A very good idea to help in obesity battle

SO many social, health, and environmental issues are rooted in the food we eat that it is time to reconsider our habits.

It is time we thought outside the box and considered anything that would inculcate a habit of responsible, healthy eating in our children, support ethical producers who grow food that could be the basis of a life-long healthy diet. If those changes were to include provisions to make sure that the estimated 20% of children who go to school hungry each day get at least one good meal a day, then all the better.

Those ideas, ideas that seem radical only in a country as hidebound as this, were advanced by the Green Party yesterday when it launched a policy advocating that school dinners be offered to tackle the growing obesity epidemic.

Another report justifying such a policy was published in the journal Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews recently. It described in a nine-year study of 176,000 obese people, 98.3% of the men and 97.8% of the women never returned to a healthy weight. People who are driven to overeat seek out a range of highly palatable, energy-dense foods, of the kind we are surrounded with today. The report came to the unpalatable conclusion that obesity is all but incurable.

The Greens have offered a sensible proposal that might help fight this epidemic. It should be considered and unless very powerful reasons for not providing school dinners are found, it should be implemented.