MAKE TUBBY WALK

Actually, we eat less (Daily Telegraph, May 30th, 2004)

In fact, Britons are eating less than they used to. According to a study by the Royal College of General Practitioners, the food intake of the average Briton has declined by 750 calories a day over the past 30 years. The reason we are getting fatter is that we are doing less manual work and taking less exercise: we are burning off 800 fewer calories a day than we were in the early 1970s. For the decline in physical activity, especially among children, the Government has to take some of the blame. It has continued to allow school playing fields to be sold to developers and has introduced health and safety legislation which makes it more difficult for outdoor adventure courses to operate.

To accuse the food industry of promoting child obesity is to distract attention from these issues. But there is also a cultural reason why the manufacturers of crisps, chocolate bars and fizzy drinks get blamed for promoting obesity: they represent everything which the Left dislikes about globalisation. The main difference between the British diet now and that of 30 years ago is not that we eat more sugar and fat, as a visit to an old-fashioned greasy spoon will remind anyone; it is that we eat more branded foods. Wotsits are damned not just because, when eaten in excess, they make people fat but because they are produced by a multinational company and are marketed around the world in standardised form.

While the availability of many forms of junk food has certainly increased over the past generation, so too have the opportunities to eat well. Whereas the greengrocer of 30 years ago offered a limited range of yellowing cauliflower and frozen peas, today's supermarket brims with fresh fruit and vegetables from all over the world. Thanks to the globalised food industry, it is possible now to buy leaner meat than 30 years ago, to buy olive oil as well as butter, skimmed milk as well as full cream. Moreover, food manufacturers now offer hugely detailed nutritional information, including calorie counts, on their packets: something which they never used to do.

Clearly, not all Britons are making wise decisions about what they eat, but to lay the charge of promoting obesity at the door of the food industry is the easy way out. Those who get fat have themselves to blame above anyone else.

Or their parents. If children were compelled to walk to and from school, to play outside all day on weekends and to pay for their own treats out of a modest allowance, there would presumably be a sharp decline in childhood obesity. Yet somehow many modern parents have let themselves be convinced that the first is dangerous, the second oppressive and the third mean. More and more they see exercise as a scheduled event to be undertaken only on consent. Having lost control over the matter, they find it much easier to direct their wrath at an imagined corporate conspiracy and teach their children to be neurotic about food.

Scientists and lawyers know a good deal when they see one and are persuading millions that we all ate a diet based upon fruits and vegetables and unrefined grains in the good old days. Those of us who can remember the typical huge breakfasts, rich desserts, school lunches, fatty meats and gravies, creamy milks, syrupy canned fruits, sugar-laden juices and soft drinks and ubiquitous cakes and pies of the 50's and 60's may wonder how we possibly managed to avoid the very real tragedy afflicting so many of our children.