Big nanny to the rescue

What I read

In "Britain needs to go on a diet, says top health official", Nick Triggle (2018) reports that Britain's Food and Drink Federation is supporting Public Health England's (PHE) proposals for the industry to voluntarily take steps to reduce the country's growing excess calorie consumption both by children and adults. Specifically targetting fast, processed and prepared foods, the measures aim to reduce the sizes of portions served by restaurants and to increase people's awareness of the calorie content of the food they eat. In addition to naming and shaming companies that fail to act, PHE has threatened new laws if its guidelines are not met. 

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My response 

I don't think anyone doubts that being overweight or obese are serious health problems that impose massive costs on health services, reduce productivity, and reduce quality of life. As one statistic included with the BBC News article says, obesity costs the NHS (National Health Service) £6 billion a year. That is a lot of money that is not available for other purposes. And with more than one third of children aged 10-11 already overweight or obese, the future is not looking attractive. 


Unfortunately, dieting is not easy, as I know from my personal experience of many years. Food is delicious, and the higher the calories the more delicious it tends to be. Nature, as so often, has a lot to answer for! I have no trouble deciding to eat only three modest meals a day when I'm full, or overfull, but a few hours later, I'm faced with feeling hungry amid plenty of tasty, easily available food. If the cheese and other attractive things in my fridge were not enough, it's a five minute walk to Dean & Deluca at Mahanakorn, or only a two minute trip to the kai yang vendor in my soi, or lots of other options depending on what my friends or I might feel like. My diet is very healthy: I just eat a lot more than I need to eat. 

But I'm not sure that it's the government's business to force other people to force me to follow healthier eating choices. That's the same bad reasoning that criminalizes a lot of very popular drugs, which are in fact probably less harmful than the excessive amounts of sugar, fat and other things that people love to eat. If the same logic is followed, chocolate cake should be criminalized along with fatty pork and foi gras. The government can make laws to ensure food providers are not dishonestly labelling food, and perhaps stop the sale of sweets to children just as cigarettes are controlled, but I think that adults must be allowed to be responsible for the choices that they make provided those choices do not directly harm others, such as when people drink a glass of red wine and then drive home. Eating way too many hamburgers before driving is not the same sort of threat to others, although perhaps throwing parents who over feed their kids on hamburgers into prison would be justified. 

Unfortunately, the pictures that accompany the story have not helped me: I love the lower calorie avocado on toast, but I'm also very fond of a full English breakfast, and a mix of both goes down very well. 

After all that writing, it must be snack time! 

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My question

Should governments make laws to control what adults eat? 

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Reference

• Triggle, N. (2018, March 6). Britain needs to go on a diet, says top health official. BBC News. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/health-43201586