The Tubby Time-bomb.
It's election time in the UK as I write this. The politicians
and journalists are locked in verbal combat over The war in Iraq, spending
plans, taxing plans, education and hospitals.
The public is bored, TV news
ratings have dropped steadily since the start of the campaign. Nobody is
particularly interested in the issues that are being endlessly re-visited. Even
some of the politicians look fed up.
Never mind chaps, it'll all be over
soon...
Of course the most worrying issue facing the nation is not being
discussed.
Is it terrorism? I hear you ask.
No.
Non renewable energy
supplies?
No.
The state of the nation's roads?
No no no!
It's obesity.
Did you know that Britain has just come third in a survey to
find the countries with the highest proportion of obese children?
In first
place was Malta and in second place, unsurprisingly, was the USA.
Now I
don't know what Malta is doing wrong but I can see where Britain and the USA
have blundered:
Privatising school catering.
Capitalism is a great driver for a country to better itself but,
left unchecked, the system has a fatal flaw; the profit imperative is king.
Ask yourself who is top of the priorities list when a company decides upon
any course of action, the shareholders or the customer?
Except for a few
principled firms, the answer is always the shareholder.
The choice for firms
is "Shall we make a product which is just good enough to satisfy most
consumers" or "Shall we spend a bit more and make a better product".
Just
look at the ingredients list on your standard supermarket packet and you'll see
which choice they invariably make.
Now we, as informed adults, are equipped to make a decision
about whether to eat the processed food or not. Children in British and
American schools are often not being offered any choice at all.
The Schools
are supplied by large concerns whose sole objective is to maximise profit. They
won the contract by undercutting suppliers who may (or may not) have been
intending to serve better food, so they have no room to manoeuvre. They have to
use the cheapest possible ingredients.
Neither are they forced to produce a
balanced diet for each child, if a child wants some chips to eat with their bag
of crisps and chocolate bar, that's what they get.
The child doesn't know
its bad for him, after all, the crisp and the chocolate manufacturer have spent
millions on advertising which tells him how good their stuff is!
More worrying is that the children's parents obviously have no
idea about how a child should eat. They send their children to school supplied
with packed lunches containing fatty processed snacks, sweets and sugary
drinks. No wonder they under-perform at school if that's all they eat.
The problem was highlighted first in the states by the film
"Supersize Me" and latterly in the UK with "Jamie's School Dinners".
A
revealing scene in Jamie Oliver's programme showed a disruptive child
responding to having his junk-food diet replaced by a balanced diet for a week.
He calmed right down and became quite pleasant, but after just one "treat" meal
of junk-food, he was all over the place again. Q.E.D.
So, whoever wins this election, please do something about this
as soon as possible. It's already too late for the generation of fat children
leaving our schools, they have been imprinted with poor eating habits which
only a few will shake off.
It's ruining their academic performance, it's
ruining their health, it's ruining their teeth it's ruining their
self-esteem.
If nothing else spurs you into action Mr. Politician, just think
how much these overweight kids are going to cost the health service in a few
years time. Then that profit imperative will really come home to roost!
*
© Winamop. May 2005
Read old page 94s here.