Tinkering with supermarket loyalty schemes cannot save the NHS
Is it possible to get to grips with obesity without excessive bossiness about what we should eat or the taxation of unhealthy food? As part of its long-term plans for the NHS, the Government wants supermarkets to make it easier for customers to buy low calorie products.
This has been denounced by the Tories as 'nanny statism' even though in office they imposed a tax on fizzy drinks for precisely the same reason. It might be better for the political parties to agree on a common strategy to deal with one of the great scourges of our time.
Nonetheless, will the latest measures make the slightest difference? Supermarkets already sell fruit, vegetables, healthy food and low sugar drinks. The problem is that people do not necessarily buy them, preferring calorie laden takeaways and ready meals.
Ministers say the supermarkets should offer special promotions, loyalty points for healthy eating and alternative shop layouts but many do this already. This feels like a policy of desperation as the Government searches for ideas that will stop the NHS becoming overwhelmed by the ailments of obesity. More than one in five children are living with obesity by the time they leave primary school, rising to almost one in three in the most deprived areas.
This is a crisis that tinkering with supermarket loyalty cards will not even come close to solving. Yet the measures that might be needed to bear down on demand, such as rationing or pricing, are not considered acceptable in a peacetime society.
For instance, should people on benefits be given vouchers that can only be exchanged for healthy food? Might a fee be exacted from obese patients for their treatment?
Such ideas only have to be suggested to recognise they are not going to be adopted. They never were for smoking, though very high taxes on tobacco certainly encouraged millions to quit. Yet why should the rest of us pay for the unhealthy choices of others?
Since so many children are obese and living with parents who are also fat it is in the schools where most effort is needed. Compulsory teaching on the sort of food to buy and how to cook it should once again be part of the national curriculum, rather than the current 'food technology' lessons.
These would be far more valuable to children facing a lifetime of poor health than today's obsession with sexuality and diversity.
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