Michael Kelly: Reward healthy lifestyles

It is an image that contradicts all the aspirations of those who seek to promote the good life of sustainability and health. Naïve citizens of Elgin queue in their gas guzzling 4x4s polluting the country air with fumes from their idling engines as they turn into a new, out-of-town branch of Kentucky Fried Chicken for a dose of cholesterol and sugar.

Deprived of this social necessity for years, instead of rejoicing in the freedom from the temptation to form loose and lazy eating habits a group of misguided fast-food groupies ran a public petition for one to be established. Now it has arrived, they can grow fatter faster because, as one of them posted on Facebook, “glad it’s closer to home” – no wasted calories having to drive that bit further ever again.

The people of Elgin have so benefited from the rape of the North Sea by Moray fishermen that one would have hoped that they would have developed a sensible taste for the healthy fish that will soon disappear from their shelves, if not the earth. But, instead, they have demonstrated that they are not immune to the blandishments of advertising, which creates a desire for something that none of them will ever need, which will produce no significant extra happiness in their lives, but which can only lead to ill-health and pain. They probably eat their fish deep fried, anyway.

Elgin may be only the latest and most foolish example of this perversity, given the rich variety of locally-produced plain healthy ingredients of a balanced diet that are readily and cheaply available to them. But their susceptibility to the social pressure that the multinational food and drink companies impose on people’s psyche by their insidious promotion of unnecessary products reflects the attitude of many throughout the UK. The demand for such products continues to grow, despite the efforts of governments and health professionals to explain the dangers to health that they pose and the options that are available for those who want to cut their risks of suffering cardio-vascular diseases. The picture of the Elgin lemmings must cause despair among heart and stroke specialists.

The question that must be answered is whether or not this preference to stick with unhealthy diets is simply a matter of consumer choice that governments must live with? At one level, there seems no doubt that it is. People are persisting in choosing to follow unhealthy lifestyles in the face of plenty of easily available advice about the dangers of fast-food in particular. But, given the huge promotional budgets available to fast-food companies that the health lobby is denied, can it be argued that consumers are not being offered a free choice?

Personally, I hate cola in all its 50 shades and flavours. Many cola manufactures seem to have the same distrust in the intrinsic attraction of their products by having veered away long ago from promoting its taste as its main attribute. Instead, it is marketed as a social crutch. In the past, things went better with it. You could have lived life to the max through switching to another brand. Now you don’t even need to drink all of the disgusting stuff that you buy. You can share it, making a friend for life – who, presumably, has no appetite either for a full can – while halving your intake of the concoction. What a deal.

The simple message, “this stuff isn’t really very good for you” stands no chance against such sophistication. Governments recognise this and for years have been in dialogue with the food industries to find agreement over ways to mitigate the worst of their excesses. On the very day when Elgin demonstrated the futility of these efforts, the UK government announced that, after ten years of talking, a new, almost generally accepted code for food labelling had been agreed. A traffic light system will alert shoppers to the amounts of fat, saturated fat, salt, sugar and calories in various products.

But, of course, it is inadequate. Companies will not, as Richard Lloyd of Which? suggests, be encouraged “to do more to reduce the amounts of [these ingredients] in popular products”. They will merely shout over them with glossy photos of the food in question on your plate added to colourful slogans extolling its virtues.

Can we not have more direct exhortation of the health implications? Little messages on the package which say; “you’d be mad to eat more than one of these a month” or “five out of ten people regularly eating this kind of product die of a heart attack before they are 50”. The exact wording would, of course, need research, but the health service has plenty of that. It would certainly be less misleading than shots of chicken more succulent, more crispy and dry than every came out of a new Moray fryer. What better proof of the ineffectiveness of health education when after decades of preaching that “fried” is the least advisable way to present any food, it remains resolutely part of the brand name?

If it is determined by policymakers that it is impractical to take the food companies head on and win and it is further conceded that no draconian intervention can be made against consumers choosing to eat badly, then perhaps a financial incentive for the goodies could be offered. The concept of a National Health Service free to all at the point of delivery would be breached by discriminating against those whose bad eating habits landed them in cardio units, either by charging them or putting them at the back of a long queue, however tempting such a proposal is.

However, obesity costs the NHS £5 billion per year. There is surely scope to offer those with a proven exemplary lifestyle an annual financial payment as a reward and an encouragement to keep going against all social pressures to conform and eat fat.

A simple, certified note from one’s GP of body mass index would suffice. A tax on the manufacturers and retailers of fatty foods and sugary drinks would help to defray the cost. And if they complained of the effect on sales, then society could claim that as a bonus.