PART 7

A Modern Health Problem

A.
There is growing concern about the way we view food, which goes beyond the ‘do we live to eat or eat to live?’ debate. More and more children are leading inactive lifestyles and are suffering from obesity. In the 1990s and early years of this century, tobacco-related diseases were the main problem, but aggressive anti-smoking campaigns caused the focus of concern to shift. In this decade, obesity appears to be the major health concern with far-reaching repercussions. Obese children suffer taunts and bullying from their peers and this, instead of causing them to rethink their eating habits, may perpetuate the vicious circle; in other words, these children turn to `comfort eating’ which adds to their weight problem. Researchers have noted that some children are doing less than one or two minutes of `moderate activity’ in an hour, which is an alarming reduction on the results of previous studies. The problem seems to be worse in teenage girls than in their male counterparts, with older children getting much less exercise than younger ones.

B.
Many parents realise that their children are overweight, but do not know enough about nutrition to give their offspring the support they need in order to help them change their lifestyles. Given time pressures from work and family, a growing number of people rely on pre-cooked convenience foods or quick fry-ups, thus exacerbating the problem. In general there is some recognition of the situation. For example, at `Weight Loss Camps’, obese children, along with their slightly less overweight peers, learn to read food labels and understand the nutritional content of food, or lack of it, eat healthily and exercise. This experience can also increase their confidence in themselves, as they are surrounded by youngsters who are in the same boat. But, by and large, not enough is being done.

C.
Schools are partly to blame, as they have marginalised physical education due to time limitations. Also, in many cases, they have bowed to financial pressure and sold off playing fields, often in order to buy more up-to-date computers, which in turn encourage sedentary lifestyles. The food industry must also shoulder some of the responsibility, as their advertising campaigns promote foodstuffs which are high in fat and sugar. Advertisements frequently feature such products as fizzy drinks, king-size chocolate bars and ever larger packets of crisps. These are attractive to families on low incomes because you now get more for the same price as the original, smaller portions. However, children who have large bags of crisps or bars of chocolate in their school lunch-boxes don’t save half for the next day; they eat the whole thing. It would appear that fast-food marketing people have seized upon children as being brand-loyal from cradle to grave. They therefore target small children with free toys, a worrying trend which, some believe, warrants government action.

D.
Some campaigners want governments to treat the fast-food industry as they do the tobacco industry, insisting that foods with a high fat or sugar content should carry an official health warning. They would also like a ban on vending machines in schools, as it is estimated that one fifth of children get more than 20 per cent of their energy from sugar, with 5 per cent of that coming from the consumption of fizzy drinks. Of course, children are not the only ones to suffer from obesity. In one survey, only 40 per cent of adults claim to regularly sit down for a meal, which means that the majority are eating on the hoof. Only around 30 per cent say that they cook all their own meals. It becomes reasonably obvious that this is so when you look around you in the street or in an underground station. Walking and talking are interspersed with eating and drinking; people carry a can to swig from, and clutch food toscoff.

E.
We live in a culture which actively promotes fast food while simultaneously showing images of svelte models who aresupposedly the ultimate in `beauty’. The majority of us could never achieve this perfect look, given our lifestyle and diet.This fact, in turn, gives rise to both overeating and its extreme opposite, anorexia. It is obviously time for us to take aclose look at our relationship to food. The recommended daily diet, at least according to some experts, consists of atleast five portions of fruit and vegetables, some protein (but not too much) and only a few carbohydrates. No one woulddeny, however, that the occasional lapse would be acceptable. Remember the old adage: a little of what you fancy doesyou good!