Eat to the beat

Two news stories caught my attention this week. A ban was proposed on packed lunches for school children by the Nanny (government). Cynicism aside, this was disturbing on several counts. The first and most obvious worry is the need for yet another ban. I watch with bemusement the insistence of successive governments that bans actually work. We are banned from driving and using a mobile telephone. We are banned from drink driving. We are banned from smoking in public places. But here is the point. How many of these bans are either enforcable or workable? I can't count how many people I see daily who are driving along with one hand on the wheel with the other clutching the mobile . I simply don't know how many people drive past me under the influence and I will probably never know. I drive past pubs every day to see regulars in the doorway smoking to their heart's content quite happy to inflict their fumes on all and sundry. In short, bans don't work unless you have the facility to enforce them.

Why does the government seek to ban packed lunches? For that matter, why do people take packed lunches to school in the first place? The argument follows that too many children are being sent to school with packed lunches of dubious nutritional content. Be that as it may, we are not told how many schools are providing meals of a similar standard. Underpinning all of this is choice. For fear of sounding overly ancient, nobody had a packed lunch when I went to school because it simply wasn't optional. Evidently it is now and so parents are faced with the added pressure of supplying the ingredients for their child's packed lunch. But why do so many people opt out of school meals. Are they just too expensive or are they really that bad. Well, I believe the real answer is a combination of the two. As a former manager in the wholesale food industry, I have a little experience in this area and can recall all too clearly the main priority for the school buyers. It may not surprise you to learn that price was the first, second and last consideration when choosing which products to buy. It would unfair to label all schools in this way, but it certainly held true for the vast majority. Of the little I have learned in my life, I can vouch for the accuracy of the adage, "You get what you pay for". If children were offered a balanced diet of good quality ingredients cooked to a basic standard, there really needn't be a problem. If a four star hotel can cook to high standard for 200 wedding guests to sit down and eat, it shouldn't be unreasonable to expect a school to be able to cater for a similar number accepting that the standard needn't be of a four star standard.

Until such time as a national template is identified for schools to emulate, parents will continue to opt out and their children with very often be the worse off for it. This isn't so much an indictment of the parents as the schools. The problem is that children will happily gravitate to crisps, chocolate and the rest if you allow them. In the long term, such choices will invariably inflict significant insults to their health outcomes. This we know to be the case. The key here is to form the right eating habits at the beginning of their lives in order to maximise their health chances in future years. In this, we all have to play our part. As I write, there is no substitute for a balanced diet rich in vegetables, fruit, pulses, and fish or white meat. I can't believe this is all that difficult if there is the basic will to make it happen. To ban packed lunches is to avoid the real issue.

The second story which turned my head this week, was news that fish oil supplements can actually increase the risk of prostate cancer in men. For once, this is good news for women but the main point here is rather like that of the packed lunch argument. If people eat balanced diets, their need to supplement with fish oil and the like should be minimal. I don't believe good health is based on rocket science but I think most people know that. That they choose to ignore advice at the expense of their health outcomes is arguably a matter for them. The problem is that the NHS has to cover the cost of this. Smoking is well documented to be one of the most heavily taxed items in the country. Alcohol is also taxed quite heavily if not quite to the same extent. Chocolate, confectionary and crisps are taxed but less so and all three are frequently the subject of special offers to entice us in to the large retailers who seek to profit from us with their other products. We have a generation now which develops diabetes, heart disease and cancer at alarming rates. Our strategy at a national level has to be the targeting of the young because it is difficult to see how the NHS can continue to support this ever increasing demand. In fact, the Chief Executive himself last week projected that the NHS will be about £30 billion pounds adrift of its budget by 2020. As the song goes, something's got to give..