Received this on Thursday:
"The King’s Speech contained some positive first steps on health, reiterating the government’s commitment for the NHS to focus more on prevention. This included specific legislation to restrict the advertising of junk food to children and banning sales of high caffeine energy drinks to children.
"However, if Labour is going to meet its ambition of achieving the healthiest generation of children in our history, they will need to go much further than this and take a wider range of steps to improve our food system. Recent evidence showed children in England are getting shorter, that life expectancy at birth is decreasing, and children are more likely to have obesity and type 2 diabetes, highlighting just how important addressing this issue is.
"The King’s Speech also touched on issues of wealth creation, opportunities for all, and getting through the cost of living crisis, however there was no mention of the child poverty strategy previously committed to. With millions sadly still experiencing food insecurity across the UK, it was positive to see commitments around a better deal for workers, however more action is desperately needed to ensure everybody can access and afford a healthy and sustainable diet, including by enhancing benefits and strengthening existing nutritional safety nets such as Healthy Start and Free School Meals."
You could be forgiven for reading this and thinking that the UK was some strange sci-fi world where children were raised in podding hutches as wards of the State, and not by mothers and fathers with responsibility for their welfare and upbringing, couldn't you..?
Were the wartime and immediate post war children the healthiest? Before then malnutrition and lack of vitamins. After that an excess.
ReplyDeleteThat is why Billy Bunter was funny. If everybody else including teachers, at Greyfriers were fat, sorry obese, oops, sorry gravitationally challenged, the stories would not have been amusing. Ditto for the F-t Controller.
Look at photographs of the time. No podgies on beaches, coming out of school, walking or cycling to work.
Will Surkeir care to bring back rationing? You know that it makes sense.
Probably not. No tax revenue in that.
"Recent evidence showed children in England are getting shorter...". How much of these changes are the result of alterations in the demographics of the country?
ReplyDeleteNot just not wanting to ask but it could dilute, even obliterate, the conclusion desired.
"Look at photographs of the time. No podgies on beaches, coming out of school, walking or cycling to work."
ReplyDeleteWhat always first strikes me about old photos isn't that, actually...it's how CLEAN everywhere is! No litter.
"How much of these changes are the result of alterations in the demographics of the country?"
Good point!