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Weight Loss – Does Britain need to eat less?
Weight Loss – Does Britain need to eat less?
This week Public Health England announced steps to reduce 20% of calories in popular foods by 2024 to tackle childhood obesity.
As they put it, ‘Too many children and most adults are overweight or obese, suffering consequences from bullying and low self-esteem in childhood, to type 2 diabetes, heart disease and some cancers as adults. An obese parent is more likely to have an obese child, who in turn is more likely to grow up into an obese adult.‘ The aim is to help people achieve weight loss and be healthier by cutting the calories consumed by eating less.
Public Health England’s challenge to the food industry is to reduce calories in their products, such as pizzas, ready meals and savoury snacks by changing recipes, reducing portion sizes and encouraging people to buy lower calorie products.
All very worthy stuff isn’t it? And no doubt the food industry, sensing the direction of policy and keen to continue healthy sales will produce products to meet this weight loss demand. Anything that makes life simpler wlll help although actually, such products already exist for those who choose to take them.
Personally I aim to eat relatively sensibly most of the time – having been ‘the fat kid’ at school, there is no way I want to go back to being overweight. I hated it. It impacted on my self esteem massively and created a negative spiral in that because I was unhappy I would eat more and being unfit I would avoid the embarrassment of exercise as much as possible. Which meant that I ate more and moved less and got bigger.
