Host: Jack, you heard there then me say what you probably already know and some people keep saying to us which is that obesity for many people is to do with money. Today's data shows that people in poorer areas are twice as likely to be hospitalised with obesity than those in the richest. The House of Commons environment Food and Rural Affairs Committee said last month in fact that the cost of living crisis is fuelling the obesity crisis. Does that explain all of it, do you think?
Honk: Well, no, it's never gonna explain all of it because obesity is a massively complex issue. There's no single factor that sort of determines somebody's weight. But poverty and obesity have long been linked within years and years of studies, places like British Medical Journal and The Lancet and the Royal College of Physicians have all long made the links between poverty and less equal health outcomes including obesity. But poverty, you know, years and years ago, perhaps 30, 40 years ago, poverty didn't necessarily result in obesity, presumably because of what, one thing would be, I suppose, the type of food that is sold now, because that is different to what was sold 30 or 40 years ago. Yeah, it's very much...
It's very much a paradox between the developed and the developing world. In the developing world, poverty tends to be equated with thinness, with malnutrition and starvation. Whereas in the developing world, the line between poverty and obesity is much more clearly drawn. And that is very much to do with the types of food that are available, higher processed foods, sort of high fructose corn syrup that's snuck into lots of different things, different sweeteners, different additives. The fact is really if you want to reduce obesity and if you want to increase people's health and life expectancies, you need to reduce poverty and increase people's incomes so that everyone's got equal access to healthy good ingredients and can make those choices.
Host: But does everyone and I include everyone in this, myself included, does everyone make the right choices when they have enough money?
Honk: Well, no, it always interests me how the... For example, the castigation of ready meals is always pointed at the lower end of the income spectrum and nobody's ever talking about the luxury six or seven pound ready meals or the you know the dine-in for two for 12 pound deals which nobody on the bread line is affording. So the criticism all seems to be engendered in one direction about people's food choices, but poverty is really it's about a lack of choice in what you can buy. I mean everybody should have the right to be able to go to the supermarket and buy what they want rather than you know what they can simply afford and when people have got the income to be able to actually have a choice about what they put in their baskets then we can start to educate people on making better choices I feel. Yeah so more money would help for people on low income so they have more choice.
Host: What about what is available in the supermarkets. I mean, we've been having this discussion for 10 years, maybe more now in terms of what supermarkets should be doing, you know, in terms of what is available and the deals, the buy one get one free deals, whether things, ultra processed food should be taxed in some way, whether sugary food should be taxed. What do you think about the other kind of actors involved in this particular issue?
Honk: Well, I'll give you an example. So where I live, and funny enough, my city came up in the study actually as one of the better ones. I live in South End and there are two Tesco Express stores within an equal 25 minute walk from my house. Yes. And one of them is walking towards the nice larger houses in the nice green conservation area. And one of them is on one of the most notorious council estates in the borough. And these two stores stock entirely different products. So the Tesco Express next to the council estate just stocks basically the value range, ready meals, beers, nappies and very little else. The Tesco Express in the leafy conservation area stocks kale, organic chicken and all sorts of healthier choices. But those choices aren't informed by the communities that they serve. Those choices were made by somebody in head office who decided on planograms and diagrams long before they even built those stores, what those people might want. So you can't say that the people thought they were eating better than the people on the Kersley estate because that's what they want to do when that's actually the choice that's been made for them by Tesco Express.
Host: Well, that's interesting. Jack, thank you. That's the food poverty campaigner Jack Monroe.
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