CHARLES BANNERMAN: Freedom of choice matters when it comes to our food in the Highlands during the cost of living crisis
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Food prices are now rising so fast that Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey has found himself obliged to apologise for having to call the situation “apocalyptic”. Meanwhile, we find health service executive chief Professor Donal O’Shea so blinkered on what he decrees to be healthy eating that he’s calling for a legal ban on low price supermarket meal deals.
Any way you look at it, this latest manifestation of food fascism is nonsensical.
These meal deals are pretty lightweight not only in price but also calories and the perfect, bite-sized, practical solution for eating on the go. The helpings are modest, with countless perfectly healthy permutations such as prawn or chicken sandwiches, tubs of apple and grapes and fruit drinks available. For a main meal, that’s typically around 600 calories, or 30 per cent of recommended daily intake. What’s Prof O’Shea’s problem?
There’s also something immoral about trying to throw demonstrably silly blanket disincentives and prohibitions at something which doesn’t affect the very many who don’t have weight issues. Why should they suffer for something that doesn’t affect them? It’s like giving the whole class detention even though you know that only the kids in the back row were misbehaving.
Unfortunately the Nanny Staters seem to be deploying this one size fits all mentality more and more. Freedom of choice is under threat and it’s not on. There’s already the equally blunt weapon of a sugar tax which hits everyone. My daughter and her partner, for instance, are international athletes who, among other things, rely on carbohydrate rich drinks for recovery from training and racing. They certainly don’t have a weight problem but necessary nutrition now costs them much more.
Sports people are just the tip of a much bigger iceberg. There are plenty of others totally unharmed by “full fat” drinks and other similar products but are still hit in the pocket.
As prices spiral and food banks proliferate, tinpot dietary dictators are demanding bans on cost effective solutions in a barefaced attempt to criminalise affordable food in the name of healthy eating. They are also after our BOGOFs and other solutions to surging prices.
Amid economic crisis, these people presume to reduce consumption by increasing costs and restricting availability. Then there’s the fundamental paradox that, at a time of burgeoning food poverty and food bank usage, we also seem to be experiencing increasing levels of obesity.
So how long now before constraints on buying necessary foodstuffs become more proscriptive even than on drink and cigarettes?
The absurdity is they want to legislate against meal deals from the same counters where fags continue to be readily available.
The fundamental remedy for most obesity is self control. So how do you advocate that when there are politically correct handwringers cringing at the prospect even of telling people they are overweight? What has been dubbed fattism (aka being constructively honest, helpful and realistic) has, it appears, become a sin.
If people have an avoidable weight problem, it’s far better to confront them with the stark reality than introduce blanket legislation discriminating against the well-disciplined, and fuelling a worrying hike in food prices.
