Comments by "Michael RCH" (@michaelrch) on "PM distances himself from key recommendation in healthy eating report" video.

@chrisb4009 Absolutely. But there is so much help we could offer if we wanted to. We could switch subsidies from unhealthy and environmentally destructive foods like meat and dairy to healthy staples like fruit, veg and legumes. We could teach kids how to cook healthy food at school and run courses for adults. We could force food companies to take out addictive and unhealthy ingredients from their processed foods. We could provide more kids free healthy school meals. We could even push up minimum wages to avoid food poverty and long working hours. But all of this is fundamentally against the neoliberal antisocial corporatist agenda of the Tories.
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@chrisb4009 Well you are luckier than me then. But as I said, we could feed more kids at school, and ensure that those meals are genuinely healthy. That reminds me. Last time Boris commented on school meals that I remember, it was to tell parents to give their kids pork pies and Mars bars through the railings... This man is now PM 🤦‍♂️
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@chrisb4009 Sounds like a good start to me. But as I said, there are many other measures beyond just school dinners. The problem is that the food industry, like every other industry is run for profit. And it has found that it can effectively addict millions of people to food that is killing them, while passing on the social costs to society in general. They are acting much like drug dealers and our government lets them because they have a ton of money and power. Just like government does the bidding of business across the whole economy. It's unlikely that the Tories will back anything that could actually get people to buy better, simpler less profitable food because the government cares mainly about the profits of large business because they are essentially paid to in political donations, and because it's their mates that run the companies.
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@tams805 You mean my criticism of Johnson? If so, I will change my opinion on his attitudes when he changes his actions.
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That is the point here I think. The taxes will make companies reformulate the products to make them less harmful. But we should also help people to buy fresh healthy food. That means more fruit, veg, legumes, etc and less processed food, and less meat eggs and dairy.
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@paxundpeace9970 Johnson actually wanted to scrap that tax when he was campaigning to be the leader of the Conservative party
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@rogerwoodhouse7945 It's true. But it didn't happen by accident. The food industry, with the blessing of the government, has driven this change. The industry now competes to produce the most addictive food it can, so that customers will keep coming back for more. That means they have added salt, sugar and other unhealthy ingredients into their processed foods because they know that they are gratifying. And as this report by Henry dimbleby points out, these ingredients act like a drug. The more you get, the more you need. We generally protect citizens from the dangers of addictive substances, except in the case of food. The industry is so powerful that it can do anything it likes to make money, and society and individuals getting sick pay the price.
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@rogerwoodhouse7945 Yeah yeah. Why do you think the industry spends billions on advertising? It's because it works. Why do they make their foods addictive? It's because it works. When you see a few people doing something wrong it stupid, sure, blame then. When you see most people doing something wrong or stupid, you have a broken system with the wrong incentives and no practical protections against abuses.
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