Eating for health : a diet action plan for Scotland.

  • Great Britain. Scottish Office. Department of Health.
Date:
1996
Catalogue details

Licence: Open Government Licence

Credit: Eating for health : a diet action plan for Scotland. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    7/138 (page 7)
    EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The Group was asked to set out what has to be done in Scotland to make its men, women and children healthier, through a better diet. Plainly, the choice of food we make, day in and day out, is the nub. We are not short of advice, and surveys show that most people know what makes a healthy diet and what does not. It is the widespread failure to act on that knowledge which is the reason for this Action Plan, and for the complex, widely cast but practical and effective things to do that make up the Group’s recommendations. Eating well is a long-term investment in good health, which is within the reach of most Scots. Yet the image, and too often the reality, of a Scotch pie and chips, washed down by a sugary drink or a beer, is the reverse. The conditions to which poor diet and obesity give rise are, in health terms, burdensome to treat, poor in outcome, and more common in Scotland than almost anywhere else. In human terms, they account for diminished lives, pain and stress. Children form tastes early: building from what we know of their present diet, prospects for their health in middle and old age look bleak. Of course, food cannot simply be approached in terms of health. Most of the Group members are drawn from fields outside health, and all members have been keenly aware that food is an industry - competitive, complex and changing - a strong feature of Scotland’s economic life. Food is also a part of people’s enjoyment of life. Eating out, linked both to work and pleasure, has become common. Eating in the home has been affected by changes in lifestyle, working hours and cooking methods which have tended to replace few and formal meals that rely on long preparation time by diets which draw more on “short order” meals and snacks. And many people are fed by others. This is true in households, but also in workplaces, schools and other institutions. The concept of diet as medicine is profoundly unappealing and will not work. But a framework of healthy eating, which looks more to fruit and vegetables, cereals, fish and leaner meat, and less to fat, sugar and salt, can offer plenty of room for enjoyable, varied, and adventurous life-long eating, that takes account of the cornucopia of foods available in Scotland, and the restrictions on those whose income limits choice. In this report, we examine every sector of the food industry and other areas that present the hardest challenge to healthy diet. For each, we identify measures we see as practical over the next few years and offering singly, but more so together, a real impact on diet. The Plan bears on those organisations which could be expected to lead the nation’s health - The Scottish Office and national agencies, the National Health Service and local government. Industry may take comfort in that, but the Plan depends, very substantially, too on its contribution. Two elements of commercial interest - the capture of changing public tastes and the prospect of larger markets for the commodities which Scotland produces - may make that contribution palatable. iS AYVWWAS FAILNDAXI