Childhood Obesity

David Tredinnick Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd May 2011 Westminster Hall

[David Tredinnick (Bosworth) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Mary Macleod) on securing this crucial debate, and my other hon. Friends who have spoken.

I was in the Mall on Friday for what everybody agreed was a most wonderful royal wedding. However, my heart sank when I saw a very large, hugely overweight man hanging on to a railing for dear life and panting. He may have had a problem caused by steroids or something else, but it is most likely that he was obese. I thought how unhappy he must be with his life—my hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) touched on the issue of happiness. One point we must get across to people who are obese is that they can be much happier if they overcome obesity.

My hon. Friends have made many points, but I want to touch on three issues. First, I want to look at the Change4Life programme and the changes that the Minister proposes to make. Secondly, I would like to say something about the impact of high-energy drinks that contain a lot of sugar and caffeine. Thirdly, I will speak about sizes of portions and clothes.

I will start by referring to the October 2007 Government report, “Tackling Obesities: Future Choices”, on what the human body is designed to do. It points out, with classic understatement, that our biological system is,

“not well adapted to a changing world, where the pace of technological progress and lifestyle change has outstripped that of human evolution.”

Many years ago in this Chamber—the old Grand Committee Room—I listened to a debate one evening, instigated by the food and health forum, that I have never forgotten. The speaker was a professor of nutrition and he said, “Look, in a nutshell, if you want to stay healthy, remember that we have not really evolved since the stone age; we are essentially stone-age people in the 20th century.” He said that if we want to be healthy, we should live like stone-age people. We should walk most of the time and run occasionally, eat berries and vegetables in season, catch fish when possible, and eat meat rarely. I was struck by that speech. Generally, our health problems arrive when we deviate from that simple model.

Last week, The Daily Telegraph looked at the problem of obesity as it affects parents. It pointed out that British men are among the fattest in Europe and that according to the World Health Organisation, we do less exercise as a nation than almost every other country in the world. In another article, I read that the World Health Organisation believes that in the regions of Europe, the east Mediterranean and the Americas, over 50% of women are overweight.

We have an enormous problem. All my hon. Friends have drawn on statistics. We tend to follow what happens in America, so we should be aware of what is happening in that country, where the problem is greater—obesity rates are 36% among women and 32% among men. The number of obese men in England has doubled since 1993, and the number of obese women has risen by half.

My hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) referred eloquently to issues in his constituency, but in my constituency we do not have the problems that affect many others. For example, the prevalence of obesity among reception-age children in the east midlands is just under 10%, and for year six children by region it is 18%. In Hinckley and Bosworth, the figures are smaller at just over 7% and under 16% respectively. Those are still enormous figures, however, and we must put that in the context of my original point about happiness. How many of those children are very unhappy with their lives?

The Minister inherited the Change4Life programme from the previous Government and I hope she will say a few things about the changes that she proposes to make. As I understand it, the funding for that programme is to change and she will be looking for contributions from the food industry. That may be a good thing, but I would like reassurances that the food industry will not be driving the agenda. I know that she has already said that we will not legislate further to bring in a range of new standards, but I think the quid pro quo is that we must know that the food industry will be very supportive of measures that do exactly what has been suggested and ensure that we see a reduction in sugar. There is far too much sugar in cereal, for example. I suggest to my hon. Friends that if they really want a cereal that is sugar-free, they should make it themselves; it is not difficult. I look to the Minister for support on that issue.

My next point relates to high-energy drinks. I have not heard a word about high-energy drinks this morning; I think that that is a forgotten area. Children and adults are consuming drinks that have two or three times the recommended caffeine level and a very high sugar content. If people have far too much caffeine, they get behavioural disorders. It is very bad for them. It increases their heart rate, and there have been instances of children going to hospital in such circumstances. It is extremely dangerous.

I recommend that the Minister look at the research conducted by Johns Hopkins university, which concluded that energy drinks should be labelled with highly visible health warnings aimed at young people. I will not quote from the study extensively, but it based its recommendations on research that discovered that certain drinks contained as much as 14 times more caffeine than the average can of cola. That is the same as drinking seven cups of coffee.

While we are on the subject of coffee, is it not extraordinary that we are now being invited by coffee shops to drink half-pint mugs of coffee? Have we taken leave of our senses? Have we all gone mad? If I stop for a cup of coffee with a friend, I often order the smallest cup of coffee and split it into two mugs because it is too much. In the 19th century, coffee cups were tiny. That is another issue that we must address.

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

Drinking half a pint of coffee would be one thing. Is not the problem with coffee shops that often people are also drinking coffee with cream, sugar and additives? Sometimes with these half-pint cups of coffee, people would get fewer calories in an ordinary meal.

--- Later in debate ---

[David Tredinnick]

I absolutely agree. What is going on in coffee shops is a debate in itself, but coffee used to be taken in very small quantities. It was not intended that we should have so much caffeine in our system.

My last point is about size—the size of portions and the sizing of clothes. I was very touched when, on the day we came back from the recess last week, one of our colleagues came into the Chamber and my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow and one or two others were saying how slim and how wonderful he looked—he had better be nameless because I did not talk to him about the fact that I might refer to him in this debate. He said, “Yes, I’ve lost a lot of weight,” and I think that it was my hon. Friend who said, “How did you do it?” He said, “I’m eating half as much food as I used to eat.” He is eating half as much food—it is not rocket science.

How about suggesting to people that sometimes they do not need to eat as much food? For those who have a faith, may I remind them that gluttony is one of the seven deadly sins? This wonderful stone-age body that we have knows when it has had enough food. The problem is that we override the system too much. We are not taught moderation. Instead of trying to eat smaller portions, we tend to overeat and eat very large meals. We are not helped by the restaurant industry and the food industry, which are constantly trying to pile our plates higher and higher, with triple or quadruple deckers and vast portions. The same applies to children’s food. That is a problem.

On the sizes of clothes, I have some reliable research from someone well known to me. In the mid-1970s, a lady weighing 7 stone with a 24-inch waist would buy a skirt in a size 10; in 2011, the same person, whose waist has increased by three quarters of an inch, buys a size 8 or 6 because the size 10 is far too large. The industry has created a completely new range of sizes to accommodate the population. The largest size used to be size 18; it is now 20 to 22. People who are buying a particular size, thinking that they are a certain weight, are actually much larger than they think they are. That is very unsatisfactory.

Some of my hon. Friends touched on sport. Sport is fantastic; it is so important, and we have the Olympics coming to this country next year. Obese children do not play much sport. They cannot because they cannot get on the pitch—they are too big—so they miss on that wonderful opportunity. With the Olympics round the corner, surely this is the best time to take every possible measure and all steps in the Minister’s power to reduce obesity among children.