Banning Junk Food

Worldwide, obesity in children has tripled over the last 20 years. In America, 18% of 6-11 year old kids are obese, and 21% of 12-19 year olds. The effects of obesity range from low self-esteem, bully and low mobility to the terrors of diabetes and heart problems. Obesity makes the childhoods of these kids a struggle and their future blighted by health problems. It is not a low-priority problem, some kind of comic jest, full of the irony of trying to slim down the 'fat kids' whilst trying to feed the third world. It is not even remotely funny. Furthermore, this is not a problem that parents, whether they are responsible or not for their children's' behaviour, have proved able to tackle. A ban on unhealthy foods in schools is only part of the solution, but it is simple and largely easy to enforce, and it shows huge potential. In Britain at least, foods with more than 5g of saturated fats, 17.5 of total fats, or 22.5g of sugars per 100g are considered to be 'red' foods. Any foods that broke these boundaries would not be permitted in schools. Since all food products in the UK must provide nutritional information per 100g, and the vast majority have clear green, yellow and red colour coding, there could be no argument about whether a food brought into school was banned or not. These foods are often ones that we take for granted, think little of, or don't realise how regularly we are eating. A mindset in which such foods are treated as everyday items is a terrible and dangerous inheritance. Banning unhealthy foods would be a process of two parts. Firstly, on school dinners, which would easy enough to force. Such a ban would vastly broaden children's horizons, showing them that you can eat mildly interesting, cheap, healthy food for every lunch and you will not collapse from a lack of sugars. It is absolutely and utterly key to long term health that children become used to eating healthy foods. Flavoured rice, chicken breast, veggies, pasta and Quorn are all healthy and realistic alternatives to pizza, pudding, cheese burgers and chips. And for anyone who has died of shock at the mention of the word 'Quorn', it has far less saturated fats than beef burgers, and as every vegetarian knows, is actually ruddy amazing. Secondly, children would not be allowed to bring unhealthy foods into school. Of course they will break this rule. Schoolchildren also roll up their skirts, swear at each other, pass notes and snog behind the sports shed. School rules aren't in place for the universal acceptance and joy of children, but to hugely reduce both the rate at which an activity is undertaken, and the implicit approval of the school and state. Ultimately, a 6 year old child isn't old enough to even evaluate the pros and cons of eating foods that could cause health problems in 20 years, whilst even 12 year olds and older lack impulse control and judgement. The area of the brain that assesses risk doesn't finish developing until the mid twenties, and children in their teens are deeply susceptible to following the social norm, rather than evaluating choices independently and sticking to them. To show children that they can have healthy snacks, but not chocolate and crisps, is essential to teaching them good norms. Our brains are programmed from the caveman days, when food was scarce and liable to become rotten exceedingly quickly. This has been recognised as the source of our problems resisting unhealthy foods for many years now, and has to be combated in an age where sugary and fatty foods abound. Studies have shown that we are more likely to eat unhealthy food when it is freely available, such as biscuits left on the counter, and less likely if it is even slightly inaccessible, such as on a high shelf. When unhealthy foods are unavailable, we crave them less and think of them less. We need to encourage our children to see unhealthy foods as treats not snacks, and additions to not staples of their diet. Banning unhealthy foods may seem harsh and radical. But the crisis we are facing of child obesity is one in which complacency is utterly unacceptable.