We are what we eat?

As we continue to drown under a tsunami of over-regulation, I was horrified to read proposals to regulate the food industry like the tobacco industry.  There is a basic problem in this approach. Regulation only has a limited worth. We have seemingly regulated the way in which MPs claim their expenses. We have also aspired to regulate the banks in the wake of the credit crunch which so nearly brought this country to bankruptcy.

The regulation of the tobacco industry is a cautionary tale of what happens when the state attempts to interfere with freedom of choice. For all the regulation and increased taxation, the incidence of new smokers taking up the habit has barely changed. The prevalence of people smoking as a proportion of the population has gradually dropped but not by nearly as much as originally intended. It proves that people will make their own minds up and make their own choices accordingly. The best way to effect a change at the end of the pipeline is to concentrate our efforts at the other end of the pipeline. If you have ever been to your local hospital and seen people shivering to death with a fag in one hand and a drip stand in the other, you should question why that happens. It is very easy to sit in judgement and condemn those smokers for the effects of their unwanted smoke on everyone around them. That rather misses the point though. Smoking is an addiction. If those same smokers had received more structured health education at primary school level and beyond, the chances of them choosing to take up the habit would be considerable reduced. Although the increased tax revenue is enticing at a time when the NHS faces ever more challenging financial pressures, the amounts generated don’t correlate with the commensurate cost of treatment.  

To seek to regulate the food industry in the same way would only yield the same results. Education both at school and in the home are the real key. If education is delivered in a focused, structured way, people will be better placed to make more informed decisions regarding their own health in the future. That must include both the children and their parents though. That is a considerable challenge but is the only way in which lasting progress will be made.

The food industry is very powerful and more than happy to supply our weaknesses – if we let it. This entire argument revolves around choice. On the one side lie the supermarkets with their demanding shareholders. That probably includes you and me if we have any pension provision or shares of our own because investment in the supermarket sector has been seen as a safe bet. Here lies the big dilemma. Whether or not we like it, we are all at least partially reliant on the continued growth of the food sector which contributes so adversely to our own health outcomes through a cynical attempt to drown us in a vast choice of high glycaemic index foods and cheap alcohol. If we follow the best available advice and shun our devotion to these high sugar foodstuffs and cheap alcohol in favour of home cooked food made from fresh base ingredients, our health outcomes will be so much better. Our pension pots might not be quite so big but our sense of wellbeing will more than make up for that. We might not even be able to afford to drive everywhere thus making us use our legs for transport again. This can only have a positive impact on our health outcomes. It is only when we make our own food and become more judicious about what we choose to eat that we become the master of what goes in it. Ergo, if we want to adopt a healthier diet, it is down to us to make that happen. Just as with smoking though, there will be those whose addiction to high sugar, processed foods will already be too great to address. While we may not be able to make much progress with those at the end of the pipeline, we can certainly make great strides at the other end – if we want to.

My worry is the power of the food industry. They remain highly influential in the corridors of Westminster and it can be argued with some justification that the government would now find it very difficult to extricate themselves. What we really need is stronger government. A government with the morality to say no to an industry which does so much damage to the health of the nation would have an enormous effect on the NHS.

Yesterday, I listened to a prominent member of Her Majesty’s Opposition highlighting the importance of an NHS which remains free at the point of access for every man, woman and child. She went on to claim how our European neighbours are incredulous that we can sustain such a system. So am I. I am utterly agog that we can continue to offer a free NHS to everyone with nowhere near enough effort being made to address the biggest drains on it. If we are going to let the food industry carry on as it is, the burden on our NHS is just going to get bigger unless we focus on consumer education. Much is being done but the real work still lies ahead of us. We all want the NHS to remain free, but are we all happy to play our part in that?

Let us also be clear about something else. Nobody lives for ever but everyone should have access to the best possible quality of life in their later years. At present, this is not being addressed adequately. A number of recent studies have highlighted sub-standard nutrition for our elderly and a growing trend for the older members of our society to turn to alcohol for comfort. In short, we have become far too insular as a society with a growing tendency to sit back and just rely on the state to provide for us when the going gets a bit tough. The concept of a family or the wider community providing for their own is becoming less and less likely with both continuing  to prefer the pursuit of wealth and pleasure. This is a huge problem which is sadly getting much worse.

It is not the food industry which we need to regulate. We need to re-educate ourselves. If we begin to value our health more, we will make better life choices in terms of our diet and exercise. If we can achieve this, the supermarkets can place as many unhealthy items as they like on their shelves and we will be better equipped to calmly walk past them. Preferably, we won’t even find ourselves in the supermarket as often because a big key to community regeneration are the struggling high streets. A return to the high street is not just achievable. It is also necessary to reclaim our communites which have become so decimated by years of corporate greed. The arrival of social media has been a real boon with people more inclined to engage with one another again.

There are signs that people are beginning to eschew the supermarkets but the reasons why are not so clear. The popular view is that the supermarkets became too greedy and people reached a tipping point above which they were no longer prepared to pay. The alternative view is that people are beginning to think more about what they eat and how much they eat. The true answer is not yet obvious but I sincerely hope the latter is true. With news that a supermarket price war is upon us, people need to resist the false economy of some transient discounting. Once the supermarkets have lured us back over their threshold, they have us where they want us and spend huge amounts of money placing the unhealthy foods in the most strategically attractive places. That is where they make the most profit and those are the foods to which we become most easily addicted. It is cynical and nasty and has sustained the growth of an enormous industry. But we all still have the choice to say no and think again about how much we value our own health.