An apology. A couple of weeks ago I misguidedly talked of Andy Burnham being the new Health Minister. I was wrong.
It is, in fact, Shylock, and he’s out for his pound of flesh. Mind you he’s prepared to pay you for it…
A one pound ASDA voucher, for every pound that you lose. This is the latest crackpot crack down on fatty fatty fat fats. The idea is that porkers are incentivised to lose weight by the prospect of an ASDA related treat. An oxymoron if ever this administration came up with one.
Like Asbos, the ASDA vouchers could be viewed as a badge of pride: Anti Social Dietary Activity. After months of dieting - which most people have no idea how to do properly - lose two stone, and get vouchers totalling £28.
Hmmmm…what can you buy with that? Recently my son noticed that ASDA sell both deep fat fryers and ex-boxer’s fat-free grills. There’s a mixed message on a white goods shelf if ever there was one. He was pleased to note that the fat-free grill was a whole 92 pence less, thereby encouraging the canny shopper to buy the healthier option.
Oh, by the way, it’s a measure of the credit crunch that I’m in ASDA at all. I’m one of those middle class women standing by the veg, shouting: “Call that an organic range?”
Surely part of the incentive of weight loss has to be financial, after all buying food to sustain 5,000 calories a day has got to be a lot more expensive than a normal 2,500.
Double choc cheesecake (which I had last night - yummy!), three quid. Bag of carrots, 78 pence. So you would be saving more money on food than you would get in rewards. It could result in a whole new form of eating disorder - Asda-rexia, shed a stone and a half, and buy twenty-one quid’s worth of pick’n'mix.
Pro-ASDA websites might encourage kids with pictures of fat emos. Or emus, that would be funnier.
What next? Lidl-imia, eat too much cheap German tinned food, and chuck it back up again. Body dys-Morrison’s syndrome? That’s having a BMI of 34, looking in the mirror and thinking you look just peachy, tinned peachy with instant custard.
Last one (I promise). Yo-Yo dieting, lose weight and tap up the tax-payer for the cash for more packets of Yo-Yos. When I do go to the local ASDA, I am struck by the strong correlation between the size of the shopper, and the contents of the trolley. Although I did follow a certain blonde radio presenter round the Marylebone High Street Waitrose recently, and my theory is not confined to the sub-prime fatty.
Never mind the actual cost of the vouchers, the cost of administering the system would be phenomenal, and no doubt the responsibility would be laid at the door of your friendly local GP.
Wouldn’t that money be better spent educating families on how to eat and cook healthy food? As Portia’s response to Shylock goes: “The quality of good oil is not strained, it droppeth as balsamic glaze from heaven, upon the salad beneath, it is twice dressed.”
Tags: Andy Burnham, Diet
