News Shorts and Other Busyness

Britain Gets Fatter

Squall 11, Autumn 1995, pg. 14.

A suppressed report conducted by the Government’s Nutrition and Physical Activity Task Force predicts an explosion in obesity in the UK.

According to senior civil service sources quoted in national newspapers: “The food lobby have gone berserk” over the implications of the report. The report blames a high fat, high salt, high sugar, low fibre diet as one of the major factors involved, saying there is a consequent increase in male susceptibility to cancer of the colon, rectum and prostate, and female susceptibility to cancer of the breast, uterus and cervix. Unnamed but quoted Whitehall sources have said that Government recommendations on diet published in the Health of the Nation white paper, have been watered down by the Department of Health “to soothe the fury of the food industry”.

The dominance of the car as a lazy form of transport is also blamed for the dramatic increases in obesity and once again car industry lobbyists have been implicated in suppressing the information. The official Department of Health line is that the report has not been suppressed, “it just hasn’t been printed yet”.