Should Fatty Foods have a Health Warning?
I was interested in an article by Kate Devlin in the Daily Telegraph last Wednesday 13th August. She says that a leading public health expert Professor David Hunter from Durham University believes that fatty foods should carry health warnings to help prevent the growing obesity problem in the UK. He feels that manufacturers should be forced to display warnings on foods that contain excessive amounts of fat, sugar or salt similar to the warnings displayed on cigarette packets.
The financial cost of unhealthy living
Professor Hunter predicts that this problem could make our National Health Service “unaffordable” within decades because it is becoming so expensive treating diseases linked to obesity such as heart conditions and diabetes. The NHS currently spends £750 million a year on drugs that treat health problems that can be directly associated with unhealthy living.
According to another report on the BBC obesity could result in the number of people with type II diabetes doubling by 2025 which will of course put a serious strain on our Health Service.
Others suffer…
The tragedy of this enormous expense – an expense that is avoidable if only people lived healthier lives – is that those with illnesses in no way linked to unhealthy living will suffer. People with conditions like Alzheimer’s and similar dementia-like conditions, those seeking expensive drugs to treat some cancers and many others will be losing out on vital treatments.
Many manufacturers and supermarkets already give nutritional information on packets of food but so far this is not a legal requirement. Do you think this would help people make more healthy choices? Write in and let us know.
To read the report in full:
See also a report by the BBC on the same subject:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7559420.stm
August 21st, 2008 at 9:32 pm
Great post and great topic to bring to head. In my opinion, I don’t think unhealthy foods should have a warning label on them because people know trans-fat and fried foods are bad. The problem is they just don’t care. However, I do think all foods from restaurants to fast food joints should be accompanied by accessible and accurate nutrition information. Once again, good topic!
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