What does the Government expect people to serve up at Christmas? Quinoa? - Andrew Vine

All those supermarket Christmas adverts occupying every television break must be driving the Health Secretary up the wall.

There’s Dawn French for M&S, inviting the neighbours round for a right old tuck-in, the singing oven gloves for Morrisons laying out a huge spread, and the Big Friendly Giant for Sainsbury’s putting on a feast.

It’s all food, glorious food, and much of it so high in fat, salt and sugar that it would give the government nannies trying to steer us away from gorging ourselves a nasty turn.

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With the sort of cack-handed timing that is becoming a Labour trademark, the Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, decided to launch his crackdown on the advertising of so-called junk food right in the middle of the run-up to Christmas, when minds are on eating and making merry for a few days before the New Year resolution to go on a diet kicks in.

A stock image of a Christmas dinner. PIC: Alamy/PAA stock image of a Christmas dinner. PIC: Alamy/PA
A stock image of a Christmas dinner. PIC: Alamy/PA

Who’s listening to the government on this? Not the people piling their supermarket trolleys high, that’s for sure. And not the supermarkets either, busily cashing in on their most profitable few weeks of the year.

It’s just silly, nanny-state posturing masquerading as genuine policy, deploying spurious statistics in an attempt to support claimed outcomes that will be impossible to quantify.

According to the government, a ban on advertising junk food from October next year will remove 7.2 billion calories from the nation’s diet and prevent 20,000 cases of child obesity a year.

Oh yes? How’s that going to be proved then?

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And if such a ban comes into force, what of next year’s Christmas adverts? Are they to be banned too? Perhaps instead of turkey with all the trimmings, pudding, cakes and cheese, we’ll see the singing oven gloves and Dawn French delighting everybody with a delicious feast of lettuce leaves and quinoa.

The more you look at this healthy-eating drive, the more ridiculous it becomes.

Foods facing the chop from being plugged on television before 9pm include yoghurt, porridge oats, rice pudding, crumpets and custard.

Leaving aside the fact that it would be a very strange child indeed who pestered mum and dad for crumpets or a tin of rice pudding as a treat, as opposed to a bag of crisps or a bar of chocolate, nutritionists have called into question branding porridge as unhealthy, pointing out that it is quite the opposite.

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Generations of parents who have served up a bowl of hot porridge as a nutritious start to their children’s day would agree.

The degree of ridiculousness of all this is underlined by the fact that ice cream and sausage rolls, neither of which is anybody’s idea of healthy, are not on the banned list.

As with so much that this government is doing, the food ban has the whiff of being half-baked.

It seems not to have struck the government that there is a jarring inconsistency between one member of the Cabinet preaching to us all about eating healthily while another is busily undermining the production of fresh, wholesome British food by taxing family farms out of business.

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Punitive levels of inheritance tax that make farms uneconomic can only further weaken the public’s understanding of where our food comes from and the challenges facing those who produce it.

Instead of the government promoting the excellent and healthy produce from our farms, its actions are going to reduce the availability of home-grown food.

Nobody sensible would quibble with the need to tackle obesity. As a nation, we’re too fat and it’s causing health problems, but demonising specific foods and the way they are advertised isn’t going to get us shedding the pounds.

Nobody can seriously believe that children will miraculously cease to be aware of sweets because they aren’t shown on television until the middle of the evening.

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Public campaigning would be a much better approach. On issues including smoking and drink-driving, sustained campaigns over many years have achieved proven results in changing people’s behaviour.

Educating the public about eating better is the only way forward that will foster a change in what people buy. Teaching the young is especially important, as it will hopefully establish good habits early.

The government should be taking a much broader view of what the nation eats, and why, if it is to make a real difference. The economics around food have long been a matter of concern, but there is no mention of them amid all the stern talk of advertising bans.

It cannot be right that farmers in Yorkshire struggle to get a fair price for what they grow or rear, while highly-processed food can be produced so cheaply it is much more affordable – and therefore tempting – for poor households.

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