There have been talks about putting a health tax on unhealthy restaurants...

It was supposed to be Obesity Awareness Week this week but at Ukmedix News we felt that the week has come and gone and there was hardly a ripple in the news about obesity. There were a few report s about initiatives in various parts of the country and lectures and seminars but it not like Joe and Jane Average actually learned much this week and is not like the UK government actually have taken some clear steps to stop obesity in the UK.

The United Kingdom has the fastest growing obesity problem in the whole of the European Union and while the UK government claims that they are setting up campaigns and initiatives to curb the growth of obesity in the UK we feel at Ukmedix News that they are simply not doing enough. There have been talks about putting a health tax on unhealthy restaurants, there have been talks about serious campaigns to warn people about the effects of obesity on health, there have been talks about making supermarkets and food producers promote and display the healthy foods much better and to legislate to make sure all that unhealthy foodstuffs are not sold in supermarkets without warnings similar to the ones that are seen on cigarette packets the UK. But the real problem seems to be that they are still at the talking stage and not at the doing stage.

We suspect at Ukmedix News that one of the reasons why the UK government is afraid to legislate and to protect children who are becoming obese is that any thing they do will be unpopular. Parents don’t like it when people tell them their children are obese and a recent campaign to have all children weighed in schools caused an uproar as parents said that it would increase bullying.

However if the UK government are serious about stopping obesity then they will have to start some initiatives that will be unpopular in the short run but nevertheless the results will bear fruit in the long term.