So just HOW should 'the government' tackle obesity etc...??

One of the biggest problems in schools is the lack of discipline and allowing children to do as they please, if they dont want to take part in P.E they just refuse and there is nothing a teacher can do.
As much as i hate tax, i cant see any other way of getting people to eat less junk, just today i saw 24 cans of fizzy pop in a supermarket for £2.99, this stuff is supposed to be a treat not a young persons usual drink.
Here in Scotland you can buy a brekkie box which is a pizza box overflowing with bacon, sausages,eggs, potato scones,hash browns and blackpuddings with a fizzy drink to wash it down with for £6, this is madness.

Another problem I think happens in pregnancy. In other cultures pregnant women carry babies/harvests/water and work until they give birth

Here, pregnant women are afraid to exercise with a big market in "antenatal exercise classes" which just perpetuate the myth that pregnant women can't/shouldn't exercise normally

Basically pregnant women are told "you don't know what you're doing" - don't exercise unless it's at an "anti natal" class once a week with someone telling you what to do, don't eat normally, just put your feet up until you're as physically un-ready for the marathon of labour as you possibly could be, then let the doctors take over.

Another "culture" story about being pregnant in the UK: when pregnant with one of my girls I was bringing packed lunches to where I worked. Examples of similar packed lunches to what I was bringing:
- Big pot of humous with either carrot and corriander and a bit of lemon mixed in or crudites and about 5 oat cakes. Herb tea. Some fruit
- Smoked salmon and avocado and oat cakes or ryvita (big portions, about 3 heaped high - brought separately and assembled at work). Fruit juice, dried mango
- A whole chicken leg, some beetroot, fruit, herb tea

^ that sort of thing. Anyway, a big bunch of women at my work pretty much tried to stage an "intervention" telling me that I was selfish and vein to "diet" when pregnant! And it was bad for the baby to "diet" when pregnant.

I wasn't "dieting". I was having big portions and not counting anything, I just turned down the staff room cakes/biscuits and ate healthy food instead. I did it because I had to survive a pregnancy with enough energy to run after a toddler, and eating cake makes me feel tired and sluggish. I didn't do it to get "thin" and I wasn't restricting my portions enough to lose weight anyway (I wasn't restricting my portions at all)

So. Healthy food choices = dieting, and pregnant women shouldn't "diet"…. is what I learnt!

Well... I stayed skinny.

They're not gobstoppers (in the Livestrong pic)! You could still talk with one six of those in your mouth.

www.tesco.com/groceries/product/details/?id=256179436

Tesco says a quarter of an 85g pack of Tesco dolly mixtures contains 19g sugar, as if anyone would just eat a quarter of the packet.

So 21g dolly mixtures contains 19g sugar approx

So 2oz dolly mixtures (56g) would contain 50g sugar.

The recommended daily allowance of sugar has just been reduced from 40g/day to 25g/day for adults.Presumably the allowance for children is rather less.

Hope that helps

I think the whole country's gone mad. Starting with Public Health England.

I don't think Willy Wonka had a lot to do with ours. TBH.

Wonka gobstoppers don't look very big...

www.livestrong.com/article/352620-gobstoppers-nutrition/

Hmmm! Some disagreement here. It appears it depends on the brand and size of the gobstopper:
www.sparkpeople.com/calories-in.asp?food=gobstoppers

Ours were HUGE!

Here you are bells
www.myfitnesspal.com/food/calories/wonka-small-gobstoppers-3-pack-250358158

5g total carbohydrate in 3 small gobstoppers.
A sugar cube weighs 4g.

Or two ounces of dolly mixture? (yum)

How much sugar was there in the average gobstopper back in the fifties?

But there's one in another paper which says 'Children eat half their sugar allowance at breakfast' which is a bit more alarming!

Read headline that some children's breakfasts mayh contain the equivalant of THREE SUGAR CUBES!!!

Actually I am being totally sarcastic as I do not think three sugar cubes first thing in the morning would do any harm to any child.

DD OH got out of pre-diabetes on LCHF. We did both lose weight though, (he lost 30kg and I lost 15kg) but still without counting calories. We did also cut portion size, but happily ate cheese, butter, meat with fat throughout. As seems to be the case with LCHF cholesterol dropped too and he was taken off statins.
I agree with you that you seem to have have much more control over what you eat with LCHF. We certainly have had no problem sticking to it for several years now.

I rarely count carbs either, Mamie, because after 25 years I know how much to eat. Every so often, I monitor what I eat by putting my food intake into a food log called 'Food Focus' and I just eat the way I do from habit.

However, I'm not trying to lose weight. If I were, I'd start off by looking at how many calories I was eating and work out which ones are the least nutrition-rich and I'd cut down portion sizes.

My interest in diet started when I was diagnosed with T2 diabetes. The standard advice at the time didn't work for me. It was based round starchy carbs, which sent my blood glucose levels up, even in quite small quantities. It wasn't until I cut out the carbs (not just added sugar) and increased my fat and protein intake that my blood glucose levels stabilised.

DD I have never counted calories on the LCHF diet and like many others have lost weight and kept it off. I think the point is that the things that you eat are much more sustaining than carbs and you feel full, don't need to snack etc.
We still eat muesli but make our own to avoid added sugar and use nuts and seeds with a small amount of dried fruit or fresh berries. With full-fat yoghurt it keeps us going through a morning's hard graft in the garden. We have lots of eggs too.
I think the answer for people who find it hard to resist things in the supermarket could be to shop on-line? We can't do that in rural France but we shop a lot at the market.

I must admit that I love breakfast - I guess it's habit. I always think it's the best part of staying in a hotel. I get a bit shakey mid-morning if I skip breakfast. However, my breakfast is usually high in fat and protein. One of my favourites is scrambled egg on a grilled flat mushroom on a small piece of granary toast, which soaks up the mushroom juices. I don't eat cereals.

Disagree totally goldengirl but then I've never eaten cereals for breakfast since I reached the age where I could choose for myself (about 8?) so there are plenty of alternatives or you could just go without. There is increasing evidence that a period of fasting is actually good for you metabolically and what better way than building a 12 hour fast into your daily régime? It's a myth that you need something to 'get you going in the morning'.

Nobody 'tells you what to do' they just issue advice to nudge you in a certain direction and you are free to take that advice or ignore it.

Ooops! Forgot the link to the BBC article, which seems to have disappeared now from the BBC front page.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-38491414

Gary Taubes has been going on about sugar for years and, to an extent, I think he's right about the demonisation of fat. I'm not a food scientist, but I have followed a high fat/low carbohydrate diet for years and it works for me. I've had my blood sugar, cholesterol and weight monitored more than most, so there's obviously something in it. However, it worried me a bit that the message in the Guardian article is that overall calorie intake doesn't matter, because it does. I'll leave the scientists to argue about whether sugar triggers some kind of metabolic change, because I honestly don't know. My food is low carb of all sorts, not just low sugar. Most of my carbs come from raw vegetables and some fruit.

There was an article today on the BBC about ending 'cake days' at work, which I support. It's quite difficult to refuse cake at work when it's offered and I'm sure I was often seen as anti-social. Whenever I had to work 12+ hour days (parents' evening, etc) schools used to provide a meal. More often than not, this was sandwiches and cake with fruit juice. I used to take more sandwiches than necessary, take out the fillings, throw away the bread and drink water or I used to take in a piece of cooked chicken and a few nuts. Whatever I did, many people thought I was odd.

I would love to see employers taking more responsibility for their employees' well being across a whole range of issues. Robert Owen, the nineteenth century mill owner and philanthropist, knew that providing a healthier environment for his workers meant that they were not only healthier and happier, but more productive.

Good link Mamie and a growing body of evidence to support Taubes.

With sweets and chocolates, alcohol and non alcohol drinks on offer everywhere you turn in a supermarket and adverts on the TV what hope is there for those with a soft spot for such items? Picking on breakfast cereal I think is counterproductive as we need something to get us going in the morning. It's the snacks in the middle that are harming. My Pilates instructor said, with a twinkle in his eye, 'just eat less; use a smaller plate'. My GP said something similar. It's all about willpower but I'm the last one to talk about that though I'm eating better since I started exercising more - so perhaps that's the way to go AND I'm v-e-r-y-s-l-o-w-l-y losing weight. I'm sick of agencies telling us what to do all the time - it will be something different soon. If you enjoy breakfast cereal then eat it - at breakfast!!!

I saw the item on BBC TV news today about sugar in cereals.
You have to really search hard to find one without sugar.
Even muesli, which originally was supposed to be a healthy cereal - I saw one with chocolate chips the other day.
The trouble is that once people have got used to all food having a slightly sweet taste we don't fancy those without.
So - ban sugar in cereals - get used to it!