#RegenesisFact 16: Probably as a result of a disastrous combination of extreme inequality and the failure to regulate the food industry effectively, 5-year old boys in the UK are on average shorter than those in any comparable nation. 🧵 
Girls in the UK are the second shortest. Put crudely, our kids are stunted.
Height is a good proxy for health and life outcomes. Our children are in a bad state, and are likely to stay that way, by comparison to their peers elsewhere, for life. This is an entirely amendable issue, but successive governments have chosen to neglect it.
The government’s Food Strategy, published yesterday to great lack-of-acclaim, does nothing to address this. Instead, as always, it seeks to individuate responsibility for a systemic, structural problem, calling on “individuals” to make “healthier lifestyle choices”.
It entirely fails to restrain the power of food manufacturers. On the contrary, it claims that “further research is needed” to determine the role of junk food in driving obesity. Which, to use the scientific jargon, is bollocks.
But hey, we love having stunted kids, don’t we? It’s what the free market’s for. Any attempt to intervene would be the work of the “nanny state”. Which we resolutely oppose. Says a government whose senior figures were brought up by actual nannies.
With apologies for a. falling so far behind with these fact threads (my schedule has been pretty crazy. I’ll try to catch up this week).
b. letting my anger show 🤬
b. letting my anger show 🤬
Sources: i. nationalfoodstrategy.org/wp-content/upl…
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