is not an argument so much as a set of preconceptions.

LSE left wing? Well, certain departments perhaps (who has ever actually met a right wing sociologist?) but the dear old alma mater has it’s quota of headbanging free marketeers (*ahem*). As to sport there, well, yes, bit thin on the ground. But then the playing fields that are available are miles and miles away. Not all that many pitches just off the Strand.

As to rugby being middle class. Depends where in the country you are. Bath itself (umm, my home town) might be described as being entirely middle class but certainly in Cornwall it’s a working class game. Much the same in South Wales.

For most of the 70s the Welsh and Pontypridd (or was in Pontyprith? Sorry, not too good with these celtic names) front row was the same three miners. I suppose you could have middle class miners but I sorta doubt it.

(Where there has sometimes been a class division in rugby, even within these geographic areas, is between pack and backs. Packs were more likely to be horny handed sons of toil than backs were. But whether that’s actually a class distinction or a sorting by body types and physical experience is difficult to unravel.)

“just put the information out there and let the rest of us decide what to do with it.”

I thought that was what was happening?

@42.

Bloggers are never ones to let an opportunity to convulse into a complete hissy fit over nothing, pass by.