This week Bosco Santimano, founder and executive director of social enterprise You Can Cook, shares his thoughts on eating habits.
Our eating habits have changed dramatically since the early 80’s in this country. What with the coming of take-aways and supermarkets providing ready meals for every household budget. Health is this country was relatively good as people ate local food that was mostly available during seasons, people had time and knew how to cook. Fast forward today and we see a massive increase of diet related illnesses eg. heart, obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, etc. The NHS is under huge strain to deal with what is becoming an epidemic. Our organisation was setup in 2007 because I came across a research document called ‘Obesity in Scotland’ from the Scottish Public Health Observatory. The key messages were; Nations that make an early change to sustainability, both in terms of peak oil and climate change could reap substantial health dividends which includes reduced obesity, less inequality and enhanced well-being; Obesity is linked to an increased risk of coronary heart disease, diabetes, cancer, kidney failure, arthritis, back pain and psychological damage and decreases life expectancy. For example, type 2 diabetes is almost 13 times more likely to occur in obese women than in women of normal weight. Obesity in Scotland is linked to nearly 500,000 cases of high blood pressure; Obesity and its consequences cost the NHS in Scotland an estimated £171 million in 2001 and finally, Scotland has one of the highest levels of obesity, second only to the United States of America. (Today Scotland is 3rd behind Mexico, still a long way to go).
All the above figures have increased substantially. Reports like these have come and gone and we have not seen any real policy shift and change from any government as the food and drink lobby is very powerful.
The current high profile news is “Processed Foods”. Governments all across the world are tackling this problem through taxation! Unfortunately, it does not take a rocket scientist to see the ulterior motives of ministers who want to raise more money to balance their budgets. We already are taxing alcohol, cigarettes, etc but these measures are not stopping people from accessing these simple pleasures. We all know now what the tobacco companies did a few decades ago in order to keep their profits high. They mixed addictive chemicals into their cigarettes to hook customers for life. We now have a new term called “ultra-processed foods”. The same principle of addiction applies. These types of foods are apparently more dangerous than ever for human consumption. Breakfast cereals, chicken nuggets and ice-cream are some of the main culprits which leads to poor health and early death.
This is one of the reasons You Can Cook was setup, so as to raise awareness of the dangers of fast foods. The only way to eat good food is to cook it yourself from scratch with raw ingredients as all the additives, chemicals, preservatives and E numbers are completely avoided from your diet.
This is one area where we need to go back to basics.
*Originally written & published in the Peeblesshire News.