Tax on food giants will tackle obesity
MARGO MACDONALD
PATRICIA HEWITT gives me the pip - of a tart, traditional, not marvellously sweet hybrid Pink Lady-style apple, of course. Her response to a report on valid, properly-conducted research that predicts one man in three will be classified as clinically obese in only five years' time was absolutely inadequate.
She said the Government couldn't tell people how to live their lives - even if their choices harm our social structure and public policy, including our economic well-being.
What a cop-out. If the Westminster Government wanted, it could exercise power over consumer affairs denied to the Scottish Parliament.
The Scottish government faced up to this problem years before Westminster, but the obesity time-bomb is ticking even more quickly than was being planned for by the Scottish Executive only three years ago.
By the end of the present decade, one girl in five, aged between two and ten, will be classified as obese. It means that even before the Primary 1 pupils targeted by the Executive initiatives on healthy eating had swapped school canteen chips for baked tatties, the policy was being undermined by Westminster's refusal to tackle the big food companies . . . the real culprits.
• To read the rest of the article buy today's Edinburgh Evening News - Scottish Newspaper of Year.
Obesity Tax 
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