Health N***s keep trying
David Fisher reports:
Health officials worried about an obesity epidemic want fast-food advertising dropped from public property, including bus shelters, and are questioning fast-food and soft-drink sponsorship of public events.
They have also raised concerns over the lack of political power to stop fast-food restaurants being built near schools and in poor areas.
The moves by the Auckland Regional Public Health Service are a return to the healthy-eating principles which drove the national ban on pies in school tuck shops.
I’m sorry but fuck off and leave us alone. Jesus Christ I am sick of these people trying to control our lives, and what we can see or do.
No food is entirely bad, it is all about moderation. It sounds like they want to ban chinese takeaways in some areas. Will sushi bars be allowed though? FFS.
I know the Auckland Regional Public Health Service is not under the direct control of the Minister of Health, but could he please cut their funding or something.
Auckland health board clinical director Robyn Toomath said the over-turning of the tuck shop rules marked the beginning of a struggle to change behaviour through Parliament.
“I’ve spent a lot of time trying to persuade central government to take responsibility for these things. At the moment, that’s not happening. So either we give up and say nothing can be done, or do you say, ‘Hang on, is there another level where we can influence the environment?’, and that’s the tier we’re talking about now.”
The translation is “Oh never mind the people voted for a different Government that doesn’t believe in banning pies from tuckshops, we’ll just carry on regardless and use our taxpaayer funded jobs to ignore the Government”.
“Obesity is a genetically, biologic-ally based state. If you inherit genes that make you a food seeker, and you put that person in an environment where food is being promoted and it’s 24/7 and it’s cheap and palatable, that person will respond to that stimulus.”
God forbid, free choice be recognised as a factor. Why doesn’t Dr Toomath just call for all food outlets to be closed down and replaced by government cafetarias that will serve appropriate meals only?
Dr Toomath: “I don’t have a bone to pick with the fast-food industry. They’re a business, they have shareholders … and they’re clever at what they do. The people I do have a bone to pick with are the regulators who’ve just taken their hand off and said ‘Go for it, do what you like’.”
The bone I have is with taxpayer funded lobbyists.