There is a dreadful ambivalence by all governments over the matter of public health and food manufacturers and nearly all food outlets.
In the UK the Food Standards Agency has a statuary objective to protect public health and consumers' other interest in relation to food and drink. It is also involved in nutrition and health at a European level.
The FSA's strategy to 2015 is to deliver these 5 aims
- Food produced or sold in the UK is safe to eat.
- Imported food is safe to eat.
- Food producers and caterers give priority to consumer interests in relation to food.
- Consumers have the information and the understanding they need to make informed choices about where and what they eat.
- Business compliance is effectively supported because it delivers consumer protection. This will include a focus on effective, risk-based and proportionate regulation and enforcement.
With a budget close to £160 million they really didn't earn by this keeping horse meat off our menus;
there being no way the public could make an informed choice about this meat is a failure of one of their stated aims.
If food safety is a stated aim how can this be defined.
Accurate and clear labelling of what it is and where it comes from.
That it is uninfected and has no foreign matter in it ( glass, rat tails etc) .
That it has appropriated storage details.
That preservative details are clear.
Cooking details where these are necessary for safety.
This is all common sense but of course it in no way means the food is remotely good for one; it just means that it is not going to give you an infective or poisoning illness.
Safety does not therefore mean healthy.
There is a health crisis in Europe related to obesity and therefore not national but international, with appalling predictions in the UK headline news today.
In the immediate post war years across Europe the rationing of food prevented starvation and meant all were fed enough to prevent just that.
In the UK during the war years it is said people were never healthier, of course not comfortable but never healthy - there were no gymnasiums and personal trainers and probably no general advice regarding exercise. What there was was a shortage of food.
My eternal advice to patients, as an obesity adviser, was eat less and your body will become its own gymnasium.
There is an unmitigated prevalence of food these days, both good and bad, cheap and expensive coping for all pockets and tastes so the rich and the impoverished can similarly satisfy their hunger.
The stringencies of war imposed inevitable restrictions on food and rationing afterwards meated out finite portions.
The consequences of obesity will drag the health and wealth of the nation only in one direction; down!
It is incumbent, therefore that the government, what ever shade it be, prioritise the solving of this problem.
Post-war stratagem by the UK government on food were not just distribution, rationing, but the quality of the basics, bread, flour and dairy.
Interference, the nanny state and other pull downs are going to be levied if the government steps in; but what else is going to work. Education will be the up-cry but there’s no shortage of that with the media explosion and the internet.
Therefore there has to be imposition; and herein lies the conundrum for the government.
Therefore there has to be imposition; and herein lies the conundrum for the government.
The producers of food basics, the cereal / dairy/ meat farmers are such a powerful lobby that the government is at their convenience and gutless to force issues on them.
However to get the ball rolling in terms of altering what we eat, no item would be more pivotal than changing the basic constituents of flour through a reduction of gluten and an increase in fibre. At a stroke the health of the nation would be better.
Get rid of that useless and gutless quango the food standards agency, FSA, as it is now and make it a subset of a new Food Advisory Board (FAB) with powers to advertise best advice and expose rubbish food products as well as implement common sense safe guards on hygiene and food being what it is labelled as.
The meat industry has no compunction about the production of bacon, almost a national dish despite front page headings on the toxicity of the nitrate, salt and smoke preservatives used to make it. No labelling to warn and definitely no attempt to change the product. Sales depend on presentation and thus the oxidising of the haemaglobin in the meat giving it the red colour we associate with freshness. The production and import of tens of thousands of tons of preserved meats from the Continent, weeks if not months old, are allowed with no warnings on them whatsoever, again kept visually acceptable by the nitrate, salt and smoke that is added.
