The Government is sending out food boxes to people judged ‘medically vulnerable’ and at risk from contracting COVID-19 and of course this is welcome. However, The Times (‘Food boxes should come with health warning’ Jenni Russell 2nd April 2020) and the BBC (‘Coronavirus: Rochdale Council tops up ‘unhealthy’ food boxes’ 31st March 2020) have greeted the contents of the boxes with open dismay.
The APPG on A Fit and Healthy Childhood has from its very first Report (‘Healthy Patterns for Healthy Families’) to its latest ( ‘Healthy Families: the present and future role of the supermarket’) published in March 2020, insisted that healthy nutrition is the key to a to a truly healthy society. We have consistently argued and demonstrated via our research that the consequences of a poor diet (which today are invariably overweight and obesity initially presenting in childhood) can heighten susceptibility to a range of diseases including some cancers, diabetes type 2 and heart disease.
Experts have also claimed that obesity may be a detrimental influence on the experiences and eventual outcomes of those who contract COVID-19. The first food boxes received in Rochdale consisted of chocolate bars, biscuits, large bags of white sugar, noodles and generously-sized bottles of sugary cordial. Rochdale Council felt obliged to supplement the contents with healthier options.
The Times in accordance, decries boxes that are ‘high on carbohydrate, much of it highly processed….. there are no fresh vegetables.’ Writer Jenni Russell points out that the people most likely to die from COVID-19 are those whose bodies are already under strain from high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease or from being overweight. She believes that in this pandemic, whether or not we survive, will be critically influenced by the robustness of our individual bodies and immune systems and comments in particular about what might work better for children at risk:
‘’This January, a six-month Dutch study of children with repeated upper respiratory tract infections found that those given green vegetables five times a week, beef three times, whole milk and whole butter every day cut their antibiotic use substantially, and they were sick for a third fewer days than the control group.”
Jenni Russell, writing in The Times
Russell argues that, in this pandemic, what the UK Government is doing is to supply the most vulnerable people with ‘food to survive on not to nourish.’
Helen Clark, APPG Lead Author, urged the Government to review the contents of its food boxes and ensure that future ones were prepared in accordance with guidance on a suitable diet for healthy families as repeatedly given by Public Health England and its own Child Obesity Strategy. ‘What is offered to the most at risk in a pandemic should be in line with Government advice on a healthy diet; emphasised in all circumstances for the entire population over many years,’ she said. ‘When we have a Sugar Tax to deter the excess usage of sugar on health grounds, the fact that the Government is allocating two ingredient spaces in a food box to a bumper pack of sugar and a bottle of sugary cordial is bizarre. The Department of Health needs to revise the contents of its food boxes – on medical grounds – as of urgency! ’