Story: A new government campaign has been launched to address obesity in the UK, containing a number of controversial measures, including mandatory calorie labelling on chain restaurant menus and banning offers on junk food.
Reasonable take: Food poverty is a huge issue in the UK, with approximately 1.6 million people using a food bank in 2019 – so perhaps that’s something to consider while trying to tackle a related public health issue.
Brain rot: Perhaps people wouldn’t be so fat and poor if they spent 53p less on potatoes!
This week, the Tory government launched a new “Better Health” campaign, outlining measures to help the British public “embrace a healthier lifestyle” and “encourage millions to lose weight and cut the risks of COVID-19”.
Videos by VICE
The campaign, run by Public Health England, includes plans to ban unhealthy food advertisements before the watershed, forbid “buy one get one free” offers on junk food, pay doctors to send people to diet clubs and introduce calorie labelling on alcohol and chain restaurant menus.
As expected, this discourse around public health has led to a cacophony of poshos heckling the poor from their ivory townhouses with “common sense suggestions”.
Leading the way was Annunziata Rees-Mogg. Hollie Borland, a reporter at The Sun, tweeted: “Until fruit and veg costs less than a bag of supermarket chips, you can’t expect struggling households to have healthier diets,” to which Annunziata retorted: “Tesco 1kg potatoes =83p, 950g own brand chips =£1.35”.
Well, I guess that’s that then!
The solution to obesity and poverty was right there in front of us this entire time. The socioeconomic situation that has left around 14 million people in poverty across the UK could be rectified, if only more of us were aware of the 53 pence disparity between two different potato products. Sadly, we were all too busy lollygagging around and shovelling McCains into our yokel gobs to realise.
Is there anything more fucking boring than a Tory using the price of root vegetables just to dunk on the poor? I have concluded that the answer is: no, there really isn’t (if there is, it’s test cricket).
What is it about the Rees-Mogg siblings and thinking we’re all feckless giant pandas, wandering around, eating a diet consisting entirely of potato?
It seems that what Britain really needs to get us through this economic crisis is a long list of Annunziata Rees-Mogg’s life hacks, to help us navigate rent, bills, sleep deprivation, shit wages and long commutes. That way, we could all attain the carefree lifestyle of a baron’s daughter.
It should be enshrined in law that any toff making classist observations about how poor people are financially unsavvy should be obliged to include their own fully costed monthly expenses list, with justifications for each item based on its nutritional value for money.
I mean, where does Rees-Mogg’s argument even go? Oh, if only the working classes had the foresight to simply get on a bus to the shop, buy a sack of potatoes and cooking oil, catch the bus home, wash, peel, slice and fry up some scratch-made chips, they could have something with little more nutritional value, and “saved” 52p in the process.
At this point, I feel we’re all just awaiting the next stage of the discourse, where the working classes are told how simple it is to start our own vegetables patches on the “spare hectare”, when we know the only things capable of flourishing in our living environment are succulents, e-coli and black mould.
Quelle surprise, our political elites have no fucking idea how hard it is to eat three healthy, balanced meals a day on poverty wages – let alone provide for a whole family. By the time you’ve finished your long shift, commuted, cooked a meal, prepped for tomorrow’s lunch and cleaned up, you have about half an hour to knock one out before it’s head to the pillow and you have to do it all again. Any deviation from this purely functional existence basically means you’re at the mercy of a lunch break meal-deal.
To make matters worse, there also seems to be a complete lack of acknowledgement from our government that millions of people in the UK are at the mercy of food bank donations. Instead, they’d rather plug their ears while also assuming they are best placed to impart wisdom to the serfs on how to cultivate, cook, clean and live on a shoestring budget.
You can tell how out of touch every member of government is when they literally subsidise 50 percent off fast food while simultaneously vilifying the poor for taking up the offer.
“Go on, we know times are tough, have half price on that family bucket meal on us… you tubby little cunt!”
At least they appear to be doing something in the aid of general public health, but I don’t really see how removing multi-buy options for families who don’t have the time or the means to rustle up a chicken liver pappardelle for supper helps. Sure, go ahead and ban meal deals, or inflate the price of a Ristorante pizza to that of an artisanal sourdough, but all it will do is further fuck the finances of the already destitute.
The solution to a healthier, happier nation lies in an increase in living standards, better wages, fewer hours at work and more free time.
If the goal of the government’s campaign really is to “cut the risks of COVID-19”, maybe the cunts can add “not living on a late-capitalistic Tory island that has the largest number of excessive deaths on the continent” to their list of advice. You know, just for balance.
