Apparently not everyone is falling into line with government initiatives.
Major high street food outlets such as Costa Coffee, Pizza Express and Garfunkels have shunned a major government initiative to reduce obesity by telling diners how many calories their products contain.
A host of well-known food and drink producers and retailers have refused to join what ministers billed as a significant drive by such businesses to help consumers lead healthier lives by reducing salt in their goods, ending the use of trans fats and publishing calorie counts.
Well, now, that makes a change from crave compliance. A refreshing change. Sure, it may be useful to have such information, but I suspect that these providers realise that no one takes a blind bit of notice anyway, so why bother?
Popular chains such as Cafe Rouge and Caffe Nero, budget supermarkets Lidl and Iceland and the makers of Birds Eye fish fingers are also among those who have not agreed to honour at least one of three pledges made health secretary Andrew Lansley when he unveiled his public health responsibility deal a year ago.
Andrew Lansley may have made the pledge, however, Andrew Lansley is is not responsible for running these operations, not to mention that none of this is any of his business anyway as it is a matter between the retailers and their customers and if the customers don’t like what they are doing, they will take their business elsewhere, won’t they?
The non co-operation is disclosed in a new report by the consumer group Which?, which claims that the first year of Lansley’s controversial system of relying on voluntary agreements with the food and drink industry, rather than regulation, to improve public health has been a failure.
Well, we all know what that means, don’t we? Despite this not being a public health matter, despite it being entirely between private concerns and their customers, despite it being rooted in junk science, despite it being absolutely nothing to do with government, we will see compulsion. Tories, Labour, Lib Dems, all the same nasty control freaks under the skin.
“If food companies don’t agree to help people eat more healthily then we must see legislation to force them to do so for the sake of the health of the nation,” he [Richard Lloyd] added.
And it will make no difference because people will buy what they like as they do now. I don’t read calorie information or how much salt or fat is in the product because I’m not remotely interested. And I am not remotely over weight either.
Look below the line on the Guardian article for the usual cretins demanding a fat tax…
I am quite a porker in my ‘natural’ state, but I’m in the process of losing weight using a low carbohydrate regime – I’ve lost 2 stone so far. In order to achieve this I haven’t counted a single calorie; low fat, calorie controlled diets simply do not work. That may be an opinion (albeit of someone who has tried such plans and failed each time) but it also suggests that calorie content is far from being the most important information which manufacturers should be required to prominently advertise. It seems to me to be the easy option in giving the impression of ‘doing something’ (even if it actually requires the Government to do nothing and food manufactueres are the only ones forced to take action) and my instinct is that it would likely prove to be useless in actually improving health or obesity. I suspect it is merely the first stages of the eventual plot to impose a ‘fat tax’ in that they are obviously looking to identify the worst offenders and begin the denormalisation process.
People don’t pay their taxes to be pushed around like this. When will politicians learn?
I would suggest that people DO pay their taxes to be pushed around like this and would point to such things as the level of complience with smoking bans, smacking bans, health and safety this that and the other, etc etc over the last 25 years or so.
Therefore, politicians have ALREADY learnt.
Maaarrghk! is feeling a bit cynical today…….
Going by the comments on the Groan, you would appear to be correct.
Na. What is the opposite of a boycott?
Whatever, those are the firms I will be looking to buy from.
I’m pretty sure I’ve seen a report somewhere (probably at Dick Puddlecoat’s) from the States – where this has been going longer – that it does indeed make absolutely no difference to menu choice by customers whatsoever…
Of course not. How many of us take the time to count calories? I certainly don’t. I am aware of what is good and bad and am capable of making up my own mind without food labelling to tell me. Besides, I’ll buy what I damned well want to buy no matter how much the Guardian and the government purse their lips and try to stop me.
Labour’s Diane Abbott, the shadow public health minister, said: “You cannot expect big business, which makes millions every year by marketing sugary, fatty and unhealthy foods to willingly limit its own profiteering.”
On the question of the consumption of sugary, fatty and unhealthy foods I’m prepared to concede that Diane Abbott is a world expert.
“profiteering”. FUCK OFF. They make a tiny marginal profit on each single VOLUNTARY transaction.
This fat ignorant authoritarian doesn’t understand what the word ‘profiteering’ means. It is one of a very large number of words she does not know the meaning of.
The irony is that it would be the STATE which would be profiteering if it imposed a “fat tax” on citizens without their consent.
I think you may have missed my point, Rob:
On the question of the consumption of sugary, fatty and unhealthy foods…
Never mind the dreadfully fattening BEER.
I’m 66, my height is 1.79m and I mass 82kg
I also drink about/between/at least 18 pints of beer and two bottles of wine a week.
I’m so shaped that I have difficulty keeping my trousers hitched uo *what are hips?)
Tell THAT to the health fascists….
Perhaps we could put together an index of companies which fail to comply with PC directives and promote them.