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.
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
People need to exercise more and I blame the food industry making healthier choices more expensive
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