Being Irish, I have no idea what's on the British national curriculum. When I was in school, I never saw as much as a frying pan and only the few students that elected to do home economics would have done anything related to food.
Good points. Even things as basic as knife skills need to be thought, so that when it comes to making that stir fry it doesn't take 5 hours because they are trying to chop a pepper up with a butter knife.
At the same time if food is twice as bad for you, it makes sense to eat half as much. If a FBO reduces a portion to make the numbers acceptable, that should tell you something about what constitutes a healthy portion of that food. They do, for a given sense of 'realise'. People are not rational beings (as the Enlightened Tobacco Company proved in 1991 when they launched the brand "DEATH" cigarettes --skull and crossbones on a black package. They sold reasonably well). They can totally, rationally know that something is very bad for them and still choose to consume it and feel that they are not making a bad choice. They are employed by both (and please, if you want a rational debate lets have less of the 'magical' sarcasm). Isn't a portion size determined by its nutritional and calorific content? I'm not saying that FBOs will not do a bit of creative work with values and portion sizes, but again: if something is twice as high in calories, does it not make sense to eat half as much? But if you are aware of this cognitive process, you can counter it, no? At the end of the day if the label says a 15g portion of this contains my RDA in salt, then I know that a 45g portion exceeds it by a factor of two. I still know that £9,99 is only a penny short of £10,--. Of course they do, but that does not stop customers from reading the numbers, interpreting them correctly and making informed choices. Actually (and somewhat annoyingly, from my point of view as a psychologist), it does work. Raising the price of alcohol makes people drink less. Raising the price of cigarettes makes people smoke less. So raising the price of sugary foods is likely to make people consume less of it. We may not like it --and the food, drink and tobacco industry certainly don't-- but them's the facts. I think that now you're putting the finger on one of the main problems. Many people have no experience or idea of what good, healthy food is so they have, as you said before, no concrete reference to compare bad food or abstract label numbers to. Something may have red traffic lights all over it, but if it tastes nice, then what does that mean? But if your experience tells you that it tastes too sweet, too salty, too greasy, then you don't need the label. We are wired to like sweet and fatty things, but taste is also for a large part acquired by learning and experience. I don't need to check the sell by date to know whether fish, meat, vegetables or fruit is fresh. I can just see it and smell it. I don't need to read the label to know whether something contains too much sugar or salt or fat --I can taste it (and I go "yuk"). Being raised by a Caribbean mother with a cultural love of food and a sharp and critical eye for market produce does that to you, but in the Netherlands every child of my generation was indoctrinated with its fatherland's cultural history of how a small country, by wrestling land from the sea and a strong farming tradition and expertise, managed to feed its dense population. School trips took us to farms, dairy factories, grain mills. As a Dutch child of the 60's it was inconceivable that you would not have touched a cow before age 10, let alone know where your milk and beef comes from. Cooking is a basic life skill, like being able to read, write or even dress and wash yourself. Every child should learn it. That includes knowing where food comes from, what good food looks, feels, smells and tastes like. We know that food preferences are learned early on in childhood. Of course children also need to learn the basic food prep and cooking skills like knowing how to handle raw meat and eggs, how to store foods, how to wield sharp knives (I've seen people practically take a finger off while peeling a potato) and hot pots and pans with boiling water or oil.
Ok, so you acknowledge that FBOs benefit from down playing negative nutritional values such as calories sugar etc. But you think that labelling calories, sugar etc. for products which are typically consumed in one sitting at half of their total value is not actually down playing their negative nutritional value. Products like 500ml bottles of coke.
Depends. If it is explicitly stated that one portion of coke is 250ml, then it kind of suggests that you're not supposed to drink the whole bottle in one go if you want to be healthy(ish) about it. If it does not, then that is downplaying but nothing that a consumer who knows basic arithmetic and has a genuine interest in what they put in their body cannot figure out. At some point the consumer has to take ownership of their health and do the math.
Ideally yes. Unfortunately many parents these days don't know how to cook (or at least cook well). An interesting bit of research found that reading ability in children was not associated with how much the parents practiced reading with them, but with how many books there were in their homes. Being exposed to the idea that books and reading were interesting encouraged them to want to read. I wonder if it's the same with cooking: if you see your parents cook, and be interested in cooking, perhaps you want to learn to cook too.
It is never explicitly stated though is it? Usually its asterisked away somewhere, or placed in a smaller font from the rest of the information, you know, the kind of tricks used to help people over look information, kind of like fine print. Do you think that advice from a medical professional (dietician) tends to "kind of suggest" something? Look at the warnings on cigarette boxes, those aren't "kind of suggest[ion]s". That is the type of clarity in labelling that gets carried out, when governments and medical professionals get involved. The current (very inconsistent) labelling has nothing to do with dieticians or medical related advice. Even your own position shifting from these dieticians first working at the FSA to providing labelling to working at the food business operators providing these labels is inconsistent and fails to support that idea. The labelling approach used on junk food is also inconsistent with other areas where governments and medical professionals are involved. See the FDAs approach to labelling (American government) and the warnings on cigarette packets (european governments and Surgeon General). The current voluntary labelling is a result of the junk food industry trying to walk a very fine line. They must both minimize the display of the negative impacts of their product, because as we have agreed that aids them in their business. At the same time they must provide some user friendly nutritional information to avoid negative backlash, bad PR and display a veil of social responsibility. These user friendly labels obfuscate the full impact of the product by using portion sizes which are invariably smaller than what is consumed. The labels are a direct output of these FBOs walking that fine line. My point is about businesses being clear, open and realistic in their labelling. You and others seem to conflate advocacy of clear, open and realistic labelling with advocacy for the removal of consumer responsibility. Of course this isn't true, it's an incorrect conflation. That should be obvious. I'm not advocating the removal of consumer responsibility. Consumer responsibility is required regardless, a point I have reiterated numerous times. My points are as follows: Dieticians are not involved in the voluntary labelling the junk food operators place on their goods. Rather, the labelling is a result of food operators walking the fine line of trying to sell as much as they can whilst also trying to appear socially responsible/deflect negative publicity. Everyone benefits from clear, true and realistic labelling. Clear and realistic labelling reduces the chances or error and misinterpretation. The current labels are not clear or realistic, because they don't reflect the reality of consumption.
My position is this: the reasons why people eat unhealthily is much more complex and multifactorial than a lack of clear, unambiguous information. Ask any person in the street to divide a bunch of foods into 'healthy' and 'unhealthy' and you'll find that they get it largely correct without reading a single label. Crisps? Bad. Fizzy pop? Bad. Cupcakes and biscuits? Bad. Big bar of chocolate? Bad. Fruit? Good. Vegetables? Good. Nuts? Good --unless you eat a big bag of them. Lean meats are better than greats sausages, fish is better than meat (but nobody likes fish, except in fish fingers or fish and chips. Yeah, fish and chips is bad, I know, but it tastes so good...). Everybody knows that, like every smoker knows that smoking is bad (big, clear, unambiguous print right there on the package as you say, just in case anyone didn't get the message in the last 50 years, and people still smoke), and every drinker knows when they are really drinking too much. Nutritionists employed by the FDA, in the NHS, in various health charities do have clear recommendations about what is a healthy portion of a given food. You'll find that nutritionists employed by FBOs say pretty much the same thing (obviously). How FBOs choose to present that information is another matter, and of course they are interested in trying to present their foods as OK, but in the end if a cornflakes box says that a portion is 30g, it's because a healthy portion of cornflakes really is 30g. What you seem to be annoyed about is that those portion sizes seem rather small compared to what people really eat. Well, they are. We often eat too much. With the traffic light system, which works per standardised 100g, it is pretty unambiguous at a glance whether a food is good or bad for you. People still eat unhealthily. Clearer information won't change anything. People already know. But people rationalise and avoid acknowledging their bad food choices, and it's easier to blame food labelling than to acknowledge that actually, they should have picked up that bag of apples or satsumas rather than that bag of crisps or packet of biscuits. That they should make the effort to cook rather than dial up another pizza delivery. As I said: people know. But that does not necessarily mean people make wise choices.
Not forgetting that the food that is classed as bad for you invariably tastes better than the healthy stuff. As someone who has not eaten solid food in 7 years and probably never will. If I could have one more meal in my life it would be a dirty great big plate of fish and chips with lashings of sauce and a slice or two of thick buttered bread. Not for me a vegetable casserole followed by a fresh fruit salad, turns my stomach just thinking of that.
To an extent that is acquired taste as much as wired taste. Having said that, I don't think anyone can acquire a taste for Fortisip (when my colleagues and I teach the module on managing weight loss in cancer, we make the students taste all the supplements commonly prescribed, as a condition of passing the module. ).
I absolutely agree with all of that. What I'm proposing is not a fix for unhealthy eating habits. Its about the presentation of clear and relevant information on food packets. The correct and reasonable presentation of this information only forms a tiny and fractional element of a larger solution. Again I agree, people eat too much. I am 100% in support of putting what a recommended portion size is on a packet. Put it on a bottle of coke that you should only drink one of these a week or a month. Its all good. Make ads about it and put it on TV. Show people what these portions actually look like. (30g of cereal is about the amount that comes in one of those variety pack boxes) There's nothing wrong with any of it. What we must not do, is put our heads under the covers and pretend that people don't eat too much, that chocolate bars don't come in sizes that are too big and that people won't eat them all in one go. The information should reflect that unfortunate reality. "If you have eaten this full bar (which you probably have) the following is the break down of what you have just eaten". "The recommended portion is no more than half of this bar". If people want to know what the value of the recommended portion is let them work it out from the per 100g values. But the quickest and most easily accessible information should reflect the reality of consumption. It should reflect the most likely thing to have happened. If consumption habits change, then the label should reflect that as well for better or for worse. The traffic light thing is a good idea and is a fine sub component of the label and I encourage it. But again the remaining detail should reflect the reality of consumption, so people can be as informed as allowable by such a simplistic layout. Again I agree. As I have said previously and seem bound to say eternally, correct and realistic labelling isn't going to replace personal responsibility. That doesn't mean that people can't benefit from clearer and more accurate information.
Fortisip is pretty vile stuff. I used to drink one that was more like someone attempted to make a vanilla milkshake out of plastic. It might not have been fortisip branded though.
I do eat the whole box of cereal in one go. I also eat 5000-5500 cal a day due to the metabolism of the damned. Yes, I math very well, but I really just am careful what I eat, and what with short bowel it limits me. I can do fruit once a week or so, and wood sorrel every so often, but vegetables never. Yet I'm trim and fit for my 6' 7 1/2". If I can, they can. It's sugar free flavored water or coffee for me, that was my first step. Completely weaning g myself off sugars.
