BY CHARLOTTE WEBSTER
The wide promotion of unhealthy foods in supermarkets should be discouraged and criticized because of the harm it does to society as a whole.
Healthy eating produces best results in our physical and mental make up, but unhealthy eating by contrast causes our body to degenerate much faster than it normally would if we consumed food substances that are healthy. Individuals as a whole are largely products of their environment, except for those conscious ones who make an effort to analyse their environment consciously and adopt practices that are in their best interest.
We should all be aware of unhealthy foods in supermarkets that are promoted through attractive packages designed to entice us. Supermarkets like Tesco and even Sainsbury’s often sell unhealthy foods in attractive packages to lure us into buying them even though they are unhealthy for us. Their obvious justification is that if there is a demand for it, then they might as well provide the supply.
Yet as much as all supermarkets should take responsibility for encouraging healthy eating, the quest to maximise profits will always outweigh the interest of feeding healthy foods to the public. After all, they can always argue that healthy foods exist which consumers can choose to purchase. This argument is weakened by the fact so many unhealthy foods are made to seem irresistible in the manner of design and packaging , that the tendency is often to succumb to the temptation of buying them.
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The wide availability of unhealthy heavily processed ready meals high in salt and sugar content should be disturbing for those knowledgeable about the accompanying health risks in consuming these meals more than occasionally. Many supermarkets engage in promotions such as two-for-one offers being for ready meals and junk food. Such promotions are rarely done for fresh fruit and vegetable. Snacks such as chocolate being offered at many supermarket checkouts.
More worrying is the fact that many food packages contain misleading nutritional labelling and lack of adequate information about nutrition and healthy food choices. For example, not many lay people understand that high carbohydrate foods eventually turn to fat, and that foods rich in Carbohydrates should be consumed moderately and ideally before or after training, for the food to do its best job on the body and mind.
The UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Olivier De Schutter, published a report in March 2012 on improving nutrition and reducing hunger. He stated that : “Urbanization, supermarketization and the global spread of modern lifestyles have shaken up traditional food habits. The result is a public health disaster.”
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The following month in April 2012, The Childrens’ Food Campaign published a report on checkout snack foods. In a survey of 48 branches of 14 national chains, it was discovered that unhealthy snacks were regularly positioned at the checkout in order to encouraging buying by parents through ‘pester power’. This is manipulative and wrong for managements in supermarkets to encourage this type of wrong and greedy approach.
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