NHS incentives?

[observer]

A Manchester Trust is to bring in a points scheme for healthy life style behaviour - behave in a "healthy way" and you get points which can be converted to discounts on trainers and healthy foods like veg. So why are the Government obsessed with our health - well to reduce demand for medical services obviously. Errm, but assuming most folk work and pay NI towards health treatment, AND an unhealthy lifestyle equals an early death, thus saving money on pensions - what's the problem? If someone smokes, drinks, over eats etc: Doc tells them that "it will kill them"; and the choice should be then up to them - it's a no brainer.

[Bazj]

Because Brown and his cronies are control freaks who think they know best for everyone in the country......

[Lucy]

I read a piece in the paper that the government is considering PAYING mothers to walk their children to school and PAYING them to go to the gym to help promote good health and combat obesity.

 

I switched on the radio the other day and had to endure a programme about obesity - as if it has only just been discovered.

 

There have always been fat people. Surely if they are happy being fat we should let them get on with it.

 

If mothers can't take their kids to school WITHOUT using the car it is a poor show. Generations of women have worked now - including me and my mother before me - and we managed to cope with our lives AND looking after our husbands. We were kept so busy we managed to avoid obesity without the need of gyms. What is wrong with the present generation. Can't they cope?

[observer]

Two things were absent from the equation them days Lucy: junk food and lack of exercise; they could simply tax bad nutritional foods and create a sports/fitness culture in all schools.

[Shelley]

Two things were absent from the equation them days Lucy: junk food and lack of exercise; they could simply tax bad nutritional foods and create a sports/fitness culture in all schools.

The problem with this is that no two nutritionists can agree on what's healthy food.

[observer]

It's worse: the Government wanted a traffic light system for food in s/markets, so it would be easy (even for the chavs), to buy "green" good food rather than "red" bad. So unusually for them, instead of bringing in a law to make it compulsory, they left it to the s/markets to bring in their own schemes - which are all different, with nutritional advice/info that's written in the smallest type imaginable, so you need a microscope to read it!

[Lucy]

Ye Gods! Do women today really need food to be labelled? For a start, if its in a packet or a tin it probably isn't very healthy anyway!

 

There was always junk food. Sausages, fish fingers (with hardly any fish in them), fish and chips. I can remember my father having dripping on toast. You can't get much less healthy than that!

 

My advice to a working woman today would be to invest in a slow cooker, prepare the meal the night before, leave it cooking all day and when they get home from work, a good, cooked, wholesome meal awaits them.

 

Or does that require a bit too much organising?

 

I also can't see why there are less opportunities for physical exercise these days either. Unless, of course, you are under the influence of the TV and think watching the soaps is more important than your own health.

[Peter T]

Didn't the Gov'ment dumb down sports and take the competition out of it by saying that it was all about teams and no winners, plus selling off playing fields.

 

Metabolism is the word. If you are brought up on compulsory sport at school, most people can eat anything, and remain skinny.

Lack of metabolic stimulation, is exacerbated by TV, Computers and PC games.

I thought everybody knew that.