Obesity: Food and Diet

Sorcha Eastwood Excerpts

Monday 20th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sorcha Eastwood (Lagan Valley) (Alliance)]

I thank the hon. Member for Stroud (Dr Opher) for bringing this matter to the House, and everybody who has spoken so brilliantly. This debate further proves the point that the issue of diet and health is personal to so many people, and it has been incredible to hear that echoed across the House.

Food is essential for life. It is part of who we are, part of our story and, for many in this House and across the UK, part of our cultural heritage. However, so many families across the UK cannot make ends meet; they are literally struggling to put food on the table. I pay tribute to the Resurgam Trust community fridge based in the Laganview and Old Warren estate in Lisburn, and to Dee and Carol, who operate the St Vincent de Paul service at the chapel in Lisburn. I feel almost awful saying that, because people in our society should not be forced to use charity in this day and age. Food banks were not normal whenever I was growing up 30 years ago, and talking about them in this way still makes me feel really queasy.

I want to call out something that for me is an elephant in the room just now. Like all thorny societal issues, it will not be addressed and dealt with in the Health Departments here in England and in Northern Ireland. We have people who work some of the longest hours in Europe. Workers on minimum wage, and often on zero-hours contracts, go home at the end of the day to houses that do not have big kitchens and fancy utensils. They might not know how to use pasta or this, that and the other. And why should we dictate what foods people should eat? It is up to them to choose what to eat. Yes, ideally it should be healthy, but we are now in a situation where we are saying, “Well, if you use your money wisely, you can spend £20 and buy a big job lot of pasta and a bit of pasta sauce.” What people eat is up to them; what we should be doing is ensuring that they are paid well and in stable work, and then they can choose the good, nutritious and sustainable foods that they want to eat, rather than having to go to some place to beg for food just to live. [Interruption.] Sorry, this is something I feel really passionately about.

At the heart of all this is inequality. What the Resurgam Trust community fridge does well is link it all together. We are dealing with a situation in which some of the biggest issues of the day, including housing and health, are all linked. It is because we have taken things for granted. Some of the wealthiest people live in my Lagan Valley constituency—there are houses on the market at £250,000 to £1 million—but on the estates in Lisburn, what people are eating is not healthy and is not good for them. I can also list the associated health problems, which include various comorbidities, obesity, heart disease and cancer.

I really worry about the impact of ultra-processed foods, particularly on young people. We are seeing a stark rise in colorectal cancer in particular. I know that some people are reluctant to make that link, and I am not explicitly making it, but we have fundamentally changed the sorts of food that we eat. I could go and do a supermarket shop today and buy something called noodles, but they are not noodles at all. I do not know what they are made of. I was not very good at science, but I know that margarine is one molecule away from plastic. Is that the sort of stuff that we should be eating? It does not sound good to me to eat plastic. That is the bare reality of it.

We also tell people to eat their five a day. Yes, they should, but the number of pesticides and herbicides in some of our food worries me. Some people might not want to hear that. People think that they are eating healthy food, but we must consider how we process that food. I was shocked to learn about how we classify processed foods, some of which I, a relatively educated person, would have thought were unprocessed, but are not. I cannot remember which hon. Member said that ingredients are marketed as a cereal with certain vitamins, for example, which sounds great, but that actually that is nonsense. We could not put anything more unhealthy on our children’s plates.

That goes back to my earlier point: if people are short on time and money, it is because of choices that we have made in this Chamber and in chambers right across Europe and the world. We have made the choice to deprive people and families, whether they are family units, carers or people who look after children. I do not think that that choice is right. We cannot turn around now and decry the obesity epidemic whenever we are not supporting people to live and work well.

I simply ask that we look at the other external factors linked to this. Yes, it is about food, and yes, we should be doing more, but we should not be considering that in isolation. We in this House are tasked with the job of looking after every constituent in the UK. That should be as much about ensuring that they have a roof above their head as it is about ensuring that they have a choice of nutritious and affordable food because we have given them good, stable jobs. That is all I ask. I send that message strongly from my Lagan Valley constituents.