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By Lord McColl of Dulwich - 19th October 2011
Lord McColl of Dulwich argues that the government should legislate to stop the seductive allure of unhealthy food and drink.
The obesity epidemic is one of the worst epidemics to overwhelm this country for 100 years. Soon half the population will be affected. It is already killing millions, costing billions of pounds and the cure is free: eat less.
Why obesity is so lethal is that it leads to diabetes at an increasingly early age and is now involving children. Diabetes leads to blindness, gangrene of the limbs, heart attacks, strokes, cirrhosis of the liver and kidney failure, while the increasing body weight wears out the joints, requiring knee and hip replacements. If they survive all that, cancer is another complication waiting to kill them.
For some years NICE has misled the Department of Health into believing that what was required was a balance between the calories consumed and the exercise taken. The truth is that exercise only consumes a fraction of the calories we take. It is important to stress that exercise is good for the heart and the control of cholesterol and makes people feel better, but it does nothing much for obesity because one has to run miles to take off a pound of fat. Obese people do not need to increase their physical activity at all. What they need to do is to eat less. Obese people are demoralised by being told to take more exercise when they know only too well that their obesity precludes them increasing their activity. Only once they reach a manageable weight is exercise wise.
Earlier this year NICE and the Chief Medical Officer were persuaded to endorse the view that the answer to the obesity epidemic was to eat less. Last week the Department of Health itself finally gave in to the pressure and the secretary of state announced that eating less was indeed the answer to the epidemic. He must now begin to publicise the appalling risks in a way that really confronts the public with the inevitable results of this appalling epidemic. This has worked in similar situations, notably the highly effective campaign against HIV Aids led by Lord Fowler in the 1980s.
The secretary of state needs to encourage the food industry to stop seducing people into death by gorging and drinking. Each food store must stop displaying alcohol in five or six different places, should avoid displaying calorie-rich foods and confectionery at the paying-in counters, and work out how they are really going to help. If persuasion does not work, then legislation will be necessary in the form of heavy taxes on lethal foods.
Disaster stares us in the face. We cannot afford to ape the Emperor Nero, who fiddled while Rome burned.
Ian McColl is a former professor of surgery at Guy's Hospital and a former deputy speaker (1994-97, 1998-2002). He was raised to the peerage in 1989 and sits on the Conservative benches.
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