Doctors say reliance on cheap foods means spectre of 'Oliver Twist' has returned to the UK
Junk food has become the modern equivalent of gruel, public health experts have said as they urge David Cameron to act on the rising numbers of children suffering from hunger and malnutrition.
Doctors said the “spectre of Oliver Twist” was now looming over the UK with more families buying cheap processed foods because they could not afford to buy and cook healthy fare for their children.
In the letter published in The Lancet, 170 public health professionals call for the creation of a working group to monitor nutrition and hunger, stating: “The reality is that many hardworking families in the UK are living in poverty and do not have enough income for a decent diet.”
The authors, led by Prof John Ashton, President of the Faculty of Public Health, say increasing numbers of poor families are stuck in a “vicious cycle” of poor diets and poor health, which is fuelling worrying rises in diseases such as obesity and diabetes.
“We have to face an uncomfortable truth: we may be facing a public health emergency in the UK,” said Prof John Ashton. “The spectre of Oliver Twist is back. Children are going hungry in the UK: they may not be eating gruel but their parents are having to choosing cheap food that is filling but not nutritious.”
The authors, who include Dr Tony Jewell, former chief medical officer of Wales, Dr Adam Bryson former medical director NHS services Scotland, and Dr Alan Maryon-Davis, Hononary Professor of Public Health at Kings College School of Medicine, say rising food costs are increasing pressures on the poorest families.
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Eddie
3 comments:
There is nothing could be done about it except forbid somehow the existence of chip fast food which, probably, still more nutritious than a gruel.
I did home economics at school, as most of my generation did and that's where we got our basic info about food and taught basic cooking skills.
When my daughter did the same , she came home one day with the ingredients list for apple pie; a tin of pie filling and a packet of pastry. I went ballistic and asked the school if they would like me to teach the children proper food prep.
In my job, nutrition and cooking come up frequently and I'm astounded and the absolute lack of knowledge. There are schemes around the country offering mums the chance to learn to cook good food for their children and these often consist of basic veg prep and cooking, and things like jacket spuds with beans. Is it any wonder with lack of education and the hold big companies and their marketing have on this country that our children are starving?
When I took home economics in high school, we cooked about 1~2 times a week. We worked in groups of 4, because there wasn't enough ingredients to go around. When I graduated, the school was struggling from a lack of funding and the groups expanded to 6 in size. We couldn't make any recipes with meat because it was too expensive. We baked with margarine and cooked a lot of pasta recipes.
It was sad. For every "cooking" lesson we spend about two "reading" recipes because there was simply not enough materials to go around.
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