It came after the FDF waged a campaign to put pressure on the DHSC to rewrite its nutrition policy, lobbying officials to remove the push to minimally processed food in the guidance issued to retailers, according to documents and emails reviewed by the Guardian.
In response to a freedom of information request, the government released a cache of emails between the FDF and the DHSC.
Most of the correspondence was heavily redacted. The government cited section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act, “which provides for the protection of personal information”, and section 35(1)(a), “which provides protection for the information that relates to the formulation or development of government policy”.
The emails, sent between October 2022 and April 2023, reveal how the FDF, which represents firms with a combined annual turnover of more than £112bn, lobbied the DHSC to drop the guidance pushing retailers to promote minimally processed food...
I'm no food expert and subsist on a perfectly balanced diet of fish (protein) and chips (fat and carbohydrates) every day, and an apple.
But I'm suspicious of food arguments that lump "ultra-processed food" into a single category. Over the decades, everything around food resembles one set of faddists arguing with another group of faddists. Or fattests.
Nor am I shocked that industry lobbyists lobby for industry-favourable outcomes. That's their mission statement.
OTOH measures which industry lobbyists moan about have been significant successes - the extra tax on high sugar, for example, which reduced sugar levels in drinks to just below the threshold. And which has shown to deliver health benefits.
Sugar is a single thing. Ultra-processed food is lots of different things lumped together.
I've become convinced this is poisoning us. I've seen kids born just six or seven years ago (so after May came to power) already be extremely fat. Everyone is eating shit and ordering terrible pizzas from Deliveroo.
I'm not sure what the right policy response is, but I'm definitely in the something must be done category now.
Luckily we have incredible new anti-obesity drugs
Mounjaro is a phenomenon and they are only getting better and cheaper. Soon they will come in pill form and cost a few quid
For the first time in forty years obesity is now falling in the USA (and quite fast). Americans are rich and can afford these drugs. We are quite rich - we can’t afford NOT to use these drugs
Every person we save from obesity saves the NHS £££££
Only 66% of Brits think they could beat a cat in a fight? We may have a minority of over-confident fighters, but we also have a lot who are pretty underconfident.
I’ve always thought that 34% was my fellow cat owners.
Have you ever tried giving a cat a pill?
INSTRUCTIONS FOR GIVING YOUR CAT A PILL
1. Pick cat up and cradle it in the crook of your left arm as if holding a baby. Position right forefinger and thumb on either side of cat's mouth and gently apply pressure to cheeks while holding pill in right hand. As cat opens mouth, pop pill into mouth. Allow cat to close mouth and swallow.
2. Retrieve pill from floor and cat from behind sofa. Cradle cat in left arm and repeat process.
3. Retrieve cat from bedroom, and throw soggy pill away. Take new pill from foil wrap, cradle cat in left arm holding rear paws tightly with left hand. Force jaws open and push pill to back of mouth with right forefinger. Hold mouth shut for a count of 10.
4. Retrieve pill from goldfish bowl and cat from top of wardrobe. Call spouse from garden.
5. Kneel on floor with cat wedged firmly between knees, holding front and rear paws. Ignore low growls emitted by cat. Get spouse to hold cat's head firmly with one hand while forcing wooden ruler into mouth. Drop pill down ruler and rub cat's throat vigorously.
6. Retrieve cat from curtain rail, get another pill from foil wrap. Make note to buy new ruler and repair curtains. Carefully sweep shattered figurines from hearth and set to one side for gluing later.
7. Wrap cat in large towel and get spouse to lie on cat with its head just visible from below spouse's armpit. Put pill in end of drinking straw, force cat's mouth open with pencil and blow down drinking straw.
8. Check label to make sure pill not harmful to humans, drink glass of water to take taste away. Apply band-aid to spouse's forearm and remove blood from carpet with cold water and soap.
9. Retrieve cat from neighbor's shed. Get another pill. Place cat in cupboard and close door onto neck to leave head showing. Force mouth open with dessert spoon. Flick pill down throat with elastic band.
10. Fetch screwdriver from garage and put door back on hinges. Apply cold compress to cheek and check records for date of last tetanus shot. Throw T-shirt away and fetch new one from bedroom.
11. Ring fire brigade to retrieve cat from tree across the road. Apologize to neighbor who crashed into fence while swerving to avoid cat. Take last pill from foil wrap.
12. Tie the little bastard’s front paws to rear paws with garden twine and bind tightly to leg of dining table. Find heavy duty pruning gloves from shed. Force cat's mouth open with small spanner. Push pill into mouth followed by large piece of fillet steak. Hold head vertically and pour 1/2 pint of water down throat to wash pill down.
13. Get spouse to drive you to emergency room; sit quietly while doctor stitches fingers and forearm and removes pill remnants from right eye. Stop by furniture shop on way home to order new table.
14. Arrange for the RSPCA to collect the cat. Buy a goldfish.
Only 66% of Brits think they could beat a cat in a fight? We may have a minority of over-confident fighters, but we also have a lot who are pretty underconfident.
I’ve always thought that 34% was my fellow cat owners.
"Your cat may wish to run off and hide afterwards."
And if you actually find where it's hiding you may well find the pill. It's the expression on a cats face when you're trying to administer anything. Pure hatred.
Only 66% of Brits think they could beat a cat in a fight? We may have a minority of over-confident fighters, but we also have a lot who are pretty underconfident.
I’ve always thought that 34% was my fellow cat owners.
Have you ever tried giving a cat a pill?
There's a reason that nobody has ever tried Schrödinger's "put a cat in a sealed box" thought experiment.
Sheldon: In case you have forgotten, Schrodinger's cat is a thought experiment.
Penny: No, no, no, no, I didn't forget. Um, there's this cat in a box and until you open it, it's either dead or alive or both. Although, back in Nebraska, our cat got stuck in my brother's camp trunk, and we did not need to open it to know there was all kinds of dead cat in there.
The Polanski and Ramsay/Chowns campaigns offer a starkly different approach for the Greens, so while not attracting much attention, I wonder if it’s a leadership election that could be very consequential for the next general election.
Interesting anecdote from an otherwise totally apolitical reunion in Hereford yesterday.
(Hereford has had a weird recent history as our Herefordian travel writer has noted: the old town centre has been hollowed out by a new shopping mall in the old cattle market and looks desolate. But the other bits of town remain pretty and reasonably prosperous).
A lot of recent politics seems to be about frustration that despite promises by everyone to fix things, nothing happens. Right? Well speaking to people from North Herefordshire that’s precisely the reason the greens won the seat in 2024. Chicken farmers have been dumping organic waste close to the Wye for years, and the river and groundwater are eutrophic and blighted. What used to be a clear, swimmable river brimming with salmon and trout is dead.
But nothing has been done. The previous Tory MP was an ex farmer and never made a concerted effort to get it fixed. The Green vote was a vote of frustration. Pretty much a single issue election.
I was aware of the long running issue but the whole “and nobody did anything despite years of campaigning” was interesting.
Quite sad to hear the town centre is still knackered
And yes indeed on the Wye. An utter disgrace. The chicken farmers should go to jail. I could sense the local anger in 2023 and it was obvious the Tories were in deep trouble
I really do hope the Tories die. They’ve had their time. Enough
By coincidence, I have just watched the latest release of "Turdtowns", for Herefordshire, on YouTube. Hereford gets a mention but Leominster is the worst.
That’s ridiculous
Hereford and Leominster are both lovely handsome towns - at least by post war British standards! Being relatively remote and poor they managed to avoid hideous redevelopment in the 50s-80s, so they have remained essentially pretty
All they need is an injection of pride and some money. They will be back. The bones are there
Yeah, the guy admitted that all the Herefordshire towns would never have made the list in any other county.
And the scenery is almost without peer in inland Southern Britain (almost, because parts of Devon and Somerset run it close).
We were driving on the A49 from Hereford to Monmouth yesterday, in the late afternoon sunshine, and the view from the sides of Aconbury hill towards Orcop, Garway and the Black Mountains is as beautiful as any in France outside the Alps and Pyrenees. And crucially it’s not bleak and cold like most of the beautiful views in Northern Britain, it belongs to the South.
Only 66% of Brits think they could beat a cat in a fight? We may have a minority of over-confident fighters, but we also have a lot who are pretty underconfident.
Cats are easy to handle if you're nice to them. Well, 90% are. The 66% must be people who like dogs and don't like cats.
Speaking sternly, offering a treat and waving a lead and ball don't work. This confuses dog owners who then have no other go to strategy. I can tell which teachers are dog lovers in a few seconds.
"Then the Man threw his two boots and his little stone axe (that makes three) at the Cat, and the Cat ran out of the Cave and the Dog chased him up a tree; and from that day to this, Best Beloved, three proper Men out of five will always throw things at a Cat whenever they meet him, and all proper Dogs will chase him up a tree. But the Cat keeps his side of the bargain too. He will kill mice and he will be kind to Babies when he is in the house, just as long as they do not pull his tail too hard. But when he has done that, and between times, and when the moon gets up and night comes, he is the Cat that walks by himself, and all places are alike to him. Then he goes out to the Wet Wild Woods or up the Wet Wild Trees or on the Wet Wild Roofs, waving his wild tail and walking by his wild lone."
Only 66% of Brits think they could beat a cat in a fight? We may have a minority of over-confident fighters, but we also have a lot who are pretty underconfident.
I’ve always thought that 34% was my fellow cat owners.
Have you ever tried giving a cat a pill?
INSTRUCTIONS FOR GIVING YOUR CAT A PILL
1. Pick cat up and cradle it in the crook of your left arm as if holding a baby. Position right forefinger and thumb on either side of cat's mouth and gently apply pressure to cheeks while holding pill in right hand. As cat opens mouth, pop pill into mouth. Allow cat to close mouth and swallow.
2. Retrieve pill from floor and cat from behind sofa. Cradle cat in left arm and repeat process.
3. Retrieve cat from bedroom, and throw soggy pill away. Take new pill from foil wrap, cradle cat in left arm holding rear paws tightly with left hand. Force jaws open and push pill to back of mouth with right forefinger. Hold mouth shut for a count of 10.
4. Retrieve pill from goldfish bowl and cat from top of wardrobe. Call spouse from garden.
5. Kneel on floor with cat wedged firmly between knees, holding front and rear paws. Ignore low growls emitted by cat. Get spouse to hold cat's head firmly with one hand while forcing wooden ruler into mouth. Drop pill down ruler and rub cat's throat vigorously.
6. Retrieve cat from curtain rail, get another pill from foil wrap. Make note to buy new ruler and repair curtains. Carefully sweep shattered figurines from hearth and set to one side for gluing later.
7. Wrap cat in large towel and get spouse to lie on cat with its head just visible from below spouse's armpit. Put pill in end of drinking straw, force cat's mouth open with pencil and blow down drinking straw.
8. Check label to make sure pill not harmful to humans, drink glass of water to take taste away. Apply band-aid to spouse's forearm and remove blood from carpet with cold water and soap.
9. Retrieve cat from neighbor's shed. Get another pill. Place cat in cupboard and close door onto neck to leave head showing. Force mouth open with dessert spoon. Flick pill down throat with elastic band.
10. Fetch screwdriver from garage and put door back on hinges. Apply cold compress to cheek and check records for date of last tetanus shot. Throw T-shirt away and fetch new one from bedroom.
11. Ring fire brigade to retrieve cat from tree across the road. Apologize to neighbor who crashed into fence while swerving to avoid cat. Take last pill from foil wrap.
12. Tie the little bastard’s front paws to rear paws with garden twine and bind tightly to leg of dining table. Find heavy duty pruning gloves from shed. Force cat's mouth open with small spanner. Push pill into mouth followed by large piece of fillet steak. Hold head vertically and pour 1/2 pint of water down throat to wash pill down.
13. Get spouse to drive you to emergency room; sit quietly while doctor stitches fingers and forearm and removes pill remnants from right eye. Stop by furniture shop on way home to order new table.
14. Arrange for the RSPCA to collect the cat. Buy a goldfish.
HOW TO GIVE A DOG A PILL:
1. Wrap it in bacon.
I’ve been twice hospitalised by cats. Once with a septic bite, once after breaking 5 ribs falling on the stairs while carrying a cat down in the night.
Reform / AFD electoral comparison - not ideological.
Reform are now running 10 Councils, and are largest party in NOC councils elsewhere.
AFD did reasonably well (meaning big improvement but not as much as thought possible) at the recent German Election.
Had the AFD run any important Councils before? Did the Electorate have any indication whether they were competent?
Reform outperformed in their strongest areas (Kent, Lincolnshire) compared to the AFD on Thuringia. Also the electoral system helped Reform here for councils compared to Germany's landtag
TBF also, the Councils here were a top slice of likely Reform areas - not all likely Reform areas, but a concentration of them.
Amond the councils whose elections were postponed were Thurrock, Suffolk and Norfolk where I imagine Reform might have won some seats.
The other councils were, from memory, Hampshire, Surrey, East and West Sussex, the Isle of Wight and the other one. Based on what we saw elsewhere, it's not hard to imagine big Conservative losses to the LDs, Reform and Greens in those councils. Indeed, you can argue Badenoch can thank Angela Rayner for not making a disastrous result catastrophic and potentially job-threatening.
Yes - I agree.
Compared to the whole country though, I think it's fair to day that the group up for Election were good for Reform.
(I'd also suggest that the reduction in number of Council seats was perhaps in their favour, as it enabled them to focus their checking process on ~1/3 fewer local elections.)
Only 66% of Brits think they could beat a cat in a fight? We may have a minority of over-confident fighters, but we also have a lot who are pretty underconfident.
I’ve always thought that 34% was my fellow cat owners.
Have you ever tried giving a cat a pill?
INSTRUCTIONS FOR GIVING YOUR CAT A PILL
1. Pick cat up and cradle it in the crook of your left arm as if holding a baby. Position right forefinger and thumb on either side of cat's mouth and gently apply pressure to cheeks while holding pill in right hand. As cat opens mouth, pop pill into mouth. Allow cat to close mouth and swallow.
2. Retrieve pill from floor and cat from behind sofa. Cradle cat in left arm and repeat process.
3. Retrieve cat from bedroom, and throw soggy pill away. Take new pill from foil wrap, cradle cat in left arm holding rear paws tightly with left hand. Force jaws open and push pill to back of mouth with right forefinger. Hold mouth shut for a count of 10.
4. Retrieve pill from goldfish bowl and cat from top of wardrobe. Call spouse from garden.
5. Kneel on floor with cat wedged firmly between knees, holding front and rear paws. Ignore low growls emitted by cat. Get spouse to hold cat's head firmly with one hand while forcing wooden ruler into mouth. Drop pill down ruler and rub cat's throat vigorously.
6. Retrieve cat from curtain rail, get another pill from foil wrap. Make note to buy new ruler and repair curtains. Carefully sweep shattered figurines from hearth and set to one side for gluing later.
7. Wrap cat in large towel and get spouse to lie on cat with its head just visible from below spouse's armpit. Put pill in end of drinking straw, force cat's mouth open with pencil and blow down drinking straw.
8. Check label to make sure pill not harmful to humans, drink glass of water to take taste away. Apply band-aid to spouse's forearm and remove blood from carpet with cold water and soap.
9. Retrieve cat from neighbor's shed. Get another pill. Place cat in cupboard and close door onto neck to leave head showing. Force mouth open with dessert spoon. Flick pill down throat with elastic band.
10. Fetch screwdriver from garage and put door back on hinges. Apply cold compress to cheek and check records for date of last tetanus shot. Throw T-shirt away and fetch new one from bedroom.
11. Ring fire brigade to retrieve cat from tree across the road. Apologize to neighbor who crashed into fence while swerving to avoid cat. Take last pill from foil wrap.
12. Tie the little bastard’s front paws to rear paws with garden twine and bind tightly to leg of dining table. Find heavy duty pruning gloves from shed. Force cat's mouth open with small spanner. Push pill into mouth followed by large piece of fillet steak. Hold head vertically and pour 1/2 pint of water down throat to wash pill down.
13. Get spouse to drive you to emergency room; sit quietly while doctor stitches fingers and forearm and removes pill remnants from right eye. Stop by furniture shop on way home to order new table.
14. Arrange for the RSPCA to collect the cat. Buy a goldfish.
HOW TO GIVE A DOG A PILL:
1. Wrap it in bacon.
This is true.
The weird thing is it’s really easy to give a cat an injection, an experience I’ve had regularly with several diabetic cats. Scruff them, inject into the scruff, done.
Pre sugar tax you might get a solitary zero option and all the flavoured options were full sugar. Now the inverse is often true, with the sugarfree choices being cheaper of course.
This is true to an almost ludicrous degree. When I look at the soft drink section in Tesco it's difficult to find any drinks without artificial sweeteners except Coke and Pepsi.
I've always suspected the soft drink industry reacted entirely the wrong way to the sugar tax. People who worried about sugar and didn't mind the taste of sweeteners were already drinking zero-sugar products. Going all in on sweeteners just drove the rest of their customers away to things like energy drinks.
Barr did something interesting with Irn Bru - sweeten the original drink to keep the cost down, but launch a full-sugar version (Irn Bru 1901) at a much higher price. 1901 costs more than double the sweetened version but still sells.
Interesting anecdote from an otherwise totally apolitical reunion in Hereford yesterday.
(Hereford has had a weird recent history as our Herefordian travel writer has noted: the old town centre has been hollowed out by a new shopping mall in the old cattle market and looks desolate. But the other bits of town remain pretty and reasonably prosperous).
A lot of recent politics seems to be about frustration that despite promises by everyone to fix things, nothing happens. Right? Well speaking to people from North Herefordshire that’s precisely the reason the greens won the seat in 2024. Chicken farmers have been dumping organic waste close to the Wye for years, and the river and groundwater are eutrophic and blighted. What used to be a clear, swimmable river brimming with salmon and trout is dead.
But nothing has been done. The previous Tory MP was an ex farmer and never made a concerted effort to get it fixed. The Green vote was a vote of frustration. Pretty much a single issue election.
I was aware of the long running issue but the whole “and nobody did anything despite years of campaigning” was interesting.
Quite sad to hear the town centre is still knackered
And yes indeed on the Wye. An utter disgrace. The chicken farmers should go to jail. I could sense the local anger in 2023 and it was obvious the Tories were in deep trouble
I really do hope the Tories die. They’ve had their time. Enough
By coincidence, I have just watched the latest release of "Turdtowns", for Herefordshire, on YouTube. Hereford gets a mention but Leominster is the worst.
That’s ridiculous
Hereford and Leominster are both lovely handsome towns - at least by post war British standards! Being relatively remote and poor they managed to avoid hideous redevelopment in the 50s-80s, so they have remained essentially pretty
All they need is an injection of pride and some money. They will be back. The bones are there
Yeah, the guy admitted that all the Herefordshire towns would never have made the list in any other county.
And the scenery is almost without peer in inland Southern Britain (almost, because parts of Devon and Somerset run it close).
We were driving on the A49 from Hereford to Monmouth yesterday, in the late afternoon sunshine, and the view from the sides of Aconbury hill towards Orcop, Garway and the Black Mountains is as beautiful as any in France outside the Alps and Pyrenees. And crucially it’s not bleak and cold like most of the beautiful views in Northern Britain, it belongs to the South.
It is indeed gorgeous. Especially that lush corner where the Welsh hills descend. The Golden Valley is rightly named
I agree it’s the loveliest corner of inland southern Britain. The Cornish rias like Helford are even prettier but they’re not really inland. Suffolk is lovely but fragmented. The Weald and the Downs can be enticing but, sadly, there are too many roads and towns and drab developments
What would the world be, once bereft Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left, O let them be left, wildness and wet; Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet
The Polanski and Ramsay/Chowns campaigns offer a starkly different approach for the Greens, so while not attracting much attention, I wonder if it’s a leadership election that could be very consequential for the next general election.
Can you point me to a summary of the different approaches?
From my viewpoint, I would vote Green locally - them being the only party that are consistently reliable on my issues of concern, but I always found them to be a bit loopy nationally, and far too prone to following fashion.
If we had the German Realo-Greens and Annalena Baerbock, that would very much help.
Pre sugar tax you might get a solitary zero option and all the flavoured options were full sugar. Now the inverse is often true, with the sugarfree choices being cheaper of course.
This is true to an almost ludicrous degree. When I look at the soft drink section in Tesco it's difficult to find any drinks without artificial sweeteners except Coke and Pepsi.
I've always suspected the soft drink industry reacted entirely the wrong way to the sugar tax. People who worried about sugar and didn't mind the taste of sweeteners were already drinking zero-sugar products. Going all in on sweeteners just drove the rest of their customers away to things like energy drinks.
Barr did something interesting with Irn Bru - sweeten the original drink to keep the cost down, but launch a full-sugar version (Irn Bru 1901) at a much higher price. 1901 costs more than double the sweetened version but still sells.
Hey Poodle
I sent you a VM about British Gas a few days ago, not sure if you saw it?
Only 66% of Brits think they could beat a cat in a fight? We may have a minority of over-confident fighters, but we also have a lot who are pretty underconfident.
Cats are easy to handle if you're nice to them. Well, 90% are. The 66% must be people who like dogs and don't like cats.
Speaking sternly, offering a treat and waving a lead and ball don't work. This confuses dog owners who then have no other go to strategy. I can tell which teachers are dog lovers in a few seconds.
You mean student's aren't all like Pavlov's dog?
Who could have guessed that?
Schoolchildren are exactly like Pavlov's dogs – the bell goes and they all have lunch. (Apologies to Gary Delaney (?) for butchering his joke.)
It came after the FDF waged a campaign to put pressure on the DHSC to rewrite its nutrition policy, lobbying officials to remove the push to minimally processed food in the guidance issued to retailers, according to documents and emails reviewed by the Guardian.
In response to a freedom of information request, the government released a cache of emails between the FDF and the DHSC.
Most of the correspondence was heavily redacted. The government cited section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act, “which provides for the protection of personal information”, and section 35(1)(a), “which provides protection for the information that relates to the formulation or development of government policy”.
The emails, sent between October 2022 and April 2023, reveal how the FDF, which represents firms with a combined annual turnover of more than £112bn, lobbied the DHSC to drop the guidance pushing retailers to promote minimally processed food...
I'm no food expert and subsist on a perfectly balanced diet of fish (protein) and chips (fat and carbohydrates) every day, and an apple.
But I'm suspicious of food arguments that lump "ultra-processed food" into a single category. Over the decades, everything around food resembles one set of faddists arguing with another group of faddists. Or fattests.
Nor am I shocked that industry lobbyists lobby for industry-favourable outcomes. That's their mission statement.
OTOH measures which industry lobbyists moan about have been significant successes - the extra tax on high sugar, for example, which reduced sugar levels in drinks to just below the threshold. And which has shown to deliver health benefits.
Sugar is a single thing. Ultra-processed food is lots of different things lumped together.
I've become convinced this is poisoning us. I've seen kids born just six or seven years ago (so after May came to power) already be extremely fat. Everyone is eating shit and ordering terrible pizzas from Deliveroo.
I'm not sure what the right policy response is, but I'm definitely in the something must be done category now.
Luckily we have incredible new anti-obesity drugs
Mounjaro is a phenomenon and they are only getting better and cheaper. Soon they will come in pill form and cost a few quid
For the first time in forty years obesity is now falling in the USA (and quite fast). Americans are rich and can afford these drugs. We are quite rich - we can’t afford NOT to use these drugs
Every person we save from obesity saves the NHS £££££
But that's exactly why public services like the NHS are in trouble - always finding ways to treat rather than prevent issues.
It's a bit like claiming that prison is a great way to reduce crime - simply lock up the habitual criminals! But that's damned expensive and it would be better for everyone to get the intervention in much earlier (probably pre-school/pre-natal).
I don't think having 60%+ of the population, including young children, on prescription drugs is a place we want to end up. It's taxpayers absorbing the enormous negative externality of food producers putting loads of crap in their food.
It came after the FDF waged a campaign to put pressure on the DHSC to rewrite its nutrition policy, lobbying officials to remove the push to minimally processed food in the guidance issued to retailers, according to documents and emails reviewed by the Guardian.
In response to a freedom of information request, the government released a cache of emails between the FDF and the DHSC.
Most of the correspondence was heavily redacted. The government cited section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act, “which provides for the protection of personal information”, and section 35(1)(a), “which provides protection for the information that relates to the formulation or development of government policy”.
The emails, sent between October 2022 and April 2023, reveal how the FDF, which represents firms with a combined annual turnover of more than £112bn, lobbied the DHSC to drop the guidance pushing retailers to promote minimally processed food...
I'm no food expert and subsist on a perfectly balanced diet of fish (protein) and chips (fat and carbohydrates) every day, and an apple.
But I'm suspicious of food arguments that lump "ultra-processed food" into a single category. Over the decades, everything around food resembles one set of faddists arguing with another group of faddists. Or fattests.
Nor am I shocked that industry lobbyists lobby for industry-favourable outcomes. That's their mission statement.
OTOH measures which industry lobbyists moan about have been significant successes - the extra tax on high sugar, for example, which reduced sugar levels in drinks to just below the threshold. And which has shown to deliver health benefits.
There are some real inconsistencies in that though, such as the exemption for milk-based drinks which mean that many milk-based drinks are full of sugar.
As someone who avoids sugar/carbs, it pisses me off that all bottled coffee-based drinks are full of sugar.
There are naturally no carbs in coffee and milk is naturally minimal in it too, but there's no sugar-free low-carb coffee based bottled drinks ever available in the supermarket.
I dislike the nanny state in principle, but being selfish I hate the lack of sugar-free coffee-based drinks when I'm out and about and the need to go for some Monster or something similar if I want a caffeine drink that's sugar free rather than coffee.
Milk is 4.7g carbs per 100ml vs 3.5g protein and 3.7g fat (whole milk).
Only 66% of Brits think they could beat a cat in a fight? We may have a minority of over-confident fighters, but we also have a lot who are pretty underconfident.
I’ve always thought that 34% was my fellow cat owners.
Have you ever tried giving a cat a pill?
INSTRUCTIONS FOR GIVING YOUR CAT A PILL
1. Pick cat up and cradle it in the crook of your left arm as if holding a baby. Position right forefinger and thumb on either side of cat's mouth and gently apply pressure to cheeks while holding pill in right hand. As cat opens mouth, pop pill into mouth. Allow cat to close mouth and swallow.
2. Retrieve pill from floor and cat from behind sofa. Cradle cat in left arm and repeat process.
3. Retrieve cat from bedroom, and throw soggy pill away. Take new pill from foil wrap, cradle cat in left arm holding rear paws tightly with left hand. Force jaws open and push pill to back of mouth with right forefinger. Hold mouth shut for a count of 10.
4. Retrieve pill from goldfish bowl and cat from top of wardrobe. Call spouse from garden.
5. Kneel on floor with cat wedged firmly between knees, holding front and rear paws. Ignore low growls emitted by cat. Get spouse to hold cat's head firmly with one hand while forcing wooden ruler into mouth. Drop pill down ruler and rub cat's throat vigorously.
6. Retrieve cat from curtain rail, get another pill from foil wrap. Make note to buy new ruler and repair curtains. Carefully sweep shattered figurines from hearth and set to one side for gluing later.
7. Wrap cat in large towel and get spouse to lie on cat with its head just visible from below spouse's armpit. Put pill in end of drinking straw, force cat's mouth open with pencil and blow down drinking straw.
8. Check label to make sure pill not harmful to humans, drink glass of water to take taste away. Apply band-aid to spouse's forearm and remove blood from carpet with cold water and soap.
9. Retrieve cat from neighbor's shed. Get another pill. Place cat in cupboard and close door onto neck to leave head showing. Force mouth open with dessert spoon. Flick pill down throat with elastic band.
10. Fetch screwdriver from garage and put door back on hinges. Apply cold compress to cheek and check records for date of last tetanus shot. Throw T-shirt away and fetch new one from bedroom.
11. Ring fire brigade to retrieve cat from tree across the road. Apologize to neighbor who crashed into fence while swerving to avoid cat. Take last pill from foil wrap.
12. Tie the little bastard’s front paws to rear paws with garden twine and bind tightly to leg of dining table. Find heavy duty pruning gloves from shed. Force cat's mouth open with small spanner. Push pill into mouth followed by large piece of fillet steak. Hold head vertically and pour 1/2 pint of water down throat to wash pill down.
13. Get spouse to drive you to emergency room; sit quietly while doctor stitches fingers and forearm and removes pill remnants from right eye. Stop by furniture shop on way home to order new table.
14. Arrange for the RSPCA to collect the cat. Buy a goldfish.
HOW TO GIVE A DOG A PILL:
1. Wrap it in bacon.
This is true.
The weird thing is it’s really easy to give a cat an injection, an experience I’ve had regularly with several diabetic cats. Scruff them, inject into the scruff, done.
Pillassist. Most cats will scarf it down voluntarily.
Sadly, this is all self-inflicted. The Johnson/Truss administrations simply destroyed the trust and confidence of their supporters.
Rishi Sunak might go down in history as the last Conservative Prime Minister, not the first Asian one.
I think if he'd held on until November they'd be in a much better place too, probably an extra 50 seats vs what the Tories actually got. Going early didn't make sense and it really cost them badly.
Very slowly Rishi and Hunt were restoring the Tory reputation on competence that had been so rashly thrown away by Truss and Boris. I think another few months and they'd have been able to claw a reasonable proportion of the millions who stayed home because they lost faith after Truss. He just didn't have enough time to get the stink off.
I was completely bewildered by the Conservatives' behaviour. From calling an election that wrongfooted them, more than their opponents, to successive pratfalls, in the campaign, to insiders betting on the date of the election.
He was leaden-footed, but I have increasing respect for Rishi Sunak's predicament in those last 2 years.
If you work here illegally or employ people who do, we’re coming for you.
Illegal working raids are up 40%. And we won’t stop there.
Too much effort.
Implement my plan -
1) undocumented employment, selling visa etc £100k fine per instance. 2) using proceeds of crime etc, ltd companies won’t shield directors assets. 3) deal with the issue of companies using contracting to create a layer. See Deliveroo 4) half the fine from 1) goes to the person reporting. 5) upon conviction the person giving evidence gets indefinite leave to remain.
So upon conviction migrant gets £50k + a real visa.
- Every scumbag employer will be shitting themselves. Every person they’ve mistreated can get rich by sending them down. - Tornado of court cases, brought privately, by ambulance chaser lawyers on contingency fee…. - Sell it as justice for the migrants.
It came after the FDF waged a campaign to put pressure on the DHSC to rewrite its nutrition policy, lobbying officials to remove the push to minimally processed food in the guidance issued to retailers, according to documents and emails reviewed by the Guardian.
In response to a freedom of information request, the government released a cache of emails between the FDF and the DHSC.
Most of the correspondence was heavily redacted. The government cited section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act, “which provides for the protection of personal information”, and section 35(1)(a), “which provides protection for the information that relates to the formulation or development of government policy”.
The emails, sent between October 2022 and April 2023, reveal how the FDF, which represents firms with a combined annual turnover of more than £112bn, lobbied the DHSC to drop the guidance pushing retailers to promote minimally processed food...
I'm no food expert and subsist on a perfectly balanced diet of fish (protein) and chips (fat and carbohydrates) every day, and an apple.
But I'm suspicious of food arguments that lump "ultra-processed food" into a single category. Over the decades, everything around food resembles one set of faddists arguing with another group of faddists. Or fattests.
Nor am I shocked that industry lobbyists lobby for industry-favourable outcomes. That's their mission statement.
OTOH measures which industry lobbyists moan about have been significant successes - the extra tax on high sugar, for example, which reduced sugar levels in drinks to just below the threshold. And which has shown to deliver health benefits.
Sugar is a single thing. Ultra-processed food is lots of different things lumped together.
I've become convinced this is poisoning us. I've seen kids born just six or seven years ago (so after May came to power) already be extremely fat. Everyone is eating shit and ordering terrible pizzas from Deliveroo.
I'm not sure what the right policy response is, but I'm definitely in the something must be done category now.
Luckily we have incredible new anti-obesity drugs
Mounjaro is a phenomenon and they are only getting better and cheaper. Soon they will come in pill form and cost a few quid
For the first time in forty years obesity is now falling in the USA (and quite fast). Americans are rich and can afford these drugs. We are quite rich - we can’t afford NOT to use these drugs
Every person we save from obesity saves the NHS £££££
But that's exactly why public services like the NHS are in trouble - always finding ways to treat rather than prevent issues.
It's a bit like claiming that prison is a great way to reduce crime - simply lock up the habitual criminals! But that's damned expensive and it would be better for everyone to get the intervention in much earlier (probably pre-school/pre-natal).
I don't think having 60%+ of the population, including young children, on prescription drugs is a place we want to end up. It's taxpayers absorbing the enormous negative externality of food producers putting loads of crap in their food.
Completely disagree
Obesity is a monstrous worldwide problem - trust me, I’ve seen it - and now we have miraculous drugs that fix it. eg Mounjaro taken over 70 weeks induces an average 20% loss of total body weight. That’s remarkable
At the same time it looks like these drugs do amazing things against cancer, Alzheimer’s, all kinds of addiction
Are these drugs dangerous and new? Well no, not really - they’ve been used by diabetics for yonks
The human race has lucked out at a crucial moment. These obesity drugs could be as game changing as antibiotics. We must use them
Yes of course it would be great if we could get everyone to slim down via yoga, Pilates and salads but let’s be real
It came after the FDF waged a campaign to put pressure on the DHSC to rewrite its nutrition policy, lobbying officials to remove the push to minimally processed food in the guidance issued to retailers, according to documents and emails reviewed by the Guardian.
In response to a freedom of information request, the government released a cache of emails between the FDF and the DHSC.
Most of the correspondence was heavily redacted. The government cited section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act, “which provides for the protection of personal information”, and section 35(1)(a), “which provides protection for the information that relates to the formulation or development of government policy”.
The emails, sent between October 2022 and April 2023, reveal how the FDF, which represents firms with a combined annual turnover of more than £112bn, lobbied the DHSC to drop the guidance pushing retailers to promote minimally processed food...
I'm no food expert and subsist on a perfectly balanced diet of fish (protein) and chips (fat and carbohydrates) every day, and an apple.
But I'm suspicious of food arguments that lump "ultra-processed food" into a single category. Over the decades, everything around food resembles one set of faddists arguing with another group of faddists. Or fattests.
Nor am I shocked that industry lobbyists lobby for industry-favourable outcomes. That's their mission statement.
OTOH measures which industry lobbyists moan about have been significant successes - the extra tax on high sugar, for example, which reduced sugar levels in drinks to just below the threshold. And which has shown to deliver health benefits.
Sugar is a single thing. Ultra-processed food is lots of different things lumped together.
I've become convinced this is poisoning us. I've seen kids born just six or seven years ago (so after May came to power) already be extremely fat. Everyone is eating shit and ordering terrible pizzas from Deliveroo.
I'm not sure what the right policy response is, but I'm definitely in the something must be done category now.
(hobbyhorse)
This is why we need all the barriers off our footpaths, and all those housing areas which were isolated from each other on bad police advice in the 1980s and 1990s reconnecting - so everyone can walk everywhere, especially to school.
This is on the path where I used to walk to my infant school. I'm aiming to draft a complaint as today's homework: The croquet hoop is 2ft wide and 4ft high, and the "shimmy round the side or through the cage" gap is about 16".
It is a prominently signposted, 2m wide asphalt, walking/wheeling and cycling route. It is a public footpath. Were it useable, that would be some cycles off the roads.
Mum with a pram? Mobility aid? Forget it, since - I reckon - 198x. It was clear in the 1970s, when I was six; I left that school at 7.
The fascinating thing is how as Brits we just accept unlawful stuff just imposed on us.
It came after the FDF waged a campaign to put pressure on the DHSC to rewrite its nutrition policy, lobbying officials to remove the push to minimally processed food in the guidance issued to retailers, according to documents and emails reviewed by the Guardian.
In response to a freedom of information request, the government released a cache of emails between the FDF and the DHSC.
Most of the correspondence was heavily redacted. The government cited section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act, “which provides for the protection of personal information”, and section 35(1)(a), “which provides protection for the information that relates to the formulation or development of government policy”.
The emails, sent between October 2022 and April 2023, reveal how the FDF, which represents firms with a combined annual turnover of more than £112bn, lobbied the DHSC to drop the guidance pushing retailers to promote minimally processed food...
I'm no food expert and subsist on a perfectly balanced diet of fish (protein) and chips (fat and carbohydrates) every day, and an apple.
But I'm suspicious of food arguments that lump "ultra-processed food" into a single category. Over the decades, everything around food resembles one set of faddists arguing with another group of faddists. Or fattests.
Nor am I shocked that industry lobbyists lobby for industry-favourable outcomes. That's their mission statement.
OTOH measures which industry lobbyists moan about have been significant successes - the extra tax on high sugar, for example, which reduced sugar levels in drinks to just below the threshold. And which has shown to deliver health benefits.
Sugar is a single thing. Ultra-processed food is lots of different things lumped together.
To be pedantic (well, this is PB), sucrose is a single thing. The term 'sugar' can include a wide range of compounds. Fructose being another example.
It came after the FDF waged a campaign to put pressure on the DHSC to rewrite its nutrition policy, lobbying officials to remove the push to minimally processed food in the guidance issued to retailers, according to documents and emails reviewed by the Guardian.
In response to a freedom of information request, the government released a cache of emails between the FDF and the DHSC.
Most of the correspondence was heavily redacted. The government cited section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act, “which provides for the protection of personal information”, and section 35(1)(a), “which provides protection for the information that relates to the formulation or development of government policy”.
The emails, sent between October 2022 and April 2023, reveal how the FDF, which represents firms with a combined annual turnover of more than £112bn, lobbied the DHSC to drop the guidance pushing retailers to promote minimally processed food...
I'm no food expert and subsist on a perfectly balanced diet of fish (protein) and chips (fat and carbohydrates) every day, and an apple.
But I'm suspicious of food arguments that lump "ultra-processed food" into a single category. Over the decades, everything around food resembles one set of faddists arguing with another group of faddists. Or fattests.
Nor am I shocked that industry lobbyists lobby for industry-favourable outcomes. That's their mission statement.
OTOH measures which industry lobbyists moan about have been significant successes - the extra tax on high sugar, for example, which reduced sugar levels in drinks to just below the threshold. And which has shown to deliver health benefits.
Sugar is a single thing. Ultra-processed food is lots of different things lumped together.
To be pedantic (well, this is PB), sucrose is a single thing. The term 'sugar' can include a wide range of compounds. Fructose being another example.
All altruists gladly make gum in gallon tanks. That's all I remember from bioorganic chemistry.
It came after the FDF waged a campaign to put pressure on the DHSC to rewrite its nutrition policy, lobbying officials to remove the push to minimally processed food in the guidance issued to retailers, according to documents and emails reviewed by the Guardian.
In response to a freedom of information request, the government released a cache of emails between the FDF and the DHSC.
Most of the correspondence was heavily redacted. The government cited section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act, “which provides for the protection of personal information”, and section 35(1)(a), “which provides protection for the information that relates to the formulation or development of government policy”.
The emails, sent between October 2022 and April 2023, reveal how the FDF, which represents firms with a combined annual turnover of more than £112bn, lobbied the DHSC to drop the guidance pushing retailers to promote minimally processed food...
I'm no food expert and subsist on a perfectly balanced diet of fish (protein) and chips (fat and carbohydrates) every day, and an apple.
But I'm suspicious of food arguments that lump "ultra-processed food" into a single category. Over the decades, everything around food resembles one set of faddists arguing with another group of faddists. Or fattests.
Nor am I shocked that industry lobbyists lobby for industry-favourable outcomes. That's their mission statement.
OTOH measures which industry lobbyists moan about have been significant successes - the extra tax on high sugar, for example, which reduced sugar levels in drinks to just below the threshold. And which has shown to deliver health benefits.
Sugar is a single thing. Ultra-processed food is lots of different things lumped together.
I've become convinced this is poisoning us. I've seen kids born just six or seven years ago (so after May came to power) already be extremely fat. Everyone is eating shit and ordering terrible pizzas from Deliveroo.
I'm not sure what the right policy response is, but I'm definitely in the something must be done category now.
(hobbyhorse)
This is why we need all the barriers off our footpaths, and all those housing areas which were isolated from each other on bad police advice in the 1980s and 1990s reconnecting - so everyone can walk everywhere, especially to school.
This is on the path where I used to walk to my infant school. I'm aiming to draft a complaint as today's homework: The croquet hoop is 2ft wide and 4ft high, and the "shimmy round the side or through the cage" gap is about 16".
It is a prominently signposted, 2m wide asphalt, walking/wheeling and cycling route. It is a public footpath. Were it useable, that would be some cycles off the roads.
Mum with a pram? Mobility aid? Forget it, since - I reckon - 198x. It was clear in the 1970s, when I was six; I left that school at 7.
(/hobbyhorse)
Has anyone come up with gate/system that prevents livestock/motorised vehicles through, but is not an insurmountable barrier to prams/differently abled etc?
It came after the FDF waged a campaign to put pressure on the DHSC to rewrite its nutrition policy, lobbying officials to remove the push to minimally processed food in the guidance issued to retailers, according to documents and emails reviewed by the Guardian.
In response to a freedom of information request, the government released a cache of emails between the FDF and the DHSC.
Most of the correspondence was heavily redacted. The government cited section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act, “which provides for the protection of personal information”, and section 35(1)(a), “which provides protection for the information that relates to the formulation or development of government policy”.
The emails, sent between October 2022 and April 2023, reveal how the FDF, which represents firms with a combined annual turnover of more than £112bn, lobbied the DHSC to drop the guidance pushing retailers to promote minimally processed food...
I'm no food expert and subsist on a perfectly balanced diet of fish (protein) and chips (fat and carbohydrates) every day, and an apple.
But I'm suspicious of food arguments that lump "ultra-processed food" into a single category. Over the decades, everything around food resembles one set of faddists arguing with another group of faddists. Or fattests.
Nor am I shocked that industry lobbyists lobby for industry-favourable outcomes. That's their mission statement.
OTOH measures which industry lobbyists moan about have been significant successes - the extra tax on high sugar, for example, which reduced sugar levels in drinks to just below the threshold. And which has shown to deliver health benefits.
Sugar is a single thing. Ultra-processed food is lots of different things lumped together.
I've become convinced this is poisoning us. I've seen kids born just six or seven years ago (so after May came to power) already be extremely fat. Everyone is eating shit and ordering terrible pizzas from Deliveroo.
I'm not sure what the right policy response is, but I'm definitely in the something must be done category now.
Luckily we have incredible new anti-obesity drugs
Mounjaro is a phenomenon and they are only getting better and cheaper. Soon they will come in pill form and cost a few quid
For the first time in forty years obesity is now falling in the USA (and quite fast). Americans are rich and can afford these drugs. We are quite rich - we can’t afford NOT to use these drugs
Every person we save from obesity saves the NHS £££££
But that's exactly why public services like the NHS are in trouble - always finding ways to treat rather than prevent issues.
It's a bit like claiming that prison is a great way to reduce crime - simply lock up the habitual criminals! But that's damned expensive and it would be better for everyone to get the intervention in much earlier (probably pre-school/pre-natal).
I don't think having 60%+ of the population, including young children, on prescription drugs is a place we want to end up. It's taxpayers absorbing the enormous negative externality of food producers putting loads of crap in their food.
Completely disagree
Obesity is a monstrous worldwide problem - trust me, I’ve seen it - and now we have miraculous drugs that fix it. eg Mounjaro taken over 70 weeks induces an average 20% loss of total body weight. That’s remarkable
At the same time it looks like these drugs do amazing things against cancer, Alzheimer’s, all kinds of addiction
Are these drugs dangerous and new? Well no, not really - they’ve been used by diabetics for yonks
The human race has lucked out at a crucial moment. These obesity drugs could be as game changing as antibiotics. We must use them
Yes of course it would be great if we could get everyone to slim down via yoga, Pilates and salads but let’s be real
So we allow big business to profit from creating the problem then other big business to profit from solving it, rather than taking action to prevent the problem occurring? Doesn't seem an efficient use of resources tbh.
It came after the FDF waged a campaign to put pressure on the DHSC to rewrite its nutrition policy, lobbying officials to remove the push to minimally processed food in the guidance issued to retailers, according to documents and emails reviewed by the Guardian.
In response to a freedom of information request, the government released a cache of emails between the FDF and the DHSC.
Most of the correspondence was heavily redacted. The government cited section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act, “which provides for the protection of personal information”, and section 35(1)(a), “which provides protection for the information that relates to the formulation or development of government policy”.
The emails, sent between October 2022 and April 2023, reveal how the FDF, which represents firms with a combined annual turnover of more than £112bn, lobbied the DHSC to drop the guidance pushing retailers to promote minimally processed food...
I'm no food expert and subsist on a perfectly balanced diet of fish (protein) and chips (fat and carbohydrates) every day, and an apple.
But I'm suspicious of food arguments that lump "ultra-processed food" into a single category. Over the decades, everything around food resembles one set of faddists arguing with another group of faddists. Or fattests.
Nor am I shocked that industry lobbyists lobby for industry-favourable outcomes. That's their mission statement.
OTOH measures which industry lobbyists moan about have been significant successes - the extra tax on high sugar, for example, which reduced sugar levels in drinks to just below the threshold. And which has shown to deliver health benefits.
Sugar is a single thing. Ultra-processed food is lots of different things lumped together.
I've become convinced this is poisoning us. I've seen kids born just six or seven years ago (so after May came to power) already be extremely fat. Everyone is eating shit and ordering terrible pizzas from Deliveroo.
I'm not sure what the right policy response is, but I'm definitely in the something must be done category now.
Luckily we have incredible new anti-obesity drugs
Mounjaro is a phenomenon and they are only getting better and cheaper. Soon they will come in pill form and cost a few quid
For the first time in forty years obesity is now falling in the USA (and quite fast). Americans are rich and can afford these drugs. We are quite rich - we can’t afford NOT to use these drugs
Every person we save from obesity saves the NHS £££££
But that's exactly why public services like the NHS are in trouble - always finding ways to treat rather than prevent issues.
It's a bit like claiming that prison is a great way to reduce crime - simply lock up the habitual criminals! But that's damned expensive and it would be better for everyone to get the intervention in much earlier (probably pre-school/pre-natal).
I don't think having 60%+ of the population, including young children, on prescription drugs is a place we want to end up. It's taxpayers absorbing the enormous negative externality of food producers putting loads of crap in their food.
Completely disagree
Obesity is a monstrous worldwide problem - trust me, I’ve seen it - and now we have miraculous drugs that fix it. eg Mounjaro taken over 70 weeks induces an average 20% loss of total body weight. That’s remarkable
At the same time it looks like these drugs do amazing things against cancer, Alzheimer’s, all kinds of addiction
Are these drugs dangerous and new? Well no, not really - they’ve been used by diabetics for yonks
The human race has lucked out at a crucial moment. These obesity drugs could be as game changing as antibiotics. We must use them
Yes of course it would be great if we could get everyone to slim down via yoga, Pilates and salads but let’s be real
Yet obesity is strongly correlated with income, deprivation and so on. It's not an inevitability. These drugs are yet another example of us not facing up to the underlying issues.
Better than nothing, I suppose, but a symptom of our failure on regulation and public health. For diseases that cannot be prevented with such means (type 1 diabetes, some random cancers and so on) - that's fine.
It came after the FDF waged a campaign to put pressure on the DHSC to rewrite its nutrition policy, lobbying officials to remove the push to minimally processed food in the guidance issued to retailers, according to documents and emails reviewed by the Guardian.
In response to a freedom of information request, the government released a cache of emails between the FDF and the DHSC.
Most of the correspondence was heavily redacted. The government cited section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act, “which provides for the protection of personal information”, and section 35(1)(a), “which provides protection for the information that relates to the formulation or development of government policy”.
The emails, sent between October 2022 and April 2023, reveal how the FDF, which represents firms with a combined annual turnover of more than £112bn, lobbied the DHSC to drop the guidance pushing retailers to promote minimally processed food...
I'm no food expert and subsist on a perfectly balanced diet of fish (protein) and chips (fat and carbohydrates) every day, and an apple.
But I'm suspicious of food arguments that lump "ultra-processed food" into a single category. Over the decades, everything around food resembles one set of faddists arguing with another group of faddists. Or fattests.
Nor am I shocked that industry lobbyists lobby for industry-favourable outcomes. That's their mission statement.
OTOH measures which industry lobbyists moan about have been significant successes - the extra tax on high sugar, for example, which reduced sugar levels in drinks to just below the threshold. And which has shown to deliver health benefits.
There are some real inconsistencies in that though, such as the exemption for milk-based drinks which mean that many milk-based drinks are full of sugar.
As someone who avoids sugar/carbs, it pisses me off that all bottled coffee-based drinks are full of sugar.
There are naturally no carbs in coffee and milk is naturally minimal in it too, but there's no sugar-free low-carb coffee based bottled drinks ever available in the supermarket.
I dislike the nanny state in principle, but being selfish I hate the lack of sugar-free coffee-based drinks when I'm out and about and the need to go for some Monster or something similar if I want a caffeine drink that's sugar free rather than coffee.
Milk is 4.7g carbs per 100ml vs 3.5g protein and 3.7g fat (whole milk).
Indeed, that's the point, so why does a typical ~200ml bottle of coffee come with ~20g of carbs?
Its not all coming from the milk, its coming from added sugar.
It came after the FDF waged a campaign to put pressure on the DHSC to rewrite its nutrition policy, lobbying officials to remove the push to minimally processed food in the guidance issued to retailers, according to documents and emails reviewed by the Guardian.
In response to a freedom of information request, the government released a cache of emails between the FDF and the DHSC.
Most of the correspondence was heavily redacted. The government cited section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act, “which provides for the protection of personal information”, and section 35(1)(a), “which provides protection for the information that relates to the formulation or development of government policy”.
The emails, sent between October 2022 and April 2023, reveal how the FDF, which represents firms with a combined annual turnover of more than £112bn, lobbied the DHSC to drop the guidance pushing retailers to promote minimally processed food...
I'm no food expert and subsist on a perfectly balanced diet of fish (protein) and chips (fat and carbohydrates) every day, and an apple.
But I'm suspicious of food arguments that lump "ultra-processed food" into a single category. Over the decades, everything around food resembles one set of faddists arguing with another group of faddists. Or fattests.
Nor am I shocked that industry lobbyists lobby for industry-favourable outcomes. That's their mission statement.
OTOH measures which industry lobbyists moan about have been significant successes - the extra tax on high sugar, for example, which reduced sugar levels in drinks to just below the threshold. And which has shown to deliver health benefits.
We have done this before. The evidence on this is extremely debatable on the direct effects of sugar tax. Sticking a few pence on sugary drinks doesn't seem to have dissuaded teenage kids drinking lakes full of sugary energy drinks.
A bigger measure / impact was the government convinced the food industry to reduce sugar content in a wide range of food voluntarily. So consumers are consuming less sugar from their food without any idea or via the idea that taxation is nudging them away from full sugar coke to sugar free sparkling water.
The MRC unit at Cambridge think that the benefit is demonstrated, which is good enough for on something like this.
This is according to research led by the Medical Research Council’s (MRC) Epidemiology Unit at the University of Cambridge.
The Polanski and Ramsay/Chowns campaigns offer a starkly different approach for the Greens, so while not attracting much attention, I wonder if it’s a leadership election that could be very consequential for the next general election.
Can you point me to a summary of the different approaches?
From my viewpoint, I would vote Green locally - them being the only party that are consistently reliable on my issues of concern, but I always found them to be a bit loopy nationally, and far too prone to following fashion.
If we had the German Realo-Greens and Annalena Baerbock, that would very much help.
The Guardian described it as a choice between "election-focused professionals" (R/C) or "insurgent activists" (Polanski). Ramsay and Chowns are MPs, they both won their rural seats from Conservatives, they are supported by the old guard (Caroline Lucas, Jenny Jones) and have been seen as insufficiently supportive of trans rights. Polanski is a red-green eco-populist, has only won election through PR (he’s on the London Assembly), wants to leave NATO, etc.
It came after the FDF waged a campaign to put pressure on the DHSC to rewrite its nutrition policy, lobbying officials to remove the push to minimally processed food in the guidance issued to retailers, according to documents and emails reviewed by the Guardian.
In response to a freedom of information request, the government released a cache of emails between the FDF and the DHSC.
Most of the correspondence was heavily redacted. The government cited section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act, “which provides for the protection of personal information”, and section 35(1)(a), “which provides protection for the information that relates to the formulation or development of government policy”.
The emails, sent between October 2022 and April 2023, reveal how the FDF, which represents firms with a combined annual turnover of more than £112bn, lobbied the DHSC to drop the guidance pushing retailers to promote minimally processed food...
I'm no food expert and subsist on a perfectly balanced diet of fish (protein) and chips (fat and carbohydrates) every day, and an apple.
But I'm suspicious of food arguments that lump "ultra-processed food" into a single category. Over the decades, everything around food resembles one set of faddists arguing with another group of faddists. Or fattests.
Nor am I shocked that industry lobbyists lobby for industry-favourable outcomes. That's their mission statement.
OTOH measures which industry lobbyists moan about have been significant successes - the extra tax on high sugar, for example, which reduced sugar levels in drinks to just below the threshold. And which has shown to deliver health benefits.
Sugar is a single thing. Ultra-processed food is lots of different things lumped together.
I've become convinced this is poisoning us. I've seen kids born just six or seven years ago (so after May came to power) already be extremely fat. Everyone is eating shit and ordering terrible pizzas from Deliveroo.
I'm not sure what the right policy response is, but I'm definitely in the something must be done category now.
Luckily we have incredible new anti-obesity drugs
Mounjaro is a phenomenon and they are only getting better and cheaper. Soon they will come in pill form and cost a few quid
For the first time in forty years obesity is now falling in the USA (and quite fast). Americans are rich and can afford these drugs. We are quite rich - we can’t afford NOT to use these drugs
Every person we save from obesity saves the NHS £££££
But that's exactly why public services like the NHS are in trouble - always finding ways to treat rather than prevent issues.
It's a bit like claiming that prison is a great way to reduce crime - simply lock up the habitual criminals! But that's damned expensive and it would be better for everyone to get the intervention in much earlier (probably pre-school/pre-natal).
I don't think having 60%+ of the population, including young children, on prescription drugs is a place we want to end up. It's taxpayers absorbing the enormous negative externality of food producers putting loads of crap in their food.
Completely disagree
Obesity is a monstrous worldwide problem - trust me, I’ve seen it - and now we have miraculous drugs that fix it. eg Mounjaro taken over 70 weeks induces an average 20% loss of total body weight. That’s remarkable
At the same time it looks like these drugs do amazing things against cancer, Alzheimer’s, all kinds of addiction
Are these drugs dangerous and new? Well no, not really - they’ve been used by diabetics for yonks
The human race has lucked out at a crucial moment. These obesity drugs could be as game changing as antibiotics. We must use them
Yes of course it would be great if we could get everyone to slim down via yoga, Pilates and salads but let’s be real
So we allow big business to profit from creating the problem the other big business to profit from solving it rather than taking action to prevent the problem occurring? Doesn't seem an efficient use of resources tbh.
Forcing food companies to produce better food but doing it at reasonable prices is hard; you then have to persuade people to buy and eat the better food, also hard
We should still try and do all this, but in the meantime we can save millions of lives and many billions of ££ by giving fat people drugs that make them slim and notably healthier
It came after the FDF waged a campaign to put pressure on the DHSC to rewrite its nutrition policy, lobbying officials to remove the push to minimally processed food in the guidance issued to retailers, according to documents and emails reviewed by the Guardian.
In response to a freedom of information request, the government released a cache of emails between the FDF and the DHSC.
Most of the correspondence was heavily redacted. The government cited section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act, “which provides for the protection of personal information”, and section 35(1)(a), “which provides protection for the information that relates to the formulation or development of government policy”.
The emails, sent between October 2022 and April 2023, reveal how the FDF, which represents firms with a combined annual turnover of more than £112bn, lobbied the DHSC to drop the guidance pushing retailers to promote minimally processed food...
I'm no food expert and subsist on a perfectly balanced diet of fish (protein) and chips (fat and carbohydrates) every day, and an apple.
But I'm suspicious of food arguments that lump "ultra-processed food" into a single category. Over the decades, everything around food resembles one set of faddists arguing with another group of faddists. Or fattests.
Nor am I shocked that industry lobbyists lobby for industry-favourable outcomes. That's their mission statement.
OTOH measures which industry lobbyists moan about have been significant successes - the extra tax on high sugar, for example, which reduced sugar levels in drinks to just below the threshold. And which has shown to deliver health benefits.
Sugar is a single thing. Ultra-processed food is lots of different things lumped together.
I've become convinced this is poisoning us. I've seen kids born just six or seven years ago (so after May came to power) already be extremely fat. Everyone is eating shit and ordering terrible pizzas from Deliveroo.
I'm not sure what the right policy response is, but I'm definitely in the something must be done category now.
Luckily we have incredible new anti-obesity drugs
Mounjaro is a phenomenon and they are only getting better and cheaper. Soon they will come in pill form and cost a few quid
For the first time in forty years obesity is now falling in the USA (and quite fast). Americans are rich and can afford these drugs. We are quite rich - we can’t afford NOT to use these drugs
Every person we save from obesity saves the NHS £££££
But that's exactly why public services like the NHS are in trouble - always finding ways to treat rather than prevent issues.
It's a bit like claiming that prison is a great way to reduce crime - simply lock up the habitual criminals! But that's damned expensive and it would be better for everyone to get the intervention in much earlier (probably pre-school/pre-natal).
I don't think having 60%+ of the population, including young children, on prescription drugs is a place we want to end up. It's taxpayers absorbing the enormous negative externality of food producers putting loads of crap in their food.
Completely disagree
Obesity is a monstrous worldwide problem - trust me, I’ve seen it - and now we have miraculous drugs that fix it. eg Mounjaro taken over 70 weeks induces an average 20% loss of total body weight. That’s remarkable
At the same time it looks like these drugs do amazing things against cancer, Alzheimer’s, all kinds of addiction
Are these drugs dangerous and new? Well no, not really - they’ve been used by diabetics for yonks
The human race has lucked out at a crucial moment. These obesity drugs could be as game changing as antibiotics. We must use them
Yes of course it would be great if we could get everyone to slim down via yoga, Pilates and salads but let’s be real
So we allow big business to profit from creating the problem then other big business to profit from solving it, rather than taking action to prevent the problem occurring? Doesn't seem an efficient use of resources tbh.
I would not be surprised if the crappy food industry is funding the lobbying for these drugs.
It came after the FDF waged a campaign to put pressure on the DHSC to rewrite its nutrition policy, lobbying officials to remove the push to minimally processed food in the guidance issued to retailers, according to documents and emails reviewed by the Guardian.
In response to a freedom of information request, the government released a cache of emails between the FDF and the DHSC.
Most of the correspondence was heavily redacted. The government cited section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act, “which provides for the protection of personal information”, and section 35(1)(a), “which provides protection for the information that relates to the formulation or development of government policy”.
The emails, sent between October 2022 and April 2023, reveal how the FDF, which represents firms with a combined annual turnover of more than £112bn, lobbied the DHSC to drop the guidance pushing retailers to promote minimally processed food...
I'm no food expert and subsist on a perfectly balanced diet of fish (protein) and chips (fat and carbohydrates) every day, and an apple.
But I'm suspicious of food arguments that lump "ultra-processed food" into a single category. Over the decades, everything around food resembles one set of faddists arguing with another group of faddists. Or fattests.
Nor am I shocked that industry lobbyists lobby for industry-favourable outcomes. That's their mission statement.
OTOH measures which industry lobbyists moan about have been significant successes - the extra tax on high sugar, for example, which reduced sugar levels in drinks to just below the threshold. And which has shown to deliver health benefits.
Sugar is a single thing. Ultra-processed food is lots of different things lumped together.
I've become convinced this is poisoning us. I've seen kids born just six or seven years ago (so after May came to power) already be extremely fat. Everyone is eating shit and ordering terrible pizzas from Deliveroo.
I'm not sure what the right policy response is, but I'm definitely in the something must be done category now.
Luckily we have incredible new anti-obesity drugs
Mounjaro is a phenomenon and they are only getting better and cheaper. Soon they will come in pill form and cost a few quid
For the first time in forty years obesity is now falling in the USA (and quite fast). Americans are rich and can afford these drugs. We are quite rich - we can’t afford NOT to use these drugs
Every person we save from obesity saves the NHS £££££
But that's exactly why public services like the NHS are in trouble - always finding ways to treat rather than prevent issues.
It's a bit like claiming that prison is a great way to reduce crime - simply lock up the habitual criminals! But that's damned expensive and it would be better for everyone to get the intervention in much earlier (probably pre-school/pre-natal).
I don't think having 60%+ of the population, including young children, on prescription drugs is a place we want to end up. It's taxpayers absorbing the enormous negative externality of food producers putting loads of crap in their food.
Completely disagree
Obesity is a monstrous worldwide problem - trust me, I’ve seen it - and now we have miraculous drugs that fix it. eg Mounjaro taken over 70 weeks induces an average 20% loss of total body weight. That’s remarkable
At the same time it looks like these drugs do amazing things against cancer, Alzheimer’s, all kinds of addiction
Are these drugs dangerous and new? Well no, not really - they’ve been used by diabetics for yonks
The human race has lucked out at a crucial moment. These obesity drugs could be as game changing as antibiotics. We must use them
Yes of course it would be great if we could get everyone to slim down via yoga, Pilates and salads but let’s be real
So we allow big business to profit from creating the problem then other big business to profit from solving it, rather than taking action to prevent the problem occurring? Doesn't seem an efficient use of resources tbh.
Utter madness.
Prevention is better than a cure. Same could be said of so many things.
“The United States could see one of the sharpest drops in obesity rates globally, thanks to the growing use of weight loss drugs such as Ozempic and Wegovy, according to a new report.
The latest data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggests the obesity rate is already starting to decline — from 42 per cent to 40.3 per cent over the past three years — equivalent to 4.1 million adults moving out of the obesity category.
Now, a new analysis by digital health provider Treated estimates that the US could see a further 10.6 per cent reduction in obesity over the next five years, with around 2.17 million people shedding enough weight annually to no longer be classed as obese.”
Its not more expensive to eat healthy home cooked food over takeaways, its considerably cheaper.
However many people don't want to bother. That's more challenging to deal with.
Air fryers are great inventions for that. Just chuck food in the air fryer, turn it over halfway, and its done. But that's still too much hard work for many people.
It came after the FDF waged a campaign to put pressure on the DHSC to rewrite its nutrition policy, lobbying officials to remove the push to minimally processed food in the guidance issued to retailers, according to documents and emails reviewed by the Guardian.
In response to a freedom of information request, the government released a cache of emails between the FDF and the DHSC.
Most of the correspondence was heavily redacted. The government cited section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act, “which provides for the protection of personal information”, and section 35(1)(a), “which provides protection for the information that relates to the formulation or development of government policy”.
The emails, sent between October 2022 and April 2023, reveal how the FDF, which represents firms with a combined annual turnover of more than £112bn, lobbied the DHSC to drop the guidance pushing retailers to promote minimally processed food...
I'm no food expert and subsist on a perfectly balanced diet of fish (protein) and chips (fat and carbohydrates) every day, and an apple.
But I'm suspicious of food arguments that lump "ultra-processed food" into a single category. Over the decades, everything around food resembles one set of faddists arguing with another group of faddists. Or fattests.
Nor am I shocked that industry lobbyists lobby for industry-favourable outcomes. That's their mission statement.
OTOH measures which industry lobbyists moan about have been significant successes - the extra tax on high sugar, for example, which reduced sugar levels in drinks to just below the threshold. And which has shown to deliver health benefits.
We have done this before. The evidence on this is extremely debatable on the direct effects of sugar tax. Sticking a few pence on sugary drinks doesn't seem to have dissuaded teenage kids drinking lakes full of sugary energy drinks.
A bigger measure / impact was the government convinced the food industry to reduce sugar content in a wide range of food voluntarily. So consumers are consuming less sugar from their food without any idea or via the idea that taxation is nudging them away from full sugar coke to sugar free sparkling water.
Indeed. As I have argued before that to get better health outcomes in the general populace, a good way is to make the foods that we all consume better for us, rather than scolding people about what they eat - where the scolding is probably misguided anyway.
People need to be taught to cook at home.
I'm in my 40s and certainly don't know how to do it, unless it's chilli con carne, lasagne or curry which I learned by rote.
Appearing at a high-profile rally at Westminster, the former Cabinet minister turned Mayor of Greater Manchester said the Labour Government risks alienating its core support if it continues to overlook transport upgrades outside London.
Mr Burnham said Northern voters were rightly angry after watching multibillion-pound projects such as the Elizabeth Line come to fruition in London while schemes promised to them a decade ago remain in limbo.
It came after the FDF waged a campaign to put pressure on the DHSC to rewrite its nutrition policy, lobbying officials to remove the push to minimally processed food in the guidance issued to retailers, according to documents and emails reviewed by the Guardian.
In response to a freedom of information request, the government released a cache of emails between the FDF and the DHSC.
Most of the correspondence was heavily redacted. The government cited section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act, “which provides for the protection of personal information”, and section 35(1)(a), “which provides protection for the information that relates to the formulation or development of government policy”.
The emails, sent between October 2022 and April 2023, reveal how the FDF, which represents firms with a combined annual turnover of more than £112bn, lobbied the DHSC to drop the guidance pushing retailers to promote minimally processed food...
I'm no food expert and subsist on a perfectly balanced diet of fish (protein) and chips (fat and carbohydrates) every day, and an apple.
But I'm suspicious of food arguments that lump "ultra-processed food" into a single category. Over the decades, everything around food resembles one set of faddists arguing with another group of faddists. Or fattests.
Nor am I shocked that industry lobbyists lobby for industry-favourable outcomes. That's their mission statement.
OTOH measures which industry lobbyists moan about have been significant successes - the extra tax on high sugar, for example, which reduced sugar levels in drinks to just below the threshold. And which has shown to deliver health benefits.
Sugar is a single thing. Ultra-processed food is lots of different things lumped together.
I've become convinced this is poisoning us. I've seen kids born just six or seven years ago (so after May came to power) already be extremely fat. Everyone is eating shit and ordering terrible pizzas from Deliveroo.
I'm not sure what the right policy response is, but I'm definitely in the something must be done category now.
(hobbyhorse)
This is why we need all the barriers off our footpaths, and all those housing areas which were isolated from each other on bad police advice in the 1980s and 1990s reconnecting - so everyone can walk everywhere, especially to school.
This is on the path where I used to walk to my infant school. I'm aiming to draft a complaint as today's homework: The croquet hoop is 2ft wide and 4ft high, and the "shimmy round the side or through the cage" gap is about 16".
It is a prominently signposted, 2m wide asphalt, walking/wheeling and cycling route. It is a public footpath. Were it useable, that would be some cycles off the roads.
Mum with a pram? Mobility aid? Forget it, since - I reckon - 198x. It was clear in the 1970s, when I was six; I left that school at 7.
The fascinating thing is how as Brits we just accept unlawful stuff just imposed on us.
(/hobbyhorse)
That is not a regulation size croquet hoop (a gap between 4″ and 3¾” wide, and top of the hoop 12″ above the ground) and would be far too easy to knock the ball through.
It came after the FDF waged a campaign to put pressure on the DHSC to rewrite its nutrition policy, lobbying officials to remove the push to minimally processed food in the guidance issued to retailers, according to documents and emails reviewed by the Guardian.
In response to a freedom of information request, the government released a cache of emails between the FDF and the DHSC.
Most of the correspondence was heavily redacted. The government cited section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act, “which provides for the protection of personal information”, and section 35(1)(a), “which provides protection for the information that relates to the formulation or development of government policy”.
The emails, sent between October 2022 and April 2023, reveal how the FDF, which represents firms with a combined annual turnover of more than £112bn, lobbied the DHSC to drop the guidance pushing retailers to promote minimally processed food...
I'm no food expert and subsist on a perfectly balanced diet of fish (protein) and chips (fat and carbohydrates) every day, and an apple.
But I'm suspicious of food arguments that lump "ultra-processed food" into a single category. Over the decades, everything around food resembles one set of faddists arguing with another group of faddists. Or fattests.
Nor am I shocked that industry lobbyists lobby for industry-favourable outcomes. That's their mission statement.
OTOH measures which industry lobbyists moan about have been significant successes - the extra tax on high sugar, for example, which reduced sugar levels in drinks to just below the threshold. And which has shown to deliver health benefits.
We have done this before. The evidence on this is extremely debatable on the direct effects of sugar tax. Sticking a few pence on sugary drinks doesn't seem to have dissuaded teenage kids drinking lakes full of sugary energy drinks.
A bigger measure / impact was the government convinced the food industry to reduce sugar content in a wide range of food voluntarily. So consumers are consuming less sugar from their food without any idea or via the idea that taxation is nudging them away from full sugar coke to sugar free sparkling water.
The MRC unit at Cambridge think that the benefit is demonstrated, which is good enough for on something like this.
This is according to research led by the Medical Research Council’s (MRC) Epidemiology Unit at the University of Cambridge.
I don't really understand Francis' point anyway. It has been shown to exhibit a behavioural impact, only that it's materialised via a reduced sugar content rather than consumers being forced to pay a higher price.
It came after the FDF waged a campaign to put pressure on the DHSC to rewrite its nutrition policy, lobbying officials to remove the push to minimally processed food in the guidance issued to retailers, according to documents and emails reviewed by the Guardian.
In response to a freedom of information request, the government released a cache of emails between the FDF and the DHSC.
Most of the correspondence was heavily redacted. The government cited section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act, “which provides for the protection of personal information”, and section 35(1)(a), “which provides protection for the information that relates to the formulation or development of government policy”.
The emails, sent between October 2022 and April 2023, reveal how the FDF, which represents firms with a combined annual turnover of more than £112bn, lobbied the DHSC to drop the guidance pushing retailers to promote minimally processed food...
I'm no food expert and subsist on a perfectly balanced diet of fish (protein) and chips (fat and carbohydrates) every day, and an apple.
But I'm suspicious of food arguments that lump "ultra-processed food" into a single category. Over the decades, everything around food resembles one set of faddists arguing with another group of faddists. Or fattests.
Nor am I shocked that industry lobbyists lobby for industry-favourable outcomes. That's their mission statement.
OTOH measures which industry lobbyists moan about have been significant successes - the extra tax on high sugar, for example, which reduced sugar levels in drinks to just below the threshold. And which has shown to deliver health benefits.
There are some real inconsistencies in that though, such as the exemption for milk-based drinks which mean that many milk-based drinks are full of sugar.
As someone who avoids sugar/carbs, it pisses me off that all bottled coffee-based drinks are full of sugar.
There are naturally no carbs in coffee and milk is naturally minimal in it too, but there's no sugar-free low-carb coffee based bottled drinks ever available in the supermarket.
I dislike the nanny state in principle, but being selfish I hate the lack of sugar-free coffee-based drinks when I'm out and about and the need to go for some Monster or something similar if I want a caffeine drink that's sugar free rather than coffee.
Milk is 4.7g carbs per 100ml vs 3.5g protein and 3.7g fat (whole milk).
Indeed, that's the point, so why does a typical ~200ml bottle of coffee come with ~20g of carbs?
Its not all coming from the milk, its coming from added sugar.
I was questioning the description of milk as “naturally minimal” in carbs.
The Polanski and Ramsay/Chowns campaigns offer a starkly different approach for the Greens, so while not attracting much attention, I wonder if it’s a leadership election that could be very consequential for the next general election.
Can you point me to a summary of the different approaches?
From my viewpoint, I would vote Green locally - them being the only party that are consistently reliable on my issues of concern, but I always found them to be a bit loopy nationally, and far too prone to following fashion.
If we had the German Realo-Greens and Annalena Baerbock, that would very much help.
The Guardian described it as a choice between "election-focused professionals" (R/C) or "insurgent activists" (Polanski). Ramsay and Chowns are MPs, they both won their rural seats from Conservatives, they are supported by the old guard (Caroline Lucas, Jenny Jones) and have been seen as insufficiently supportive of trans rights. Polanski is a red-green eco-populist, has only won election through PR (he’s on the London Assembly), wants to leave NATO, etc.
Trans? NATO?
Call me naive, but I thought it might be about biodiversity.
The Polanski and Ramsay/Chowns campaigns offer a starkly different approach for the Greens, so while not attracting much attention, I wonder if it’s a leadership election that could be very consequential for the next general election.
Can you point me to a summary of the different approaches?
From my viewpoint, I would vote Green locally - them being the only party that are consistently reliable on my issues of concern, but I always found them to be a bit loopy nationally, and far too prone to following fashion.
If we had the German Realo-Greens and Annalena Baerbock, that would very much help.
We have an extremely active, and from my point of view, good, Green County Councillor.Took the seat from the Conservative last time, and I strongly suspect he would have held it this year if the elections hadn't been cancelled. Essex is going to have a mayor next year and I wonder if the county (etc) electoral divisions will be the same.
It came after the FDF waged a campaign to put pressure on the DHSC to rewrite its nutrition policy, lobbying officials to remove the push to minimally processed food in the guidance issued to retailers, according to documents and emails reviewed by the Guardian.
In response to a freedom of information request, the government released a cache of emails between the FDF and the DHSC.
Most of the correspondence was heavily redacted. The government cited section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act, “which provides for the protection of personal information”, and section 35(1)(a), “which provides protection for the information that relates to the formulation or development of government policy”.
The emails, sent between October 2022 and April 2023, reveal how the FDF, which represents firms with a combined annual turnover of more than £112bn, lobbied the DHSC to drop the guidance pushing retailers to promote minimally processed food...
I'm no food expert and subsist on a perfectly balanced diet of fish (protein) and chips (fat and carbohydrates) every day, and an apple.
But I'm suspicious of food arguments that lump "ultra-processed food" into a single category. Over the decades, everything around food resembles one set of faddists arguing with another group of faddists. Or fattests.
Nor am I shocked that industry lobbyists lobby for industry-favourable outcomes. That's their mission statement.
OTOH measures which industry lobbyists moan about have been significant successes - the extra tax on high sugar, for example, which reduced sugar levels in drinks to just below the threshold. And which has shown to deliver health benefits.
We have done this before. The evidence on this is extremely debatable on the direct effects of sugar tax. Sticking a few pence on sugary drinks doesn't seem to have dissuaded teenage kids drinking lakes full of sugary energy drinks.
A bigger measure / impact was the government convinced the food industry to reduce sugar content in a wide range of food voluntarily. So consumers are consuming less sugar from their food without any idea or via the idea that taxation is nudging them away from full sugar coke to sugar free sparkling water.
Indeed. As I have argued before that to get better health outcomes in the general populace, a good way is to make the foods that we all consume better for us, rather than scolding people about what they eat - where the scolding is probably misguided anyway.
People need to be taught to cook at home.
I'm in my 40s and certainly don't know how to do it, unless it's chilli con carne, lasagne or curry which I learned by rote.
You do realise you can teach yourself?
I did, over a few years. And not in any boring way - it was fun. Cooking is fun. You try new recipes, you use your hands in a pleasurable way, it’s relaxing and convivial. And at the end, you can cook
It came after the FDF waged a campaign to put pressure on the DHSC to rewrite its nutrition policy, lobbying officials to remove the push to minimally processed food in the guidance issued to retailers, according to documents and emails reviewed by the Guardian.
In response to a freedom of information request, the government released a cache of emails between the FDF and the DHSC.
Most of the correspondence was heavily redacted. The government cited section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act, “which provides for the protection of personal information”, and section 35(1)(a), “which provides protection for the information that relates to the formulation or development of government policy”.
The emails, sent between October 2022 and April 2023, reveal how the FDF, which represents firms with a combined annual turnover of more than £112bn, lobbied the DHSC to drop the guidance pushing retailers to promote minimally processed food...
I'm no food expert and subsist on a perfectly balanced diet of fish (protein) and chips (fat and carbohydrates) every day, and an apple.
But I'm suspicious of food arguments that lump "ultra-processed food" into a single category. Over the decades, everything around food resembles one set of faddists arguing with another group of faddists. Or fattests.
Nor am I shocked that industry lobbyists lobby for industry-favourable outcomes. That's their mission statement.
OTOH measures which industry lobbyists moan about have been significant successes - the extra tax on high sugar, for example, which reduced sugar levels in drinks to just below the threshold. And which has shown to deliver health benefits.
There are some real inconsistencies in that though, such as the exemption for milk-based drinks which mean that many milk-based drinks are full of sugar.
As someone who avoids sugar/carbs, it pisses me off that all bottled coffee-based drinks are full of sugar.
There are naturally no carbs in coffee and milk is naturally minimal in it too, but there's no sugar-free low-carb coffee based bottled drinks ever available in the supermarket.
I dislike the nanny state in principle, but being selfish I hate the lack of sugar-free coffee-based drinks when I'm out and about and the need to go for some Monster or something similar if I want a caffeine drink that's sugar free rather than coffee.
Milk is 4.7g carbs per 100ml vs 3.5g protein and 3.7g fat (whole milk).
Indeed, that's the point, so why does a typical ~200ml bottle of coffee come with ~20g of carbs?
Its not all coming from the milk, its coming from added sugar.
I was questioning the description of milk as “naturally minimal” in carbs.
Compared to 20g of carbs in a drink in a 200ml drink, it is.
And you don't need all 200ml to be pure milk either. Milk, water and coffee is a possible combination too for making a coffee.
If I make a coffee at home I might get about 1g of carbs in my cup, from whole milk, not 20g.
The Polanski and Ramsay/Chowns campaigns offer a starkly different approach for the Greens, so while not attracting much attention, I wonder if it’s a leadership election that could be very consequential for the next general election.
Can you point me to a summary of the different approaches?
From my viewpoint, I would vote Green locally - them being the only party that are consistently reliable on my issues of concern, but I always found them to be a bit loopy nationally, and far too prone to following fashion.
If we had the German Realo-Greens and Annalena Baerbock, that would very much help.
The Guardian described it as a choice between "election-focused professionals" (R/C) or "insurgent activists" (Polanski). Ramsay and Chowns are MPs, they both won their rural seats from Conservatives, they are supported by the old guard (Caroline Lucas, Jenny Jones) and have been seen as insufficiently supportive of trans rights. Polanski is a red-green eco-populist, has only won election through PR (he’s on the London Assembly), wants to leave NATO, etc.
Trans? NATO?
Call me naive, but I thought it might be about biodiversity.
The Polanski and Ramsay/Chowns campaigns offer a starkly different approach for the Greens, so while not attracting much attention, I wonder if it’s a leadership election that could be very consequential for the next general election.
Can you point me to a summary of the different approaches?
From my viewpoint, I would vote Green locally - them being the only party that are consistently reliable on my issues of concern, but I always found them to be a bit loopy nationally, and far too prone to following fashion.
If we had the German Realo-Greens and Annalena Baerbock, that would very much help.
The Guardian described it as a choice between "election-focused professionals" (R/C) or "insurgent activists" (Polanski). Ramsay and Chowns are MPs, they both won their rural seats from Conservatives, they are supported by the old guard (Caroline Lucas, Jenny Jones) and have been seen as insufficiently supportive of trans rights. Polanski is a red-green eco-populist, has only won election through PR (he’s on the London Assembly), wants to leave NATO, etc.
Polanski keeps on about "eco populism" but I have yet to see an explanation of what that actually means.
The Polanski and Ramsay/Chowns campaigns offer a starkly different approach for the Greens, so while not attracting much attention, I wonder if it’s a leadership election that could be very consequential for the next general election.
Can you point me to a summary of the different approaches?
From my viewpoint, I would vote Green locally - them being the only party that are consistently reliable on my issues of concern, but I always found them to be a bit loopy nationally, and far too prone to following fashion.
If we had the German Realo-Greens and Annalena Baerbock, that would very much help.
The Guardian described it as a choice between "election-focused professionals" (R/C) or "insurgent activists" (Polanski). Ramsay and Chowns are MPs, they both won their rural seats from Conservatives, they are supported by the old guard (Caroline Lucas, Jenny Jones) and have been seen as insufficiently supportive of trans rights. Polanski is a red-green eco-populist, has only won election through PR (he’s on the London Assembly), wants to leave NATO, etc.
I'm inclined to think that Trans Rights is the wrong issue for Greens to impale themselves on, given their reason for existence.
I sometimes get Adrian Ramsay, who is a former head of the Centre for Alternative Technologies, with Adam Ramsay, who used to edit the Bright Green Scotland blog, and whose dad owns a castle and an estate and I think reintroduced beavers to Scotland.
If you work here illegally or employ people who do, we’re coming for you.
Illegal working raids are up 40%. And we won’t stop there.
No messing about there. Polls will confirm (or not) but a word that probably leaps to many people's minds when thinking about Keir Starmer is "muscular". He'd take that, I reckon, if it turns out to be the case.
Its not more expensive to eat healthy home cooked food over takeaways, its considerably cheaper.
However many people don't want to bother. That's more challenging to deal with.
Air fryers are great inventions for that. Just chuck food in the air fryer, turn it over halfway, and its done. But that's still too much hard work for many people.
It’s perfectly easy to cook at home healthily and cheaply. It’s 100% laziness to complain that it’s not possible.
If you work here illegally or employ people who do, we’re coming for you.
Illegal working raids are up 40%. And we won’t stop there.
No messing about there. Polls will confirm (or not) but a word that probably leaps to many people's minds when thinking about Keir Starmer is "muscular". He'd take that, I reckon, if it turns out to be the case.
I bet he’d take it with those man boobs and chins!
If you work here illegally or employ people who do, we’re coming for you.
Illegal working raids are up 40%. And we won’t stop there.
No messing about there. Polls will confirm (or not) but a word that probably leaps to many people's minds when thinking about Keir Starmer is "muscular". He'd take that, I reckon, if it turns out to be the case.
Ahahahahaha
I guarantee that if you did a word cloud on Starmer the term “muscular” would not appear. He is seen as a weak, pitiable figure, except when he wants to persecute white people
Look at his abysmal polling, which has recently got even worse
“The United States could see one of the sharpest drops in obesity rates globally, thanks to the growing use of weight loss drugs such as Ozempic and Wegovy, according to a new report.
The latest data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggests the obesity rate is already starting to decline — from 42 per cent to 40.3 per cent over the past three years — equivalent to 4.1 million adults moving out of the obesity category.
Now, a new analysis by digital health provider Treated estimates that the US could see a further 10.6 per cent reduction in obesity over the next five years, with around 2.17 million people shedding enough weight annually to no longer be classed as obese.”
Interesting anecdote from an otherwise totally apolitical reunion in Hereford yesterday.
(Hereford has had a weird recent history as our Herefordian travel writer has noted: the old town centre has been hollowed out by a new shopping mall in the old cattle market and looks desolate. But the other bits of town remain pretty and reasonably prosperous).
A lot of recent politics seems to be about frustration that despite promises by everyone to fix things, nothing happens. Right? Well speaking to people from North Herefordshire that’s precisely the reason the greens won the seat in 2024. Chicken farmers have been dumping organic waste close to the Wye for years, and the river and groundwater are eutrophic and blighted. What used to be a clear, swimmable river brimming with salmon and trout is dead.
But nothing has been done. The previous Tory MP was an ex farmer and never made a concerted effort to get it fixed. The Green vote was a vote of frustration. Pretty much a single issue election.
I was aware of the long running issue but the whole “and nobody did anything despite years of campaigning” was interesting.
Quite sad to hear the town centre is still knackered
And yes indeed on the Wye. An utter disgrace. The chicken farmers should go to jail. I could sense the local anger in 2023 and it was obvious the Tories were in deep trouble
I really do hope the Tories die. They’ve had their time. Enough
By coincidence, I have just watched the latest release of "Turdtowns", for Herefordshire, on YouTube. Hereford gets a mention but Leominster is the worst.
That’s ridiculous
Hereford and Leominster are both lovely handsome towns - at least by post war British standards! Being relatively remote and poor they managed to avoid hideous redevelopment in the 50s-80s, so they have remained essentially pretty
All they need is an injection of pride and some money. They will be back. The bones are there
Looking forward to Herford & Leominster are BACK! posts.
It came after the FDF waged a campaign to put pressure on the DHSC to rewrite its nutrition policy, lobbying officials to remove the push to minimally processed food in the guidance issued to retailers, according to documents and emails reviewed by the Guardian.
In response to a freedom of information request, the government released a cache of emails between the FDF and the DHSC.
Most of the correspondence was heavily redacted. The government cited section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act, “which provides for the protection of personal information”, and section 35(1)(a), “which provides protection for the information that relates to the formulation or development of government policy”.
The emails, sent between October 2022 and April 2023, reveal how the FDF, which represents firms with a combined annual turnover of more than £112bn, lobbied the DHSC to drop the guidance pushing retailers to promote minimally processed food...
I'm no food expert and subsist on a perfectly balanced diet of fish (protein) and chips (fat and carbohydrates) every day, and an apple.
But I'm suspicious of food arguments that lump "ultra-processed food" into a single category. Over the decades, everything around food resembles one set of faddists arguing with another group of faddists. Or fattests.
Nor am I shocked that industry lobbyists lobby for industry-favourable outcomes. That's their mission statement.
OTOH measures which industry lobbyists moan about have been significant successes - the extra tax on high sugar, for example, which reduced sugar levels in drinks to just below the threshold. And which has shown to deliver health benefits.
We have done this before. The evidence on this is extremely debatable on the direct effects of sugar tax. Sticking a few pence on sugary drinks doesn't seem to have dissuaded teenage kids drinking lakes full of sugary energy drinks.
A bigger measure / impact was the government convinced the food industry to reduce sugar content in a wide range of food voluntarily. So consumers are consuming less sugar from their food without any idea or via the idea that taxation is nudging them away from full sugar coke to sugar free sparkling water.
Indeed. As I have argued before that to get better health outcomes in the general populace, a good way is to make the foods that we all consume better for us, rather than scolding people about what they eat - where the scolding is probably misguided anyway.
People need to be taught to cook at home.
I'm in my 40s and certainly don't know how to do it, unless it's chilli con carne, lasagne or curry which I learned by rote.
You do realise you can teach yourself?
I did, over a few years. And not in any boring way - it was fun. Cooking is fun. You try new recipes, you use your hands in a pleasurable way, it’s relaxing and convivial. And at the end, you can cook
Yes, I do most of the cooking at home and it's no chore. Although when it comes to throwing dinner parties for friends and family and casual acquaintances I'm not trusted and my wife steps in.
It came after the FDF waged a campaign to put pressure on the DHSC to rewrite its nutrition policy, lobbying officials to remove the push to minimally processed food in the guidance issued to retailers, according to documents and emails reviewed by the Guardian.
In response to a freedom of information request, the government released a cache of emails between the FDF and the DHSC.
Most of the correspondence was heavily redacted. The government cited section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act, “which provides for the protection of personal information”, and section 35(1)(a), “which provides protection for the information that relates to the formulation or development of government policy”.
The emails, sent between October 2022 and April 2023, reveal how the FDF, which represents firms with a combined annual turnover of more than £112bn, lobbied the DHSC to drop the guidance pushing retailers to promote minimally processed food...
I'm no food expert and subsist on a perfectly balanced diet of fish (protein) and chips (fat and carbohydrates) every day, and an apple.
But I'm suspicious of food arguments that lump "ultra-processed food" into a single category. Over the decades, everything around food resembles one set of faddists arguing with another group of faddists. Or fattests.
Nor am I shocked that industry lobbyists lobby for industry-favourable outcomes. That's their mission statement.
OTOH measures which industry lobbyists moan about have been significant successes - the extra tax on high sugar, for example, which reduced sugar levels in drinks to just below the threshold. And which has shown to deliver health benefits.
We have done this before. The evidence on this is extremely debatable on the direct effects of sugar tax. Sticking a few pence on sugary drinks doesn't seem to have dissuaded teenage kids drinking lakes full of sugary energy drinks.
A bigger measure / impact was the government convinced the food industry to reduce sugar content in a wide range of food voluntarily. So consumers are consuming less sugar from their food without any idea or via the idea that taxation is nudging them away from full sugar coke to sugar free sparkling water.
Indeed. As I have argued before that to get better health outcomes in the general populace, a good way is to make the foods that we all consume better for us, rather than scolding people about what they eat - where the scolding is probably misguided anyway.
People need to be taught to cook at home.
I'm in my 40s and certainly don't know how to do it, unless it's chilli con carne, lasagne or curry which I learned by rote.
You do realise you can teach yourself?
I did, over a few years. And not in any boring way - it was fun. Cooking is fun. You try new recipes, you use your hands in a pleasurable way, it’s relaxing and convivial. And at the end, you can cook
It’s something that some people just don’t seem to get, even if they try. I’m not quite sure why ?
It came after the FDF waged a campaign to put pressure on the DHSC to rewrite its nutrition policy, lobbying officials to remove the push to minimally processed food in the guidance issued to retailers, according to documents and emails reviewed by the Guardian.
In response to a freedom of information request, the government released a cache of emails between the FDF and the DHSC.
Most of the correspondence was heavily redacted. The government cited section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act, “which provides for the protection of personal information”, and section 35(1)(a), “which provides protection for the information that relates to the formulation or development of government policy”.
The emails, sent between October 2022 and April 2023, reveal how the FDF, which represents firms with a combined annual turnover of more than £112bn, lobbied the DHSC to drop the guidance pushing retailers to promote minimally processed food...
I'm no food expert and subsist on a perfectly balanced diet of fish (protein) and chips (fat and carbohydrates) every day, and an apple.
But I'm suspicious of food arguments that lump "ultra-processed food" into a single category. Over the decades, everything around food resembles one set of faddists arguing with another group of faddists. Or fattests.
Nor am I shocked that industry lobbyists lobby for industry-favourable outcomes. That's their mission statement.
OTOH measures which industry lobbyists moan about have been significant successes - the extra tax on high sugar, for example, which reduced sugar levels in drinks to just below the threshold. And which has shown to deliver health benefits.
Sugar is a single thing. Ultra-processed food is lots of different things lumped together.
I've become convinced this is poisoning us. I've seen kids born just six or seven years ago (so after May came to power) already be extremely fat. Everyone is eating shit and ordering terrible pizzas from Deliveroo.
I'm not sure what the right policy response is, but I'm definitely in the something must be done category now.
Luckily we have incredible new anti-obesity drugs
Mounjaro is a phenomenon and they are only getting better and cheaper. Soon they will come in pill form and cost a few quid
For the first time in forty years obesity is now falling in the USA (and quite fast). Americans are rich and can afford these drugs. We are quite rich - we can’t afford NOT to use these drugs
Every person we save from obesity saves the NHS £££££
But that's exactly why public services like the NHS are in trouble - always finding ways to treat rather than prevent issues.
It's a bit like claiming that prison is a great way to reduce crime - simply lock up the habitual criminals! But that's damned expensive and it would be better for everyone to get the intervention in much earlier (probably pre-school/pre-natal).
I don't think having 60%+ of the population, including young children, on prescription drugs is a place we want to end up. It's taxpayers absorbing the enormous negative externality of food producers putting loads of crap in their food.
Completely disagree
Obesity is a monstrous worldwide problem - trust me, I’ve seen it - and now we have miraculous drugs that fix it. eg Mounjaro taken over 70 weeks induces an average 20% loss of total body weight. That’s remarkable
At the same time it looks like these drugs do amazing things against cancer, Alzheimer’s, all kinds of addiction
Are these drugs dangerous and new? Well no, not really - they’ve been used by diabetics for yonks
The human race has lucked out at a crucial moment. These obesity drugs could be as game changing as antibiotics. We must use them
Yes of course it would be great if we could get everyone to slim down via yoga, Pilates and salads but let’s be real
So we allow big business to profit from creating the problem then other big business to profit from solving it, rather than taking action to prevent the problem occurring? Doesn't seem an efficient use of resources tbh.
I would not be surprised if the crappy food industry is funding the lobbying for these drugs.
No, the crappy food industry is very worried about the drugs, because they make people eat a lot less food.
Analysts at Morgan Stanley estimate that 24 million people, or 7% of the US population, will be taking the new GLP-1 drugs by 2035. A survey carried out of 300 patients taking the shots showed they ate less and cut back the most on foods high in sugar and fat. About 90% of those using the drugs said their snacking declined and 77% said they visited fast-casual restaurants less often.
“The United States could see one of the sharpest drops in obesity rates globally, thanks to the growing use of weight loss drugs such as Ozempic and Wegovy, according to a new report.
The latest data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggests the obesity rate is already starting to decline — from 42 per cent to 40.3 per cent over the past three years — equivalent to 4.1 million adults moving out of the obesity category.
Now, a new analysis by digital health provider Treated estimates that the US could see a further 10.6 per cent reduction in obesity over the next five years, with around 2.17 million people shedding enough weight annually to no longer be classed as obese.”
Its not more expensive to eat healthy home cooked food over takeaways, its considerably cheaper.
However many people don't want to bother. That's more challenging to deal with.
Air fryers are great inventions for that. Just chuck food in the air fryer, turn it over halfway, and its done. But that's still too much hard work for many people.
It’s perfectly easy to cook at home healthily and cheaply. It’s 100% laziness to complain that it’s not possible.
Even 'cheap' takeaways aren't cheap nowadays. Lucky to feed a family of 4 for less than £30 at somewhere like McDonalds.
We've used our air fryer routinely since it first came out and we got the original model when it was a novelty. It died a few years ago after nearly a decade of daily use, so we got a replacement from Amazon (no brand) that lasted a few years but died a few weeks ago - again having been used 2-3 times daily.
So just bought our third model, this time gone for the top of the line 2 drawer Ninja model which I bought on finance for £15 a month. I use this 2-3 times daily, but even using it just once a month would pay itself back. Using it regularly saves a fortune.
If you work here illegally or employ people who do, we’re coming for you.
Illegal working raids are up 40%. And we won’t stop there.
No messing about there. Polls will confirm (or not) but a word that probably leaps to many people's minds when thinking about Keir Starmer is "muscular". He'd take that, I reckon, if it turns out to be the case.
I bet he’d take it with those man boobs and chins!
C'mon put your politics in a jar - he looks good for a man of 62.
“The United States could see one of the sharpest drops in obesity rates globally, thanks to the growing use of weight loss drugs such as Ozempic and Wegovy, according to a new report.
The latest data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggests the obesity rate is already starting to decline — from 42 per cent to 40.3 per cent over the past three years — equivalent to 4.1 million adults moving out of the obesity category.
Now, a new analysis by digital health provider Treated estimates that the US could see a further 10.6 per cent reduction in obesity over the next five years, with around 2.17 million people shedding enough weight annually to no longer be classed as obese.”
Police could search homes and phones after pregnancy loss ... New guidance from the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) on “child death investigation” advises officers to search for “drugs that can terminate pregnancy” in cases involving stillbirths. The NPCC, which sets strategic direction for policing across the country UK, also suggests a woman’s digital devices could be seized to help investigators “establish a woman’s knowledge and intention in relation to the pregnancy”. That could include checking a woman’s internet searches, messages to friends and family, and health apps, “such as menstrual cycle and fertility trackers”, it states.
It came after the FDF waged a campaign to put pressure on the DHSC to rewrite its nutrition policy, lobbying officials to remove the push to minimally processed food in the guidance issued to retailers, according to documents and emails reviewed by the Guardian.
In response to a freedom of information request, the government released a cache of emails between the FDF and the DHSC.
Most of the correspondence was heavily redacted. The government cited section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act, “which provides for the protection of personal information”, and section 35(1)(a), “which provides protection for the information that relates to the formulation or development of government policy”.
The emails, sent between October 2022 and April 2023, reveal how the FDF, which represents firms with a combined annual turnover of more than £112bn, lobbied the DHSC to drop the guidance pushing retailers to promote minimally processed food...
I'm no food expert and subsist on a perfectly balanced diet of fish (protein) and chips (fat and carbohydrates) every day, and an apple.
But I'm suspicious of food arguments that lump "ultra-processed food" into a single category. Over the decades, everything around food resembles one set of faddists arguing with another group of faddists. Or fattests.
Nor am I shocked that industry lobbyists lobby for industry-favourable outcomes. That's their mission statement.
OTOH measures which industry lobbyists moan about have been significant successes - the extra tax on high sugar, for example, which reduced sugar levels in drinks to just below the threshold. And which has shown to deliver health benefits.
Sugar is a single thing. Ultra-processed food is lots of different things lumped together.
I've become convinced this is poisoning us. I've seen kids born just six or seven years ago (so after May came to power) already be extremely fat. Everyone is eating shit and ordering terrible pizzas from Deliveroo.
I'm not sure what the right policy response is, but I'm definitely in the something must be done category now.
Luckily we have incredible new anti-obesity drugs
Mounjaro is a phenomenon and they are only getting better and cheaper. Soon they will come in pill form and cost a few quid
For the first time in forty years obesity is now falling in the USA (and quite fast). Americans are rich and can afford these drugs. We are quite rich - we can’t afford NOT to use these drugs
Every person we save from obesity saves the NHS £££££
It's better than nothing, but how about we teach people how to cook great home cooked food (like your Gran used to cook) and just hop on their BMX or play footie?
If you work here illegally or employ people who do, we’re coming for you.
Illegal working raids are up 40%. And we won’t stop there.
No messing about there. Polls will confirm (or not) but a word that probably leaps to many people's minds when thinking about Keir Starmer is "muscular". He'd take that, I reckon, if it turns out to be the case.
He certainly is looking muscular in recent pictures.
If you work here illegally or employ people who do, we’re coming for you.
Illegal working raids are up 40%. And we won’t stop there.
No messing about there. Polls will confirm (or not) but a word that probably leaps to many people's minds when thinking about Keir Starmer is "muscular". He'd take that, I reckon, if it turns out to be the case.
Ahahahahaha
I guarantee that if you did a word cloud on Starmer the term “muscular” would not appear. He is seen as a weak, pitiable figure, except when he wants to persecute white people
Look at his abysmal polling, which has recently got even worse
You're hopelessly biased. I think you'd admit that.
It came after the FDF waged a campaign to put pressure on the DHSC to rewrite its nutrition policy, lobbying officials to remove the push to minimally processed food in the guidance issued to retailers, according to documents and emails reviewed by the Guardian.
In response to a freedom of information request, the government released a cache of emails between the FDF and the DHSC.
Most of the correspondence was heavily redacted. The government cited section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act, “which provides for the protection of personal information”, and section 35(1)(a), “which provides protection for the information that relates to the formulation or development of government policy”.
The emails, sent between October 2022 and April 2023, reveal how the FDF, which represents firms with a combined annual turnover of more than £112bn, lobbied the DHSC to drop the guidance pushing retailers to promote minimally processed food...
I'm no food expert and subsist on a perfectly balanced diet of fish (protein) and chips (fat and carbohydrates) every day, and an apple.
But I'm suspicious of food arguments that lump "ultra-processed food" into a single category. Over the decades, everything around food resembles one set of faddists arguing with another group of faddists. Or fattests.
Nor am I shocked that industry lobbyists lobby for industry-favourable outcomes. That's their mission statement.
OTOH measures which industry lobbyists moan about have been significant successes - the extra tax on high sugar, for example, which reduced sugar levels in drinks to just below the threshold. And which has shown to deliver health benefits.
We have done this before. The evidence on this is extremely debatable on the direct effects of sugar tax. Sticking a few pence on sugary drinks doesn't seem to have dissuaded teenage kids drinking lakes full of sugary energy drinks.
A bigger measure / impact was the government convinced the food industry to reduce sugar content in a wide range of food voluntarily. So consumers are consuming less sugar from their food without any idea or via the idea that taxation is nudging them away from full sugar coke to sugar free sparkling water.
Indeed. As I have argued before that to get better health outcomes in the general populace, a good way is to make the foods that we all consume better for us, rather than scolding people about what they eat - where the scolding is probably misguided anyway.
People need to be taught to cook at home.
I'm in my 40s and certainly don't know how to do it, unless it's chilli con carne, lasagne or curry which I learned by rote.
You do realise you can teach yourself?
I did, over a few years. And not in any boring way - it was fun. Cooking is fun. You try new recipes, you use your hands in a pleasurable way, it’s relaxing and convivial. And at the end, you can cook
It’s something that some people just don’t seem to get, even if they try. I’m not quite sure why ?
Yes it’s strange
Some people are just too stupid to cook. You do need a decent IQ to understand measurements and processes and new words
But lots of bright people like @Casino_Royale can’t cook. My dad was a clever man and sort-of-tried to learn to cook - and failed
Sadly, this is all self-inflicted. The Johnson/Truss administrations simply destroyed the trust and confidence of their supporters.
Many of their problems predate that.
for example the increase in student fees crippled them among young graduates.
Something which was accentuated by unaffordable housing in southern England.
The Conservatives became reliant upon the support of the over 50s and C2s.
Demographics which Farage could be attractive to.
The Conservatives ceased to be aspirational. Especially for younger people.
If Cameron was serious that we were "all in it together" he should have announced the triple lock would move to a double lock by 2025 (in 15 years time from 2010) which would now be taking effect, and lower stamp duty and incentivised downsizing.
My parents have literally just rejected doing this due to cost, and losing c.£80k in so doing, so are now living in a house that's far too big for them.
I suspect we will be in that boat soon. We’re in a 3 bed family home on a nice enough estate by a good school. Ideally we’d trade down to one of the two bed bungalows on the same estate in a few years. Not going to happen unless there’s a change of policy.
If you work here illegally or employ people who do, we’re coming for you.
Illegal working raids are up 40%. And we won’t stop there.
No messing about there. Polls will confirm (or not) but a word that probably leaps to many people's minds when thinking about Keir Starmer is "muscular". He'd take that, I reckon, if it turns out to be the case.
I bet he’d take it with those man boobs and chins!
C'mon put your politics in a jar - he looks good for a man of 62.
Putting politics completely aside, I completely disagree. He was a handsome man with a square jaw in his thirties and forties from what I’ve seen, but looks old and flabby now. Reminds me of Richard Keys
If I look like that in 12 years time I’ll be horrified
It came after the FDF waged a campaign to put pressure on the DHSC to rewrite its nutrition policy, lobbying officials to remove the push to minimally processed food in the guidance issued to retailers, according to documents and emails reviewed by the Guardian.
In response to a freedom of information request, the government released a cache of emails between the FDF and the DHSC.
Most of the correspondence was heavily redacted. The government cited section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act, “which provides for the protection of personal information”, and section 35(1)(a), “which provides protection for the information that relates to the formulation or development of government policy”.
The emails, sent between October 2022 and April 2023, reveal how the FDF, which represents firms with a combined annual turnover of more than £112bn, lobbied the DHSC to drop the guidance pushing retailers to promote minimally processed food...
I'm no food expert and subsist on a perfectly balanced diet of fish (protein) and chips (fat and carbohydrates) every day, and an apple.
But I'm suspicious of food arguments that lump "ultra-processed food" into a single category. Over the decades, everything around food resembles one set of faddists arguing with another group of faddists. Or fattests.
Nor am I shocked that industry lobbyists lobby for industry-favourable outcomes. That's their mission statement.
OTOH measures which industry lobbyists moan about have been significant successes - the extra tax on high sugar, for example, which reduced sugar levels in drinks to just below the threshold. And which has shown to deliver health benefits.
Sugar is a single thing. Ultra-processed food is lots of different things lumped together.
I've become convinced this is poisoning us. I've seen kids born just six or seven years ago (so after May came to power) already be extremely fat. Everyone is eating shit and ordering terrible pizzas from Deliveroo.
I'm not sure what the right policy response is, but I'm definitely in the something must be done category now.
Luckily we have incredible new anti-obesity drugs
Mounjaro is a phenomenon and they are only getting better and cheaper. Soon they will come in pill form and cost a few quid
For the first time in forty years obesity is now falling in the USA (and quite fast). Americans are rich and can afford these drugs. We are quite rich - we can’t afford NOT to use these drugs
Every person we save from obesity saves the NHS £££££
It's better than nothing, but how about we teach people how to cook great home cooked food (like your Gran used to cook) and just hop on their BMX or play footie?
It's better for you. In almost every way.
You want schools to scrap SEND provision in order to give lessons in slashing and stabbing with razor sharp knives, not to mention boiling water.
Its not more expensive to eat healthy home cooked food over takeaways, its considerably cheaper.
However many people don't want to bother. That's more challenging to deal with.
Air fryers are great inventions for that. Just chuck food in the air fryer, turn it over halfway, and its done. But that's still too much hard work for many people.
It’s perfectly easy to cook at home healthily and cheaply. It’s 100% laziness to complain that it’s not possible.
Even 'cheap' takeaways aren't cheap nowadays. Lucky to feed a family of 4 for less than £30 at somewhere like McDonalds.
We've used our air fryer routinely since it first came out and we got the original model when it was a novelty. It died a few years ago after nearly a decade of daily use, so we got a replacement from Amazon (no brand) that lasted a few years but died a few weeks ago - again having been used 2-3 times daily.
So just bought our third model, this time gone for the top of the line 2 drawer Ninja model which I bought on finance for £15 a month. I use this 2-3 times daily, but even using it just once a month would pay itself back. Using it regularly saves a fortune.
We just had a new kitchen put in and I half heartedly, knowing there was no chance of agreement, campaigned for no oven as we never used the old one after getting an air fryer. I feel like I’ve bought a hi fi system with record player and glass door circa 1992 with the new oven, no one will have them in a decade
It came after the FDF waged a campaign to put pressure on the DHSC to rewrite its nutrition policy, lobbying officials to remove the push to minimally processed food in the guidance issued to retailers, according to documents and emails reviewed by the Guardian.
In response to a freedom of information request, the government released a cache of emails between the FDF and the DHSC.
Most of the correspondence was heavily redacted. The government cited section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act, “which provides for the protection of personal information”, and section 35(1)(a), “which provides protection for the information that relates to the formulation or development of government policy”.
The emails, sent between October 2022 and April 2023, reveal how the FDF, which represents firms with a combined annual turnover of more than £112bn, lobbied the DHSC to drop the guidance pushing retailers to promote minimally processed food...
I'm no food expert and subsist on a perfectly balanced diet of fish (protein) and chips (fat and carbohydrates) every day, and an apple.
But I'm suspicious of food arguments that lump "ultra-processed food" into a single category. Over the decades, everything around food resembles one set of faddists arguing with another group of faddists. Or fattests.
Nor am I shocked that industry lobbyists lobby for industry-favourable outcomes. That's their mission statement.
OTOH measures which industry lobbyists moan about have been significant successes - the extra tax on high sugar, for example, which reduced sugar levels in drinks to just below the threshold. And which has shown to deliver health benefits.
We have done this before. The evidence on this is extremely debatable on the direct effects of sugar tax. Sticking a few pence on sugary drinks doesn't seem to have dissuaded teenage kids drinking lakes full of sugary energy drinks.
A bigger measure / impact was the government convinced the food industry to reduce sugar content in a wide range of food voluntarily. So consumers are consuming less sugar from their food without any idea or via the idea that taxation is nudging them away from full sugar coke to sugar free sparkling water.
Indeed. As I have argued before that to get better health outcomes in the general populace, a good way is to make the foods that we all consume better for us, rather than scolding people about what they eat - where the scolding is probably misguided anyway.
People need to be taught to cook at home.
I'm in my 40s and certainly don't know how to do it, unless it's chilli con carne, lasagne or curry which I learned by rote.
You do realise you can teach yourself?
I did, over a few years. And not in any boring way - it was fun. Cooking is fun. You try new recipes, you use your hands in a pleasurable way, it’s relaxing and convivial. And at the end, you can cook
It’s something that some people just don’t seem to get, even if they try. I’m not quite sure why ?
Yes it’s strange
Some people are just too stupid to cook. You do need a decent IQ to understand measurements and processes and new words
But lots of bright people like @Casino_Royale can’t cook. My dad was a clever man and sort-of-tried to learn to cook - and failed
Humanity is peculiar
Buy meat.
Buy seasoning
Put seasoning on meat.
Put meat in air fryer.
Turn on for time that suits that meat.
Halfway through turn it over.
Take out.
Eat.
What IQ is needed for those instructions? Not everything needs to be super complicated.
Similar instructions can work for veg and potatoes too.
It came after the FDF waged a campaign to put pressure on the DHSC to rewrite its nutrition policy, lobbying officials to remove the push to minimally processed food in the guidance issued to retailers, according to documents and emails reviewed by the Guardian.
In response to a freedom of information request, the government released a cache of emails between the FDF and the DHSC.
Most of the correspondence was heavily redacted. The government cited section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act, “which provides for the protection of personal information”, and section 35(1)(a), “which provides protection for the information that relates to the formulation or development of government policy”.
The emails, sent between October 2022 and April 2023, reveal how the FDF, which represents firms with a combined annual turnover of more than £112bn, lobbied the DHSC to drop the guidance pushing retailers to promote minimally processed food...
I'm no food expert and subsist on a perfectly balanced diet of fish (protein) and chips (fat and carbohydrates) every day, and an apple.
But I'm suspicious of food arguments that lump "ultra-processed food" into a single category. Over the decades, everything around food resembles one set of faddists arguing with another group of faddists. Or fattests.
Nor am I shocked that industry lobbyists lobby for industry-favourable outcomes. That's their mission statement.
OTOH measures which industry lobbyists moan about have been significant successes - the extra tax on high sugar, for example, which reduced sugar levels in drinks to just below the threshold. And which has shown to deliver health benefits.
We have done this before. The evidence on this is extremely debatable on the direct effects of sugar tax. Sticking a few pence on sugary drinks doesn't seem to have dissuaded teenage kids drinking lakes full of sugary energy drinks.
A bigger measure / impact was the government convinced the food industry to reduce sugar content in a wide range of food voluntarily. So consumers are consuming less sugar from their food without any idea or via the idea that taxation is nudging them away from full sugar coke to sugar free sparkling water.
Indeed. As I have argued before that to get better health outcomes in the general populace, a good way is to make the foods that we all consume better for us, rather than scolding people about what they eat - where the scolding is probably misguided anyway.
People need to be taught to cook at home.
I'm in my 40s and certainly don't know how to do it, unless it's chilli con carne, lasagne or curry which I learned by rote.
You do realise you can teach yourself?
I did, over a few years. And not in any boring way - it was fun. Cooking is fun. You try new recipes, you use your hands in a pleasurable way, it’s relaxing and convivial. And at the end, you can cook
It’s something that some people just don’t seem to get, even if they try. I’m not quite sure why ?
Yes it’s strange
Some people are just too stupid to cook. You do need a decent IQ to understand measurements and processes and new words
But lots of bright people like @Casino_Royale can’t cook. My dad was a clever man and sort-of-tried to learn to cook - and failed
Humanity is peculiar
I think an instinctive sense of timing is one of the best assets for cooking imo. My partner dislikes cooking, gets stressed out doing it and not coincidentally is late for just about everything.
If you work here illegally or employ people who do, we’re coming for you.
Illegal working raids are up 40%. And we won’t stop there.
No messing about there. Polls will confirm (or not) but a word that probably leaps to many people's minds when thinking about Keir Starmer is "muscular". He'd take that, I reckon, if it turns out to be the case.
A quick glance at the video of him at a boxing club would instantly dispel that kind of insanity
It came after the FDF waged a campaign to put pressure on the DHSC to rewrite its nutrition policy, lobbying officials to remove the push to minimally processed food in the guidance issued to retailers, according to documents and emails reviewed by the Guardian.
In response to a freedom of information request, the government released a cache of emails between the FDF and the DHSC.
Most of the correspondence was heavily redacted. The government cited section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act, “which provides for the protection of personal information”, and section 35(1)(a), “which provides protection for the information that relates to the formulation or development of government policy”.
The emails, sent between October 2022 and April 2023, reveal how the FDF, which represents firms with a combined annual turnover of more than £112bn, lobbied the DHSC to drop the guidance pushing retailers to promote minimally processed food...
I'm no food expert and subsist on a perfectly balanced diet of fish (protein) and chips (fat and carbohydrates) every day, and an apple.
But I'm suspicious of food arguments that lump "ultra-processed food" into a single category. Over the decades, everything around food resembles one set of faddists arguing with another group of faddists. Or fattests.
Nor am I shocked that industry lobbyists lobby for industry-favourable outcomes. That's their mission statement.
OTOH measures which industry lobbyists moan about have been significant successes - the extra tax on high sugar, for example, which reduced sugar levels in drinks to just below the threshold. And which has shown to deliver health benefits.
Sugar is a single thing. Ultra-processed food is lots of different things lumped together.
I've become convinced this is poisoning us. I've seen kids born just six or seven years ago (so after May came to power) already be extremely fat. Everyone is eating shit and ordering terrible pizzas from Deliveroo.
I'm not sure what the right policy response is, but I'm definitely in the something must be done category now.
Luckily we have incredible new anti-obesity drugs
Mounjaro is a phenomenon and they are only getting better and cheaper. Soon they will come in pill form and cost a few quid
For the first time in forty years obesity is now falling in the USA (and quite fast). Americans are rich and can afford these drugs. We are quite rich - we can’t afford NOT to use these drugs
Every person we save from obesity saves the NHS £££££
It's better than nothing, but how about we teach people how to cook great home cooked food (like your Gran used to cook) and just hop on their BMX or play footie?
It's better for you. In almost every way.
You want schools to scrap SEND provision in order to give lessons in slashing and stabbing with razor sharp knives, not to mention boiling water.
In Edward IVs time, they tried to ban football to send everyone to archery practise.
The modern equivalent would be - every bloke between about 14 and 60 to the village green to practise with the full auto assault rifles….
Whatever the government’s net zero ambitions, funding the maintenance and expansion of this facility, to cover the needs of the next decade, would almost certainly be economically beneficial.
The Polanski and Ramsay/Chowns campaigns offer a starkly different approach for the Greens, so while not attracting much attention, I wonder if it’s a leadership election that could be very consequential for the next general election.
Can you point me to a summary of the different approaches?
From my viewpoint, I would vote Green locally - them being the only party that are consistently reliable on my issues of concern, but I always found them to be a bit loopy nationally, and far too prone to following fashion.
If we had the German Realo-Greens and Annalena Baerbock, that would very much help.
The Guardian described it as a choice between "election-focused professionals" (R/C) or "insurgent activists" (Polanski). Ramsay and Chowns are MPs, they both won their rural seats from Conservatives, they are supported by the old guard (Caroline Lucas, Jenny Jones) and have been seen as insufficiently supportive of trans rights. Polanski is a red-green eco-populist, has only won election through PR (he’s on the London Assembly), wants to leave NATO, etc.
The Greens should be two parties. The old Ecology Party and a Corbynite party.
If you work here illegally or employ people who do, we’re coming for you.
Illegal working raids are up 40%. And we won’t stop there.
No messing about there. Polls will confirm (or not) but a word that probably leaps to many people's minds when thinking about Keir Starmer is "muscular". He'd take that, I reckon, if it turns out to be the case.
Ahahahahaha
I guarantee that if you did a word cloud on Starmer the term “muscular” would not appear. He is seen as a weak, pitiable figure, except when he wants to persecute white people
Look at his abysmal polling, which has recently got even worse
You're hopelessly biased. I think you'd admit that.
I am hopelessly biased. I cordially despise him. But the polls are not biased - and his polling is horrible and getting worse
It came after the FDF waged a campaign to put pressure on the DHSC to rewrite its nutrition policy, lobbying officials to remove the push to minimally processed food in the guidance issued to retailers, according to documents and emails reviewed by the Guardian.
In response to a freedom of information request, the government released a cache of emails between the FDF and the DHSC.
Most of the correspondence was heavily redacted. The government cited section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act, “which provides for the protection of personal information”, and section 35(1)(a), “which provides protection for the information that relates to the formulation or development of government policy”.
The emails, sent between October 2022 and April 2023, reveal how the FDF, which represents firms with a combined annual turnover of more than £112bn, lobbied the DHSC to drop the guidance pushing retailers to promote minimally processed food...
I'm no food expert and subsist on a perfectly balanced diet of fish (protein) and chips (fat and carbohydrates) every day, and an apple.
But I'm suspicious of food arguments that lump "ultra-processed food" into a single category. Over the decades, everything around food resembles one set of faddists arguing with another group of faddists. Or fattests.
Nor am I shocked that industry lobbyists lobby for industry-favourable outcomes. That's their mission statement.
OTOH measures which industry lobbyists moan about have been significant successes - the extra tax on high sugar, for example, which reduced sugar levels in drinks to just below the threshold. And which has shown to deliver health benefits.
We have done this before. The evidence on this is extremely debatable on the direct effects of sugar tax. Sticking a few pence on sugary drinks doesn't seem to have dissuaded teenage kids drinking lakes full of sugary energy drinks.
A bigger measure / impact was the government convinced the food industry to reduce sugar content in a wide range of food voluntarily. So consumers are consuming less sugar from their food without any idea or via the idea that taxation is nudging them away from full sugar coke to sugar free sparkling water.
Indeed. As I have argued before that to get better health outcomes in the general populace, a good way is to make the foods that we all consume better for us, rather than scolding people about what they eat - where the scolding is probably misguided anyway.
People need to be taught to cook at home.
I'm in my 40s and certainly don't know how to do it, unless it's chilli con carne, lasagne or curry which I learned by rote.
"I just let my Mum get on with it," Sunil said, putting his feet up on the coffee table.
Its not more expensive to eat healthy home cooked food over takeaways, its considerably cheaper.
However many people don't want to bother. That's more challenging to deal with.
Air fryers are great inventions for that. Just chuck food in the air fryer, turn it over halfway, and its done. But that's still too much hard work for many people.
It’s perfectly easy to cook at home healthily and cheaply. It’s 100% laziness to complain that it’s not possible.
Even 'cheap' takeaways aren't cheap nowadays. Lucky to feed a family of 4 for less than £30 at somewhere like McDonalds.
We've used our air fryer routinely since it first came out and we got the original model when it was a novelty. It died a few years ago after nearly a decade of daily use, so we got a replacement from Amazon (no brand) that lasted a few years but died a few weeks ago - again having been used 2-3 times daily.
So just bought our third model, this time gone for the top of the line 2 drawer Ninja model which I bought on finance for £15 a month. I use this 2-3 times daily, but even using it just once a month would pay itself back. Using it regularly saves a fortune.
Police could search homes and phones after pregnancy loss ... New guidance from the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) on “child death investigation” advises officers to search for “drugs that can terminate pregnancy” in cases involving stillbirths. The NPCC, which sets strategic direction for policing across the country UK, also suggests a woman’s digital devices could be seized to help investigators “establish a woman’s knowledge and intention in relation to the pregnancy”. That could include checking a woman’s internet searches, messages to friends and family, and health apps, “such as menstrual cycle and fertility trackers”, it states.
Where is this nonsense coming from? I know where anti-abortion nonsense comes from, but how did it get into the NPCC? This is, among many other things, a massive waste of police resources.
If you work here illegally or employ people who do, we’re coming for you.
Illegal working raids are up 40%. And we won’t stop there.
No messing about there. Polls will confirm (or not) but a word that probably leaps to many people's minds when thinking about Keir Starmer is "muscular". He'd take that, I reckon, if it turns out to be the case.
I bet he’d take it with those man boobs and chins!
C'mon put your politics in a jar - he looks good for a man of 62.
Putting politics completely aside, I completely disagree. He was a handsome man with a square jaw in his thirties and forties from what I’ve seen, but looks old and flabby now. Reminds me of Richard Keys
If I look like that in 12 years time I’ll be horrified
Starmer looks nothing like Richard Keys - he has a mouth.
And you said Nigel Farage looks youthful so I'm not sure you're able to keep politics out of it (although I can accept that you're trying to).
Its not more expensive to eat healthy home cooked food over takeaways, its considerably cheaper.
However many people don't want to bother. That's more challenging to deal with.
Air fryers are great inventions for that. Just chuck food in the air fryer, turn it over halfway, and its done. But that's still too much hard work for many people.
It’s perfectly easy to cook at home healthily and cheaply. It’s 100% laziness to complain that it’s not possible.
Even 'cheap' takeaways aren't cheap nowadays. Lucky to feed a family of 4 for less than £30 at somewhere like McDonalds.
We've used our air fryer routinely since it first came out and we got the original model when it was a novelty. It died a few years ago after nearly a decade of daily use, so we got a replacement from Amazon (no brand) that lasted a few years but died a few weeks ago - again having been used 2-3 times daily.
So just bought our third model, this time gone for the top of the line 2 drawer Ninja model which I bought on finance for £15 a month. I use this 2-3 times daily, but even using it just once a month would pay itself back. Using it regularly saves a fortune.
I suspect that a big part of the feeling (among some) of being poorer than they were a few years ago, is related to the massive inflation in the hospitality industry - especially at the low end. As you say - the cheapest family takeaway is pretty expensive if you are minimum wage, now.
It came after the FDF waged a campaign to put pressure on the DHSC to rewrite its nutrition policy, lobbying officials to remove the push to minimally processed food in the guidance issued to retailers, according to documents and emails reviewed by the Guardian.
In response to a freedom of information request, the government released a cache of emails between the FDF and the DHSC.
Most of the correspondence was heavily redacted. The government cited section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act, “which provides for the protection of personal information”, and section 35(1)(a), “which provides protection for the information that relates to the formulation or development of government policy”.
The emails, sent between October 2022 and April 2023, reveal how the FDF, which represents firms with a combined annual turnover of more than £112bn, lobbied the DHSC to drop the guidance pushing retailers to promote minimally processed food...
I'm no food expert and subsist on a perfectly balanced diet of fish (protein) and chips (fat and carbohydrates) every day, and an apple.
But I'm suspicious of food arguments that lump "ultra-processed food" into a single category. Over the decades, everything around food resembles one set of faddists arguing with another group of faddists. Or fattests.
Nor am I shocked that industry lobbyists lobby for industry-favourable outcomes. That's their mission statement.
OTOH measures which industry lobbyists moan about have been significant successes - the extra tax on high sugar, for example, which reduced sugar levels in drinks to just below the threshold. And which has shown to deliver health benefits.
We have done this before. The evidence on this is extremely debatable on the direct effects of sugar tax. Sticking a few pence on sugary drinks doesn't seem to have dissuaded teenage kids drinking lakes full of sugary energy drinks.
A bigger measure / impact was the government convinced the food industry to reduce sugar content in a wide range of food voluntarily. So consumers are consuming less sugar from their food without any idea or via the idea that taxation is nudging them away from full sugar coke to sugar free sparkling water.
Indeed. As I have argued before that to get better health outcomes in the general populace, a good way is to make the foods that we all consume better for us, rather than scolding people about what they eat - where the scolding is probably misguided anyway.
People need to be taught to cook at home.
I'm in my 40s and certainly don't know how to do it, unless it's chilli con carne, lasagne or curry which I learned by rote.
Cookery, along with home management, basic DIY and household budgeting, should be a compulsory subject at school. More useful to the majority of students than compulsory maths (as opposed to arithmetic).
Whatever the government’s net zero ambitions, funding the maintenance and expansion of this facility, to cover the needs of the next decade, would almost certainly be economically beneficial.
It came after the FDF waged a campaign to put pressure on the DHSC to rewrite its nutrition policy, lobbying officials to remove the push to minimally processed food in the guidance issued to retailers, according to documents and emails reviewed by the Guardian.
In response to a freedom of information request, the government released a cache of emails between the FDF and the DHSC.
Most of the correspondence was heavily redacted. The government cited section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act, “which provides for the protection of personal information”, and section 35(1)(a), “which provides protection for the information that relates to the formulation or development of government policy”.
The emails, sent between October 2022 and April 2023, reveal how the FDF, which represents firms with a combined annual turnover of more than £112bn, lobbied the DHSC to drop the guidance pushing retailers to promote minimally processed food...
I'm no food expert and subsist on a perfectly balanced diet of fish (protein) and chips (fat and carbohydrates) every day, and an apple.
But I'm suspicious of food arguments that lump "ultra-processed food" into a single category. Over the decades, everything around food resembles one set of faddists arguing with another group of faddists. Or fattests.
Nor am I shocked that industry lobbyists lobby for industry-favourable outcomes. That's their mission statement.
OTOH measures which industry lobbyists moan about have been significant successes - the extra tax on high sugar, for example, which reduced sugar levels in drinks to just below the threshold. And which has shown to deliver health benefits.
We have done this before. The evidence on this is extremely debatable on the direct effects of sugar tax on drinks. Sticking a few pence on sugary drinks doesn't seem to have dissuaded teenage kids drinking lakes full of sugary energy drinks.
A bigger measure / impact was the government convinced the food industry to reduce sugar content in a wide range of food voluntarily.
Considering that the areas exempt from the tax are still full of sugar (eg milkshakes/bottled coffees etc) it doesn't seem entirely voluntary to me.
The industry reformulated to deliberately be just below the threshold for things that would hit the threshold, avoiding the cliff-edge of having hit the threshold.
Almost as if people act to avoid hitting cliff edges in taxation. I wonder where else that could apply?
No, sugar tax is on drinks. The government got the industry to agree to reduce sugar in quite a lot of processed foods.
I was talking about drinks. Drinks like Fanta etc were reformulated so that even the non-Zero version was just below the tax threshold, whereas drinks like bottled coffees (exempt from the tax) etc were not.
People act to avoid hitting thresholds in taxes if they can.
Yes, but in terms of it having a large impact on reducing people sugar intake, it really isn't a big part of it. And teenage kids are hosing everything down with stupid amount of energy drinks, despite the sugar tax / cost.
Again, energy drinks being subject to the tax have been formulated to be low sugar, whereas more natural bottled energy drinks like coffees etc are not.
If I'm on the road and want to get a caffeine hit from a supermarket I'll either get a coffee from a machine made fresh if they do that, or get a can of Monster Zero because there's no sugar in that, whereas there's not a single damned sugarfree bottled coffee available despite the fact that coffee is naturally free from sugar.
Normal monster hasn't been reformulated. 500ml can contains 55g of sugar.
But there's far, far, far more choice now in Zero options now than there were.
As someone who has always bought sugarfree drinks (for dental reasons originally, even before I cut sugar from my diet), its been a very notable trend.
Pre sugar tax you might get a solitary zero option and all the flavoured options were full sugar. Now the inverse is often true, with the sugarfree choices being cheaper of course.
Not ture. Go into any supermarket, there is no different in price generally between sugar or sugar-free. In fact, on the multipack, I noticed the sugar free monster zero was £1 more expensive the other day in Sainsburys.
Not sure where you shop but I always see the Zero option being cheaper.
It came after the FDF waged a campaign to put pressure on the DHSC to rewrite its nutrition policy, lobbying officials to remove the push to minimally processed food in the guidance issued to retailers, according to documents and emails reviewed by the Guardian.
In response to a freedom of information request, the government released a cache of emails between the FDF and the DHSC.
Most of the correspondence was heavily redacted. The government cited section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act, “which provides for the protection of personal information”, and section 35(1)(a), “which provides protection for the information that relates to the formulation or development of government policy”.
The emails, sent between October 2022 and April 2023, reveal how the FDF, which represents firms with a combined annual turnover of more than £112bn, lobbied the DHSC to drop the guidance pushing retailers to promote minimally processed food...
I'm no food expert and subsist on a perfectly balanced diet of fish (protein) and chips (fat and carbohydrates) every day, and an apple.
But I'm suspicious of food arguments that lump "ultra-processed food" into a single category. Over the decades, everything around food resembles one set of faddists arguing with another group of faddists. Or fattests.
Nor am I shocked that industry lobbyists lobby for industry-favourable outcomes. That's their mission statement.
OTOH measures which industry lobbyists moan about have been significant successes - the extra tax on high sugar, for example, which reduced sugar levels in drinks to just below the threshold. And which has shown to deliver health benefits.
We have done this before. The evidence on this is extremely debatable on the direct effects of sugar tax. Sticking a few pence on sugary drinks doesn't seem to have dissuaded teenage kids drinking lakes full of sugary energy drinks.
A bigger measure / impact was the government convinced the food industry to reduce sugar content in a wide range of food voluntarily. So consumers are consuming less sugar from their food without any idea or via the idea that taxation is nudging them away from full sugar coke to sugar free sparkling water.
Indeed. As I have argued before that to get better health outcomes in the general populace, a good way is to make the foods that we all consume better for us, rather than scolding people about what they eat - where the scolding is probably misguided anyway.
People need to be taught to cook at home.
I'm in my 40s and certainly don't know how to do it, unless it's chilli con carne, lasagne or curry which I learned by rote.
You do realise you can teach yourself?
I did, over a few years. And not in any boring way - it was fun. Cooking is fun. You try new recipes, you use your hands in a pleasurable way, it’s relaxing and convivial. And at the end, you can cook
Yeah, I do a bit by HelloFresh.
My point was more I want Home Economics taught in schools again, and more home cooking pushed by public policy*
[No faddish LGBT or vegan bullshit pushed into it either, which you know the EDI krew would have a cracking at, if they could]
If you work here illegally or employ people who do, we’re coming for you.
Illegal working raids are up 40%. And we won’t stop there.
No messing about there. Polls will confirm (or not) but a word that probably leaps to many people's minds when thinking about Keir Starmer is "muscular". He'd take that, I reckon, if it turns out to be the case.
A quick glance at the video of him at a boxing club would instantly dispel that kind of insanity
The Polanski and Ramsay/Chowns campaigns offer a starkly different approach for the Greens, so while not attracting much attention, I wonder if it’s a leadership election that could be very consequential for the next general election.
Can you point me to a summary of the different approaches?
From my viewpoint, I would vote Green locally - them being the only party that are consistently reliable on my issues of concern, but I always found them to be a bit loopy nationally, and far too prone to following fashion.
If we had the German Realo-Greens and Annalena Baerbock, that would very much help.
The Guardian described it as a choice between "election-focused professionals" (R/C) or "insurgent activists" (Polanski). Ramsay and Chowns are MPs, they both won their rural seats from Conservatives, they are supported by the old guard (Caroline Lucas, Jenny Jones) and have been seen as insufficiently supportive of trans rights. Polanski is a red-green eco-populist, has only won election through PR (he’s on the London Assembly), wants to leave NATO, etc.
The Greens should be two parties. The old Ecology Party and a Corbynite party.
So eco-populist is just another term for Corbynite?
It came after the FDF waged a campaign to put pressure on the DHSC to rewrite its nutrition policy, lobbying officials to remove the push to minimally processed food in the guidance issued to retailers, according to documents and emails reviewed by the Guardian.
In response to a freedom of information request, the government released a cache of emails between the FDF and the DHSC.
Most of the correspondence was heavily redacted. The government cited section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act, “which provides for the protection of personal information”, and section 35(1)(a), “which provides protection for the information that relates to the formulation or development of government policy”.
The emails, sent between October 2022 and April 2023, reveal how the FDF, which represents firms with a combined annual turnover of more than £112bn, lobbied the DHSC to drop the guidance pushing retailers to promote minimally processed food...
I'm no food expert and subsist on a perfectly balanced diet of fish (protein) and chips (fat and carbohydrates) every day, and an apple.
But I'm suspicious of food arguments that lump "ultra-processed food" into a single category. Over the decades, everything around food resembles one set of faddists arguing with another group of faddists. Or fattests.
Nor am I shocked that industry lobbyists lobby for industry-favourable outcomes. That's their mission statement.
OTOH measures which industry lobbyists moan about have been significant successes - the extra tax on high sugar, for example, which reduced sugar levels in drinks to just below the threshold. And which has shown to deliver health benefits.
We have done this before. The evidence on this is extremely debatable on the direct effects of sugar tax. Sticking a few pence on sugary drinks doesn't seem to have dissuaded teenage kids drinking lakes full of sugary energy drinks.
A bigger measure / impact was the government convinced the food industry to reduce sugar content in a wide range of food voluntarily. So consumers are consuming less sugar from their food without any idea or via the idea that taxation is nudging them away from full sugar coke to sugar free sparkling water.
Indeed. As I have argued before that to get better health outcomes in the general populace, a good way is to make the foods that we all consume better for us, rather than scolding people about what they eat - where the scolding is probably misguided anyway.
People need to be taught to cook at home.
I'm in my 40s and certainly don't know how to do it, unless it's chilli con carne, lasagne or curry which I learned by rote.
You do realise you can teach yourself?
I did, over a few years. And not in any boring way - it was fun. Cooking is fun. You try new recipes, you use your hands in a pleasurable way, it’s relaxing and convivial. And at the end, you can cook
It’s something that some people just don’t seem to get, even if they try. I’m not quite sure why ?
Yes it’s strange
Some people are just too stupid to cook. You do need a decent IQ to understand measurements and processes and new words
But lots of bright people like @Casino_Royale can’t cook. My dad was a clever man and sort-of-tried to learn to cook - and failed
Humanity is peculiar
Buy meat.
Buy seasoning
Put seasoning on meat.
Put meat in air fryer.
Turn on for time that suits that meat.
Halfway through turn it over.
Take out.
Eat.
What IQ is needed for those instructions? Not everything needs to be super complicated.
Similar instructions can work for veg and potatoes too.
The Polanski and Ramsay/Chowns campaigns offer a starkly different approach for the Greens, so while not attracting much attention, I wonder if it’s a leadership election that could be very consequential for the next general election.
Can you point me to a summary of the different approaches?
From my viewpoint, I would vote Green locally - them being the only party that are consistently reliable on my issues of concern, but I always found them to be a bit loopy nationally, and far too prone to following fashion.
If we had the German Realo-Greens and Annalena Baerbock, that would very much help.
The Guardian described it as a choice between "election-focused professionals" (R/C) or "insurgent activists" (Polanski). Ramsay and Chowns are MPs, they both won their rural seats from Conservatives, they are supported by the old guard (Caroline Lucas, Jenny Jones) and have been seen as insufficiently supportive of trans rights. Polanski is a red-green eco-populist, has only won election through PR (he’s on the London Assembly), wants to leave NATO, etc.
The Greens should be two parties. The old Ecology Party and a Corbynite party.
You could say this about any party, but successful parties learn to overcome their internal divisions.
Dolinger recalls that Yoon and his comrades were willing to die for what they believed in: that Korea deserved democracy. “In many ways,” Dolinger said, “Gwangju was where I was born, where I became a human being.” He reflects today that few people in his own country would be willing to lay down their lives for such a cause...
It came after the FDF waged a campaign to put pressure on the DHSC to rewrite its nutrition policy, lobbying officials to remove the push to minimally processed food in the guidance issued to retailers, according to documents and emails reviewed by the Guardian.
In response to a freedom of information request, the government released a cache of emails between the FDF and the DHSC.
Most of the correspondence was heavily redacted. The government cited section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act, “which provides for the protection of personal information”, and section 35(1)(a), “which provides protection for the information that relates to the formulation or development of government policy”.
The emails, sent between October 2022 and April 2023, reveal how the FDF, which represents firms with a combined annual turnover of more than £112bn, lobbied the DHSC to drop the guidance pushing retailers to promote minimally processed food...
I'm no food expert and subsist on a perfectly balanced diet of fish (protein) and chips (fat and carbohydrates) every day, and an apple.
But I'm suspicious of food arguments that lump "ultra-processed food" into a single category. Over the decades, everything around food resembles one set of faddists arguing with another group of faddists. Or fattests.
Nor am I shocked that industry lobbyists lobby for industry-favourable outcomes. That's their mission statement.
OTOH measures which industry lobbyists moan about have been significant successes - the extra tax on high sugar, for example, which reduced sugar levels in drinks to just below the threshold. And which has shown to deliver health benefits.
We have done this before. The evidence on this is extremely debatable on the direct effects of sugar tax. Sticking a few pence on sugary drinks doesn't seem to have dissuaded teenage kids drinking lakes full of sugary energy drinks.
A bigger measure / impact was the government convinced the food industry to reduce sugar content in a wide range of food voluntarily. So consumers are consuming less sugar from their food without any idea or via the idea that taxation is nudging them away from full sugar coke to sugar free sparkling water.
Indeed. As I have argued before that to get better health outcomes in the general populace, a good way is to make the foods that we all consume better for us, rather than scolding people about what they eat - where the scolding is probably misguided anyway.
People need to be taught to cook at home.
I'm in my 40s and certainly don't know how to do it, unless it's chilli con carne, lasagne or curry which I learned by rote.
You do realise you can teach yourself?
I did, over a few years. And not in any boring way - it was fun. Cooking is fun. You try new recipes, you use your hands in a pleasurable way, it’s relaxing and convivial. And at the end, you can cook
It’s something that some people just don’t seem to get, even if they try. I’m not quite sure why ?
Yes it’s strange
Some people are just too stupid to cook. You do need a decent IQ to understand measurements and processes and new words
But lots of bright people like @Casino_Royale can’t cook. My dad was a clever man and sort-of-tried to learn to cook - and failed
Humanity is peculiar
Buy meat.
Buy seasoning
Put seasoning on meat.
Put meat in air fryer.
Turn on for time that suits that meat.
Halfway through turn it over.
Take out.
Eat.
What IQ is needed for those instructions? Not everything needs to be super complicated.
Similar instructions can work for veg and potatoes too.
Massive pot bellies, shit tattoos, weird "fash" hair and stupid Rag and Bone men beards. Necking Neck Oil or Madri a vape or a cancer stick and then ordering a burger or pizza. And calling his own son "mate". Yuk.
Very occasionally you get the opposite: a gym freak guy out with others who'll only touch Huel and Water and has got biceps like they've been on steroids. But are as boring as hell.
If you work here illegally or employ people who do, we’re coming for you.
Illegal working raids are up 40%. And we won’t stop there.
No messing about there. Polls will confirm (or not) but a word that probably leaps to many people's minds when thinking about Keir Starmer is "muscular". He'd take that, I reckon, if it turns out to be the case.
I bet he’d take it with those man boobs and chins!
C'mon put your politics in a jar - he looks good for a man of 62.
Putting politics completely aside, I completely disagree. He was a handsome man with a square jaw in his thirties and forties from what I’ve seen, but looks old and flabby now. Reminds me of Richard Keys
If I look like that in 12 years time I’ll be horrified
Starmer looks nothing like Richard Keys - he has a mouth.
And you said Nigel Farage looks youthful so I'm not sure you're able to keep politics out of it (although I can accept that you're trying to).
Farage used to look older than his years; now he looks younger
Starmer has gone the opposite way. A genuinely handsome man into his 50s but now really quite porcine
It came after the FDF waged a campaign to put pressure on the DHSC to rewrite its nutrition policy, lobbying officials to remove the push to minimally processed food in the guidance issued to retailers, according to documents and emails reviewed by the Guardian.
In response to a freedom of information request, the government released a cache of emails between the FDF and the DHSC.
Most of the correspondence was heavily redacted. The government cited section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act, “which provides for the protection of personal information”, and section 35(1)(a), “which provides protection for the information that relates to the formulation or development of government policy”.
The emails, sent between October 2022 and April 2023, reveal how the FDF, which represents firms with a combined annual turnover of more than £112bn, lobbied the DHSC to drop the guidance pushing retailers to promote minimally processed food...
I'm no food expert and subsist on a perfectly balanced diet of fish (protein) and chips (fat and carbohydrates) every day, and an apple.
But I'm suspicious of food arguments that lump "ultra-processed food" into a single category. Over the decades, everything around food resembles one set of faddists arguing with another group of faddists. Or fattests.
Nor am I shocked that industry lobbyists lobby for industry-favourable outcomes. That's their mission statement.
OTOH measures which industry lobbyists moan about have been significant successes - the extra tax on high sugar, for example, which reduced sugar levels in drinks to just below the threshold. And which has shown to deliver health benefits.
We have done this before. The evidence on this is extremely debatable on the direct effects of sugar tax. Sticking a few pence on sugary drinks doesn't seem to have dissuaded teenage kids drinking lakes full of sugary energy drinks.
A bigger measure / impact was the government convinced the food industry to reduce sugar content in a wide range of food voluntarily. So consumers are consuming less sugar from their food without any idea or via the idea that taxation is nudging them away from full sugar coke to sugar free sparkling water.
Indeed. As I have argued before that to get better health outcomes in the general populace, a good way is to make the foods that we all consume better for us, rather than scolding people about what they eat - where the scolding is probably misguided anyway.
People need to be taught to cook at home.
I'm in my 40s and certainly don't know how to do it, unless it's chilli con carne, lasagne or curry which I learned by rote.
"I just let my Mum get on with it," Sunil said, putting his feet up on the coffee table.
I suppose you let her clean your footmarks off the coffee table as well.
Comments
Mounjaro is a phenomenon and they are only getting better and cheaper. Soon they will come in pill form and cost a few quid
For the first time in forty years obesity is now falling in the USA (and quite fast). Americans are rich and can afford these drugs. We are quite rich - we can’t afford NOT to use these drugs
Every person we save from obesity saves the NHS £££££
1. Pick cat up and cradle it in the crook of your left arm as if holding a baby. Position right forefinger and thumb on either side of cat's mouth and gently apply pressure to cheeks while holding pill in right hand. As cat opens mouth, pop pill into mouth. Allow cat to close mouth and swallow.
2. Retrieve pill from floor and cat from behind sofa. Cradle cat in left arm and repeat process.
3. Retrieve cat from bedroom, and throw soggy pill away. Take new pill from foil wrap, cradle cat in left arm holding rear paws tightly with left hand. Force jaws open and push pill to back of mouth with right forefinger. Hold mouth shut for a count of 10.
4. Retrieve pill from goldfish bowl and cat from top of wardrobe. Call spouse from garden.
5. Kneel on floor with cat wedged firmly between knees, holding front and rear paws. Ignore low growls emitted by cat. Get spouse to hold cat's head firmly with one hand while forcing wooden ruler into mouth. Drop pill down ruler and rub cat's throat vigorously.
6. Retrieve cat from curtain rail, get another pill from foil wrap. Make note to buy new ruler and repair curtains. Carefully sweep shattered figurines from hearth and set to one side for gluing later.
7. Wrap cat in large towel and get spouse to lie on cat with its head just visible from below spouse's armpit. Put pill in end of drinking straw, force cat's mouth open with pencil and blow down drinking straw.
8. Check label to make sure pill not harmful to humans, drink glass of water to take taste away. Apply band-aid to spouse's forearm and remove blood from carpet with cold water and soap.
9. Retrieve cat from neighbor's shed. Get another pill. Place cat in cupboard and close door onto neck to leave head showing. Force mouth open with dessert spoon. Flick pill down throat with elastic band.
10. Fetch screwdriver from garage and put door back on hinges. Apply cold compress to cheek and check records for date of last tetanus shot. Throw T-shirt away and fetch new one from bedroom.
11. Ring fire brigade to retrieve cat from tree across the road. Apologize to neighbor who crashed into fence while swerving to avoid cat. Take last pill from foil wrap.
12. Tie the little bastard’s front paws to rear paws with garden twine and bind tightly to leg of dining table. Find heavy duty pruning gloves from shed. Force cat's mouth open with small spanner. Push pill into mouth followed by large piece of fillet steak. Hold head vertically and pour 1/2 pint of water down throat to wash pill down.
13. Get spouse to drive you to emergency room; sit quietly while doctor stitches fingers and forearm and removes pill remnants from right eye. Stop by furniture shop on way home to order new table.
14. Arrange for the RSPCA to collect the cat. Buy a goldfish.
HOW TO GIVE A DOG A PILL:
1. Wrap it in bacon.
It's the expression on a cats face when you're trying to administer anything. Pure hatred.
Penny: No, no, no, no, I didn't forget. Um, there's this cat in a box and until you open it, it's either dead or alive or both. Although, back in Nebraska, our cat got stuck in my brother's camp trunk, and we did not need to open it to know there was all kinds of dead cat in there.
Trump berates Walmart over price hikes: ‘Eat the tariffs’
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5305499-donald-trump-walmart-tariffs-price-hike/
How long before he introduces price controls ... ?
We were driving on the A49 from Hereford to Monmouth yesterday, in the late afternoon sunshine, and the view from the sides of Aconbury hill towards Orcop, Garway and the Black Mountains is as beautiful as any in France outside the Alps and Pyrenees. And crucially it’s not bleak and cold like most of the beautiful views in Northern Britain, it belongs to the South.
One of my favourites as a child.
Compared to the whole country though, I think it's fair to day that the group up for Election were good for Reform.
(I'd also suggest that the reduction in number of Council seats was perhaps in their favour, as it enabled them to focus their checking process on ~1/3 fewer local elections.)
https://x.com/keir_starmer/status/1924022034146705420
If you work here illegally or employ people who do, we’re coming for you.
Illegal working raids are up 40%. And we won’t stop there.
The weird thing is it’s really easy to give a cat an injection, an experience I’ve had regularly with several diabetic cats. Scruff them, inject into the scruff, done.
I've always suspected the soft drink industry reacted entirely the wrong way to the sugar tax. People who worried about sugar and didn't mind the taste of sweeteners were already drinking zero-sugar products. Going all in on sweeteners just drove the rest of their customers away to things like energy drinks.
Barr did something interesting with Irn Bru - sweeten the original drink to keep the cost down, but launch a full-sugar version (Irn Bru 1901) at a much higher price. 1901 costs more than double the sweetened version but still sells.
I agree it’s the loveliest corner of inland southern
Britain. The Cornish rias like Helford are even prettier but they’re not really inland. Suffolk is lovely but fragmented. The Weald and the Downs can be enticing but, sadly, there are too many roads and towns and drab developments
What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet
From my viewpoint, I would vote Green locally - them being the only party that are consistently reliable on my issues of concern, but I always found them to be a bit loopy nationally, and far too prone to following fashion.
If we had the German Realo-Greens and Annalena Baerbock, that would very much help.
I sent you a VM about British Gas a few days ago, not sure if you saw it?
It's a bit like claiming that prison is a great way to reduce crime - simply lock up the habitual criminals! But that's damned expensive and it would be better for everyone to get the intervention in much earlier (probably pre-school/pre-natal).
I don't think having 60%+ of the population, including young children, on prescription drugs is a place we want to end up. It's taxpayers absorbing the enormous negative externality of food producers putting loads of crap in their food.
Most cats will scarf it down voluntarily.
Implement my plan -
1) undocumented employment, selling visa etc £100k fine per instance.
2) using proceeds of crime etc, ltd companies won’t shield directors assets.
3) deal with the issue of companies using contracting to create a layer. See Deliveroo
4) half the fine from 1) goes to the person reporting.
5) upon conviction the person giving evidence gets indefinite leave to remain.
So upon conviction migrant gets £50k + a real visa.
- Every scumbag employer will be shitting themselves. Every person they’ve mistreated can get rich by sending them down.
- Tornado of court cases, brought privately, by ambulance chaser lawyers on contingency fee….
- Sell it as justice for the migrants.
Obesity is a monstrous worldwide problem - trust me, I’ve seen it - and now we have miraculous drugs that fix it. eg Mounjaro taken over 70 weeks induces an average 20% loss of total body weight. That’s remarkable
At the same time it looks like these drugs do amazing things against cancer, Alzheimer’s, all kinds of addiction
Are these drugs dangerous and new? Well no, not really - they’ve been used by diabetics for yonks
The human race has lucked out at a crucial moment. These obesity drugs could be as game changing as antibiotics. We must use them
Yes of course it would be great if we could get everyone to slim down via yoga, Pilates and salads but let’s be real
This is why we need all the barriers off our footpaths, and all those housing areas which were isolated from each other on bad police advice in the 1980s and 1990s reconnecting - so everyone can walk everywhere, especially to school.
This is on the path where I used to walk to my infant school. I'm aiming to draft a complaint as today's homework:
The croquet hoop is 2ft wide and 4ft high, and the "shimmy round the side or through the cage" gap is about 16".
It is a prominently signposted, 2m wide asphalt, walking/wheeling and cycling route. It is a public footpath. Were it useable, that would be some cycles off the roads.
Mum with a pram? Mobility aid? Forget it, since - I reckon - 198x. It was clear in the 1970s, when I was six; I left that school at 7.
The fascinating thing is how as Brits we just accept unlawful stuff just imposed on us.
(/hobbyhorse)
...
Labour will throw its weight behind a new generation of science champions in an effort to stem a tide of successful companies quitting Britain for the US.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/05/18/ministers-push-to-stop-pharma-brain-drain-to-us/ (£££)
See PB passim.
Doesn't seem an efficient use of resources tbh.
Better than nothing, I suppose, but a symptom of our failure on regulation and public health. For diseases that cannot be prevented with such means (type 1 diabetes, some random cancers and so on) - that's fine.
Its not all coming from the milk, its coming from added sugar.
This is according to research led by the Medical Research Council’s (MRC) Epidemiology Unit at the University of Cambridge.
Taking into account current trends in obesity, their estimates suggest that around 5,000 cases of obesity per year may have been prevented in year 6 girls alone.
https://www.ukri.org/news/sugary-drinks-tax-may-have-prevented-over-5000-cases-of-obesity/
We should still try and do all this, but in the meantime we can save millions of lives and many billions of ££ by giving fat people drugs that make them slim and notably healthier
Prevention is better than a cure. Same could be said of so many things.
“The United States could see one of the sharpest drops in obesity rates globally, thanks to the growing use of weight loss drugs such as Ozempic and Wegovy, according to a new report.
The latest data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggests the obesity rate is already starting to decline — from 42 per cent to 40.3 per cent over the past three years — equivalent to 4.1 million adults moving out of the obesity category.
Now, a new analysis by digital health provider Treated estimates that the US could see a further 10.6 per cent reduction in obesity over the next five years, with around 2.17 million people shedding enough weight annually to no longer be classed as obese.”
https://www.obesityalliance.co.uk/news/us-obesity-rate-set-to-fall-thanks-to-weight-loss-drugs
However many people don't want to bother. That's more challenging to deal with.
Air fryers are great inventions for that. Just chuck food in the air fryer, turn it over halfway, and its done. But that's still too much hard work for many people.
I'm in my 40s and certainly don't know how to do it, unless it's chilli con carne, lasagne or curry which I learned by rote.
Mr Burnham said Northern voters were rightly angry after watching multibillion-pound projects such as the Elizabeth Line come to fruition in London while schemes promised to them a decade ago remain in limbo.
Labour will lose the North without rail links, Andy Burnham warns Starmer
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/05/18/labour-will-lose-north-without-rail-link-andy-burnham
Call me naive, but I thought it might be about biodiversity.
Essex is going to have a mayor next year and I wonder if the county (etc) electoral divisions will be the same.
I did, over a few years. And not in any boring way - it was fun. Cooking is fun. You try new recipes, you use your hands in a pleasurable way, it’s relaxing and convivial. And at the end, you can cook
And you don't need all 200ml to be pure milk either. Milk, water and coffee is a possible combination too for making a coffee.
If I make a coffee at home I might get about 1g of carbs in my cup, from whole milk, not 20g.
I sometimes get Adrian Ramsay, who is a former head of the Centre for Alternative Technologies, with Adam Ramsay, who used to edit the Bright Green Scotland blog, and whose dad owns a castle and an estate and I think reintroduced beavers to Scotland.
I guarantee that if you did a word cloud on Starmer the term “muscular” would not appear. He is seen as a weak, pitiable figure, except when he wants to persecute white people
Look at his abysmal polling, which has recently got even worse
I’m not quite sure why ?
Analysts at Morgan Stanley estimate that 24 million people, or 7% of the US population, will be taking the new GLP-1 drugs by 2035. A survey carried out of 300 patients taking the shots showed they ate less and cut back the most on foods high in sugar and fat. About 90% of those using the drugs said their snacking declined and 77% said they visited fast-casual restaurants less often.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/jan/06/will-weight-loss-drugs-kill-the-fast-food-business
Does it matter anyway? Soon the drugs will be cheap (Mounjaro is already half the price of the original Ozempic)
So they will become pills you take for life, like blood pressure medication
We've used our air fryer routinely since it first came out and we got the original model when it was a novelty. It died a few years ago after nearly a decade of daily use, so we got a replacement from Amazon (no brand) that lasted a few years but died a few weeks ago - again having been used 2-3 times daily.
So just bought our third model, this time gone for the top of the line 2 drawer Ninja model which I bought on finance for £15 a month. I use this 2-3 times daily, but even using it just once a month would pay itself back. Using it regularly saves a fortune.
@josh_wingrove
“Eat the tariffs,” Trump tells Walmart.
https://x.com/josh_wingrove/status/1923754136635338857
Less money in cures.
...
New guidance from the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) on “child death investigation” advises officers to search for “drugs that can terminate pregnancy” in cases involving stillbirths. The NPCC, which sets strategic direction for policing across the country UK, also suggests a woman’s digital devices could be seized to help investigators “establish a woman’s knowledge and intention in relation to the pregnancy”. That could include checking a woman’s internet searches, messages to friends and family, and health apps, “such as menstrual cycle and fertility trackers”, it states.
Details are also provided for how police could bypass legal requirements for a court order to obtain medical records about a woman’s abortion from NHS providers.
https://observer.co.uk/news/national/article/police-could-search-homes-and-seize-phones-after-sudden-pregnancy-loss
It's better for you. In almost every way.
In the Boris Johnson sense.
Probably too much vegan venison bacon.
Some people are just too stupid to cook. You do need a decent IQ to understand measurements and processes and new words
But lots of bright people like @Casino_Royale can’t cook. My dad was a clever man and sort-of-tried to learn to cook - and failed
Humanity is peculiar
If I look like that in 12 years time I’ll be horrified
Buy seasoning
Put seasoning on meat.
Put meat in air fryer.
Turn on for time that suits that meat.
Halfway through turn it over.
Take out.
Eat.
What IQ is needed for those instructions? Not everything needs to be super complicated.
Similar instructions can work for veg and potatoes too.
The man is, physically, pathetically weak
Lucky he sticks to his principles, eh?
The modern equivalent would be - every bloke between about 14 and 60 to the village green to practise with the full auto assault rifles….
Energy boss warns over future of gas storage facility
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0mrwdzvrmzo
Thirty days’ gas storage for the UK - versus six without it - would make a huge difference in our vulnerability to gas price spikes.
And you said Nigel Farage looks youthful so I'm not sure you're able to keep politics out of it (although I can accept that you're trying to).
As against that, we should remember this is a man who believes that British Gas has an excellent reputation and its staff are fantastic.
My point was more I want Home Economics taught in schools again, and more home cooking pushed by public policy*
[No faddish LGBT or vegan bullshit pushed into it either, which you know the EDI krew would have a cracking at, if they could]
https://youtu.be/-tynSZLvDgg
He’d definitely lose a fight with a cat
Only joking. Good for you. It does sound like quite simple food but if you enjoy it and it keeps you healthy (and you say it does) then 👍
I do wish I could get an air fryer. But my kitchen simply doesn’t have room. If and when I emigrate to a condo in chiang mai it’ll be first on my list
David Dolinger granted Gwangju honorary citizenship in recognition of 5.18 role
https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/southkorea/globalcommunity/20250518/david-dolinger-granted-gwangju-honorary-citizenship-in-recognition-of-518-role
…” During that fateful time 45 years ago, because of the citizens of Gwangju … because of the people here in Gwangju … who were standing up for democracy, justice and human rights, I was never afraid,” he said. “I was accepted as part of a large family, a community of people with a mission, a cause and who were taking care of each other.”
Dolinger recalls that Yoon and his comrades were willing to die for what they believed in: that Korea deserved democracy. “In many ways,” Dolinger said, “Gwangju was where I was born, where I became a human being.” He reflects today that few people in his own country would be willing to lay down their lives for such a cause...
Blokes. In their 20s and 30s. Terrible.
Massive pot bellies, shit tattoos, weird "fash" hair and stupid Rag and Bone men beards. Necking Neck Oil or Madri a vape or a cancer stick and then ordering a burger or pizza. And calling his own son "mate". Yuk.
Very occasionally you get the opposite: a gym freak guy out with others who'll only touch Huel and Water and has got biceps like they've been on steroids. But are as boring as hell.
What a choice.
How did it come to this?
Starmer has gone the opposite way. A genuinely handsome man into his 50s but now really quite porcine