It has been reported in the medical journal, The Lancet, that by 2030 forty percent of people in the UK are likely to be obese. The cost of this in lives and to the NHS is unthinkable, but in monetary terms alone it is estimated to be about two billion pounds per year. This is, of course, unacceptable and we should start doing something now to adjust both ours and our children’s dietary habits.
Maybe we should start by teaching our children in school the value of a nutritional diet and the health benefits gained by it. Healthy eating should be made to look more attractive so that it cannot only compete with but overcome the junk food market. The UK is eating more junk food now than ever.
This government and previous governments have been scared to take on this problem and now we are starting to pay the price. Surely it is better and cheaper in the long run to educate people about diet rather than rely on the Health Service to bail them out when problems arise.
A possibility is to tax junk food and make healthier foods cheaper to buy. But people still need to be educated. With all the cookery programmes on television we have the opportunity to start there and make everyone aware of the problem and make healthy eating look like something to be enjoyed.
Parents must take some responsibility in the home. They must stop going for the simple option of getting a takeaway or putting something in the microwave. Start cooking healthy food again and get our children interested in cooking. It can, after all be very enjoyable and relaxing to cook a nice meal.
Sex education is now compulsory in school so we should make basic cookery compulsory too. Then our children will learn from the start the importance of healthy, nutritional eating.
