Government plans to reduce obesity

A £372 million strategy to reduce obesity levels has been launched by the government. £372 million to tell people to move more and sit on their bums less, and to eat more proper food and less junk food!

The fact is it's our choice if we want to eat unhealthy foods (and despite talk of traffic light systems and food labelling most people do have a reasonable idea what's healthy and what isn't). All the confusion over food labelling applies to processed foods that are generally best avoided anyway.

To choose to be more active and eat a healthy diet we have to feel that we have the time and resources to make these changes. Any obstacles can easily become excuses for not making change.

People need to know how they can make a healthy meal on a budget when they only have a limited amount of time. Jamie Oliver has done more to encourage healthy eating in Britain than any government funded campaign. People need to be encourged to find healthy activities that they enjoy doing. If they think it's fun they'll keep doing it. If they find it boring they wont.

Most people know that their health will suffer if they don't exercise, yet only 22% of people who have suffered a heart attack maintain lifestyle changes 12 months on. If people whose diet and inactivity almost killed them don't feel able to stick to these changes by following government advice, then how is this advice going to make a significant difference to people who haven't had such a wake up call.

Whilst on the subject of heart attacks, I spent this morning at the cardiac rehab unit of my local hospital. These sort of programs make a huge difference to peoples lives and in the long term save an absolute fortune to the NHS through reducing repeat heart attacks and subsequent hospitilisation. Yet funding for these schemes is virtually non existent.

Improving provision of exercise facilties does increase take up. So why reduce funding to local authorities to use for leisure facilities? Why allow sports grounds (including school sports fields) to be sold off for housing developments?

Surely it would be better to resource existing initiatives before wasting money on such wide ranging initiatives where even the few sensbile ideas being set out are unlikely to receive sufficient funding to become effective anyway.

"Improving health by creating positive attitudes towards fitness"