A balanced diet is not a chocolate in both hands

Last Wednesday we finally finished eating our Christmas chocolates. I’m already missing going to the cupboard and choosing a soothing chunk of something sweet. Each year, I start preparing our Christmas cupboard in September, buying something every week. This chocolate hoard is supplemented by gifts at Christmas time. Right now the cupboard is bare, and is likely to remain that way for a couple of reasons. The first is despite doing ‘dry January’ the added accumulated weight gained during 2023 stubbornly refused to be shed. I’m still the same weight as I was on the 1st January. Having chocolate every day probably didn’t help. The second reason is that the price of chocolate has risen higher than the already high price of many food stuffs. Maybe, if you can, get your Easter eggs as early as possible.

It is apparently the huge rise in the price of cocoa that is to blame. Cocoa is the key ingredient of chocolate and the global price of cocoa is set to rise above the already record-beating £4,655 a ton. Ghana and the Ivory Coast produce over 60% of all cocoa. Hot and dry weather in both countries reduced the cocoa crop last year and is threatening the crops this year. In addition, the demand for chocolate has grown exponentially, particularly in China and India. According to Barry Callebaut, the world’s biggest chocolate maker (I bet you didn’t know that, see here) the price of your favourite bar of chocolate* will continue to rise during 2024.

Now there is always a silver lining to such ‘bad news’ stories, and stay with me here. The British Heart Foundation (BHF) notes that the average person in the UK will consume 7,560 bars of chocolate, 2,268 slices of chocolate cake, and 8,316 chocolate biscuits in their lifetime. In addition, they are likely to drink 3,204 mugs of hot chocolate, 126 Easter eggs, and my favourite, consume 2,898 miniature chocolate eggs during their life. High cost of chocolate will reduce the demand and perhaps how much we each choose to eat. And that’s a good thing.  

In the BHF study, nearly 40% of folk stated that chocolate is their favourite food, and 40% declared they couldn’t live without it. Despite my own sweet tooth, in no way can chocolate be considered an essential part of a healthy diet. As was proven in my unscientific piece of research over January this year, too much chocolate can lead to weight gain and increase our risk of obesity.

Over 63% of us are above a healthy weight, and half of these folk are living with obesity. In England, 1 in 3 children leaving primary school are overweight or obese. The prevalence of obesity is, like many other poor health indicators, highest in the most deprived communities in England. Obesity is associated with reduced life expectancy and a wide range of other health problems, including diabetes, heart disease, liver disorders and is the second biggest preventable cause of cancer.

A couple of years ago, we took a heritage tour of our local hospital Blackpool Victoria NHS Trust. One of the places we were taken to was the morgue. Our guide explained that the Trust, like many others, was having to consider purchasing new trolleys that would hold up to 60 stones, due to the fact that so many of the people they were dealing with no longer fitted the standard trolley.

Last week Finnair announced that as well as weighing passengers’ luggage, they were introducing weighing the passengers themselves. This story sparked a media storm, with groups complaining about ‘fat shaming‘ on one hand and on the other, of people having to share plane seats with someone grossly overweight and who as a consequence, may unfairly take up  some of their seat space. There was a challenging side story as well. Finnair claimed they were introducing this new measure to ensure they were able to calculate the true weight of the plane and put in the correct amount of fuel for the flight. So, if the weight of the plane increased more fuel would be required. More fuel would mean higher ticket prices. In the longer term, would we all be paying more money for our travel than we needed to because of the lifestyle choices of obese folk? I said it was a challenging debate!

Preventing obesity and helping those living with this condition is a high priority for the UK Government. Obesity costs the NHS £6.5 billion each year in direct and obesity-related disease treatments. As well as these physical health concerns, obesity can also have an impact on mental health and our sense of wellbeing. This was something that was touched upon at a dinner and discussion I attended along with other colleagues from across England last week. It was a Chatham House Rules event so I won’t share the whole conversation, but there was much discussion of how we could and should be doing more around preventing mental health problems and illness.

I couldn’t agree more. The more we can do to keep folk healthy, whether this is good physical health or good mental health, the better the world will be for the individual, our families, and communities. We know some of the proven measures we can all take, one of which is to try and learn how to eat more healthily. It is not easy to cut out chocolate from our everyday diet. Indeed, at the dinner I attended last week we had a gorgeous sticky toffee pudding smothered in the most delicious gooey chocolate sauce, but we can try. To date our Christmas cupboard remains a chocolate free zone. 

*Snickers is the UK’s favourite chocolate bar, beating the classic Cadbury Dairy Milk by a narrow margin. Galaxy is the third favourite followed by Bounty, KitKat and Twix, Mars Bar and Flake