Do You Want Chips With That?

Firstly, let me say that I am no nutritionalist. It's true I have been trimming the fat off my red meat and bacon for years now and, thanks mainly to 24/7 news  and its need to pad out non-news days with a plethora of worrying study reports, I have gradually become somewhat paranoid about what I eat and drink. Hardly a day goes by without a new report telling me that another of my favourite foods needs to be crossed off my list for one reason or another. As a result, I now buy decaffeinated coffee and drink bottled water to keep my blood pressure down. I hardly ever drink alcohol. I also steam rather than boil my vegetables to prevent destroying any vitamins and diligently try to meet my 5-a-day requirement of fruit and vegetables. I use olive and rapeseed oil because of their high content of mono-unsaturates and spend what seems like hours examining the undersides of margarine tubs searching for the minimum level of trans-fatty acids. Having reached middle-age, I take a daily 75mg dispersible aspirin to reduce the risk of a heart attack and a statin tablet to keep my cholesterol levels down. I avoid so-called junk-food like the plague; use skimmed milk instead of ordinary; take the stairs instead of lifts and walk to places when previously I might have hopped into the car. It's not that I'm obsessed with this kind of thing its just that I along with everyone else have been bombarded for years now from all directions with information on how best to maintain my health. It's on TV, in the newspapers, in doctors surgeries and even in the workplace. Surely, there cannot be anyone left in the U.K. that doesn't know that junk-food is bad and fruit and vegetables are good.

One thing I do know is that I managed to accumulate all of this information without the assistance of a council appointed Fat Controller. I can just about get my head around the idea of the local PCT employing a nutrition specialist but why the Council?

But actually that is not the situation. Hartlepool Council has already being employing a nutritional advisor for some time as has the PCT. The controversial recent 'Fat Controller' appointment was not to initiate better nutrition within communities but to check whether the work being carried out by the other two nutrition specialists was actually achieving anything and to coordinate the activities of both. In other words, what I am persuaded might be a reasonable appointment of one publicly funded, nutritionalist in the the community has suddenly become three!

The cost of the new Fat Controller to will be about £25,000 p.a. which will be paid initially by the Government. However, when the Government funding is withdrawn, as in so many cases, we should expect the cost to be wholly transferred to the Council along with the employee. This is the normal path for people initially employed on Government schemes. £25,000 is the equivalent of all council tax revenue from some 22 houses - in other words a reasonably sized street.

The real question is: will there be any tangible benefit from the appointment given the plethora of nutritional information already available? I doubt it.

I suggest that the message of healthy eating has been well and truly received by now and if people are still ignoring the message then they are doing so by choice. Who can forget the images of frantic mothers feeding their primary school fledglings burgers and chips through the school fence after the school had adopted Jamie Oliver style school dinners.

To be fair, Hartlepool Council deserves some credit for improving the quality of its school dinners. However, there is a limit to what it can do. If people have the information but still chose to eat junk that is their choice and no number of nutritionalists will make the slightest difference.

John McNaughton