My granny always told me that you should enjoy food but have "everything in moderation". She lived until she was 85. What she meant was that balance in your diet was a good thing even if you hated carrots or other foods that are "good for you". Of course you can enjoy a fish supper from time to time, but not every night of the week. Yet obesity is increasingly recognised as a major killer. Why are we growing fatter?
The Fortune magazine ran a front cover posing the question, "Is fat the next tobacco?" The cover showed a picture of a chip as a cigarette in an ashtray. We are being warned that obesity is the growing killer in the western world and that the next generation of children will be called "Generation O". The "O" stands for obese. Diabetes is appearing in children as young as 11 and court cases against fast food retailers from children are on the cards in the United States.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has contributed to the growing evidence with its expert report on diet, nutrition and the prevention of chronic disease. The growing death rates in the European Union due to heart disease, cancer, diabetes and obesity make for grim reading. According to the WHO: "The imbalance between declining energy expenditure due to physical inactivity and high energy in the diet is the main determinant of the obesity epidemic."
Cardiovascular diseases, the major killer worldwide, are to a great extent linked to poor diets and physical inactivity. Tobacco is the number one cause of lung cancer but dietary factors contribute significantly to other types of cancer. Healthy diets and physical activity are key to good nutrition.
Why are Europeans becoming more obese? There are a number of reasons. We lead more sedentary lives; notably, there is not the physical burden of hard labour to burn off excess calories. Secondly, although we do not have such hard physical jobs, people live busy lives and often do not have the time to cook. The ready meal is the easy option. Thirdly, we have more choice of both good and bad products than ever before with disruptive impacts upon traditional diets.
And on top of all this, what if some of these products are poorly labelled? What if there are misleading claims? If read one way the message might suggest one thing but read in another way it might produce a completely different interpretation.Take the product that claims to be 90 per cent fat free.What that means is that it actually contains IC per cent fat.That is still a high fat content. The Consumers' Association gives a few extreme examples of food claims. We have the Snack Stop chicken and sweetcorn pasta which was found to contain just two per cent dried chicken and one per cent sweetcorn, and the Tesco finest prawn, squat lobster, lemon and parsley terrine slices which contained just six per cent prawns and two per cent lobster. The Asda maple syrup creams contained no maple syrup at all! It makes you wonder what most of these products are made up of?
The European Commission has just published legislation on the issue of food claims and will do the same on the issue of nutrition, As the Consumers' Associa-tion rightly suggests, we have a lot to do. We should specify what nutrition claims such as "low fat" and "lite" should mean and not leave this up to a voluntary code. Percentage fat free claims should be banned. We must require health claims to be substantiated before appearing on food labels. We also need to deal with implied claims as well as explicit claims and put an end to meaningless and vague claims and those that use technical lan-guage to bamboozle consumers.
We should have a common sense approach to proper food labelling. If sodium is salt, then say it is salt on the label. Perhaps if people knew that the convenience foods, which we so readily rely on, werehigh in fat, sugar and salt, we might think twice about eating this type of product. However we are all rational human beings. We can make choices. At the moment those choices are not all fully informed. Tackling the new epidemic of obesity demands a better labelling regime on food products.We need to give people information, not to spoil their enjoyment of a product, but to give them the facts. Informed choice is the watchword and balance is our goal. My granny was right after all - although I personally still don't like carrots!
Catherine Stihler is a Labour MEP
