Short
Arnold
Lara MDanish Health Policy Vs Australian
August 30th 2006 06:21
According to a recent article in SMH, experts in obesity claim that eating highly processed foods with little nutritional value and extreme fat, salt and sugar content can be just as physically damaging as tobacco and should therefore be discouraged as strongly on a national level. This is quite a big claim to make, especially since they suggest massive changes such as "physical activity rules for school students, a ban on all heavily processed fast foods and snacks from public schools and hospitals, unambiguous colour-coded labels to denote nutritional quality, taxation for unhealthy products balanced with subsidies for fresh foods, and prohibition of all food marketing aimed at children." They also speculative that this method would begin to be effective after only the first year of implementation.
A 'Danish' - http://www.sxc.hu/photo/250532
The government, however, is unconcerned and says that it is the responsibility of the consumer to monitor their own eating habits. This concept of free market regulation is interesting. Some experts are now arguing that this is not as simply effective a form of regulation as previously thought. Unfortunately many individuals, particularly children, are not equipped with the facilities to determine nutritional food choices from bad. Producers are in part responsible as they have too high a degree of autonomy when labelling and packaging their products in a misleading fashion. Though the government states that individuals should exercise a level of responsibility as a matter of course, it is quite possible that the high economic influence of fast food companies could have also some influence on government policies.
Over a recent dinner conversation an acquaintance informed me of some
legislation she discovered on a recent trip to Denmark. Like Australia and
the USA, Denmark faced a rising obesity problem. Unlike Australia and the USA, the Danish government cared enough about their people to do something about it. A series of taxation changes resulted in junk food becoming far more expensive than healthy food. My informant claimed that skim milk was a much cheaper alternative to full cream milk. Furthermore, the Danish government have also introduced a scheme in which people undertaking a certain level of physical activity such a gym membership or dance lessons will qualify for tax deductions.
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