Health column: No quick fixes for a complex issue
This week is Diabetes Prevention Week – a week dedicated to highlighting the impact this health issue has on residents.
A report published earlier this month shows that in just six years, diagnoses of type 2 diabetes are up 39 per cent in people under 40.
Obesity and cheap junk food are being blamed for this stark rise, but the problem is much more complex and contrary to popular belief, there is no one ‘quick fix’.
If tackling obesity was as simple as eating your five a day or going for a walk, then why do so many of us struggle to lead healthy and active lives?
The answer is that there are so many other factors at play affecting the choices we make.
The cost-of-living crisis has seen food prices increase by 31 per cent since March 2021 – with lower-income households hit the hardest.
Healthy and sustainable diets are unaffordable to many households, with a report from The Food Foundation finding that healthy foods are nearly three times more expensive than less healthy foods per calorie.
In 2020, the government published its national food strategy in an effort to reverse this trend, but many of the measures - which included a 9pm junk-food advertising watershed and bans on online ads and unhealthy buy-one-get-one-free deals - have been shelved until October 2025. The decision to delay these measures is disappointing.
We know campaigns and messages can only do so much.
To ensure real change, we need stricter policies. In 2007, the introduction of the indoor smoking ban had significant benefits, with a 2.4 per cent reduction in hospital admissions for heart attacks the following year.
This resulted in 12,000 fewer hospital admissions and saved the NHS £8.4 million in the first year alone.
This shows that behaviour change is more effective when policy and law works together to deliver this positive impact.
If we’re serious about tackling obesity, then we should be looking at a similar approach with how we govern unhealthy food, moving beyond our ‘five a day’ rhetoric.
Ultra-processed foods and products high in fat, sugar and salt have become “normalised” in children’s diets, stricter legislation on how we advertise junk food and label food needs to be addressed, as well as ensuring our families have access to affordable and nutritious diets.
Until then, this health epidemic will continue to spiral out of control and reversing the trend will be impossible.
Written by Rachael Musgrave, director of public health, Wigan Council