A couple of NHS-related items this week worth reading, that are not surprising, but still depressing: a good summary of what is being cut vs. funded, and trends in obesity-related spending. [Executive summary: (1) nhs will kill more people by cutting nursing staff but spend more money assuming people are stupid and need a visit to a doctor to tell them they're overweight, (2) staple your stomachs!]
Change4Life is an NHS anti-obesity initiative mentioned in both articles. Despite the site appearing designed for 8-yr-olds, I think it's supposed to be targeting adults. I guess the dumb nature of the site is an effective indicator of how seriously you should treat its advice. Too bad this is costing us a fortune.
Billboards have been popping up as part of this campaign. One large one on my daily commute shows kids drinking fruit juice and boldly exclaiming, "fruit juice is 1 of my 5 a day!" I confirmed on the c4l site itself that they do in fact endorse apple juice as healthy. Apple juice. Seriously, you'd be better off giving your kids Sprite to drink instead. (Both are equally worthless for nutritional needs, except Sprite has marginally less sugar and is marginally less inflammatory.) Randomly poking around, I discover c4l also thinks oven chips are healthy because, you know, they have less fat than fried chips. I challenge anyone involved in this NHS campaign who is overweight to replace an equi-caloric portion of their diet, any portion, with 5 cups/day of apple juice and some oven chips, and let me know how that works out for you.
More lives would be saved by canning c4l and adding a few nurses to hospitals that need them. The fundamental problem, the real kick in the gut, is this: while the idea quoted in the Guardian article -- "When it comes to tackling the obesity crisis, money would be better spent by focusing in the key areas of prevention and awareness" -- is spot-on, the causes of obesity are so poorly understood by the people making public health desicions that much of the prevention & awareness is misguided or ineffective. They're all pretending the science is a done deal, the "everybody knows" phenomenon, when it's not. This is the same old groundless crap being peddled but now it's consuming an increasingly hefty portion of public health funding. But maybe I'm being too pessimistic. This high-priced campaign to prevent obesity, diabetes, and stomach-stapling could be wonderfully effective. I should just go cool down with a refreshing juicebox.
No comments:
Post a Comment