COMMENT: Cutting calories from foods

Plans are afoot for food manufacturers to voluntarily cut the number of calories in a wide range of their products.

What's the point?

I suspect that the tiny (and yes the proposals are no more than a tiny slither from the calorie count of the products) will have a negligible effect on the daily calorie consumption of most people. It has been suggested that it might be as little as the equivalent of 16 peanuts a day!

The problem is the current proposal is voluntary. It's not backed by any legislation or code of conduct.

To improve diets there are two sensible tactics the government should be legislating for.

1) Heavily tax all high fat, high salt, unhealthy food. High taxation has been used to try to put off smokers so why not as a tool to adjust eating habits? And, instead of the money being lost in the Treasury's coffers, why not use the money raised to subsidise healthy foods?

2) Educate more and better about the dangers of eating badly as well as how to cook.

On BBC News just now a mother said she welcomed foods that children eat being made more healthy. The examples she used were two chocolate bars!

D'oh!