As someone who once ate a bag of Mini Eggs for breakfast, I'm in no position to champion a crusade against the evils of confectionery. But Tesco's decision to eject sweets from their pride-of-place at checkouts is difficult not to applaud (though I'll spare the standing ovation until Tesco starts paying a living wage).
There is a long-established consensus that obesity is one of the defining – and growing – health crises of our age. It kills people, ruins people's wellbeing, and costs huge sums to deal with. Child obesity in Britain is the highest in western Europe, and between 2000 and 2009 the number of young people admitted to hospital with obesity-related conditions more than quadrupled. It costs the NHS £4.2bn to treat each year.
The problem is this. While we're all agreed that scoffing sweets is a foolproof means of trashing your health, I am now lost as to what constitutes a healthy diet and lifestyle. Growing up it was simple: avoid eating fat if you don't, well, want to become fat. As a teenager, I would down bottles of Frijj chocolate milkshake on the basis it was advertised as a "low-fat" drink. I've long depended on Red Bulls to power me through deadlines, but was recently horrified to discover a 473ml can of the stuff contains no less than 13 teaspoons of sugar. It doesn't just give you wings, but a belly too.
Now it's no longer fat that is public enemy number one: it's sugar. Not least because it hides in pretty much everything and is supremely addictive.
But then it gets complicated. The official recommendation is to eat at least five portions of fruit and vegetables a day: only for a University College London foundation to suggest that consuming at least seven would save lives. That's a pretty lofty ambition: over the past few years we've actually been consuming less fruit and veg. The health benefits are clear: they contain lots of fibre (which also makes you feel full) and antioxidants, and reduce your risk of nasty diseases such as various cancers and heart disease. But then there's the anti-fructose lobby, led by the likes of Dr Robert Lustig; the Daily Mail, perhaps more predictably, has suggested too much fruit makes you fat. Others suggest excessive fruit consumption leads to everything from dental decay to thinning hair. Oh boy!
The truth is you would have to eat a lot of fruit to seriously damage your health: though avoiding fruit juices is a good move, because they are jam-packed with sugar. But the advice has been seriously muddied because of the anti-sugar backlash. Then there's carbohydrates: their reputation is all over the place, and we're supposed to learn how to distinguish between "good" carbs and "bad" carbs.
Diets are still routinely promoted, even though there is a growing consensus that they are unhealthy, and lead only to temporary and unsustainable weight loss, demoralising anyone who tries them. But now even exercise for weight loss is under fire: apparently if you go the gym, you just eat more to reward yourself, cancelling out the effects. We've all done it: had a run and then tucked into a nice big burger, feeling guilt-free.
Just to make it even more complicated, we're subjected to a constant diet of unrealistic body images – damaging our self-esteem (particularly for women), but also driving us to lifestyles that are completely counterproductive and damaging to our health. There's the environment to consider too: the world's growing consumption of meat is driving up greenhouse gas emissions, as well as food prices.
What a total mess. Removing sweets from the front of Tesco is a good symbolic gesture when it comes to promoting healthy lifestyles. But what we all need is a clear guide to what a healthy diet and lifestyle would look like. At the moment, we're being fed confusing and contradictory statements. No wonder, then, that public awareness of the need to be healthy – in an abstract sense – is greater than it has ever been, and yet obesity rates are hurtling ever upwards. Unless the message is drastically simplified, our health is going to keep getting worse.
