On the radio on the way home I heard they were releasing something, (a document of some description?), to uncover all the bad foods that are making healthy claims on their labels. The examples they gave actually included marshmallows that are fat free and chips with 75% less salt, and said that people may not realise fat free marshmallows have sugar and low slt chips have saturated fat.
Are you kidding me?
How about investing money in health and food education. TEACH people how to read labels and to bother doing it. TEACH people that what goes into their body does matter. TEACH people that 400 different chemicals is not OK just because it's low in calories. TEACH people to look in the 'per 100g' column of the label for the %. TEACH TEACH TEACH!
So now they are proposing a traffic light system for foods. Green for healthy, amber for eat moderately and red for eat occasionally. I can see how this would be beneficial to Australian's who say, can't read, but apart from that, this just makes me insanely angry.
Yes, parent's may not have time to read the labels with their kids in t he trolley who no doubt hate supermarkets like I hate breakfast cereal marketing, but it takes one day to familiarise yourself with the healthiest products, and less than that to learn how to read a label in 15seconds (scan salt, sugar, fat, sat fat and ingredients, it takes nothing!). Do we really need to dumb our nation down to a traffic light system?
And what makes anyone think a one size fits all system is going to work? A box of cornflakes may have an amber light for the majority of the population, but what about diabetics? Do they know that it contains sugar? You might say a diabetic has to read the label as it's a part of their lives and managing their health, but why are we not all being taught to manage our health in this way?
Prevention and education are the two areas of Australian Health that I think need the most attention and somehow, they seem to keep avoiding dealing with either.
Makes me so mad!
Stay well (and read your labels! If you don't know how, I will teach you myself..)
Nat x
