Rich person tells ppl at foodbank to spend more on organic, small family farm produced food.

[PH]

Just listened to The UK Food Strategy Panel with Henry Dimbleby at the Oxford Farming Conference 2020

Thanks for that, I've just watched it. Unsurprisingly there was unanimous agreement across the panel that it needs government intervention, though maybe less consensus on the level and type. I thought Henry Dimbleby made a good point about the need to try things and monitor the impact, before keeping, tweaking or discarding, though I fear he may as well have been asking for the moon. That sadly isn't the way it works, there would need to a consensus amongst politicians before an acceptance that a failure was part of the process rather than a stick to beat the opposition with.
I was also pleased to see that the difference was clearly made between the issues of food poverty and food pricing policy, something the government response, and some comments on here, have tried to combine to avoid dealing with either.
It all seems depressingly irrelevant, those that commissioned the report have rejected it.

EDIT - Typo that I may have got away with...

[PH]

I use that pejorative way about him because of what he said. I did feel it was his way of lecturing and I did listen to him to have that feeling.

Your entire input into this, your own thread, seems to be about shooting the messenger rather than discussing the message.
Is he the best person to make the points he has? I don't think so, but he has the platform to do so, whereas those best able to understand the issues do not.

[simonineaston]

Is he the best person to make the points he has? I don't think so, but he has the platform to do so, whereas those best able to understand the issues do not.

I was in two minds as to whether to address this very point. To conflate the involvement of one of the UK's richest hobby-farmers with the use of food-banks by a significant number of the country's least well-off may be very tempting, but misses all the other complex, difficult and interacting factors. Entitled, rich and under-employed he may be, but he takes a genuine interest in farming and sustainability and was ahead of the curve when it came to adopting organic principles. TopTip: my local Waitrose often has his products on yellow label...

[Jdsk]

Is he the best person to make the points he has? I don't think so, but he has the platform to do so, whereas those best able to understand the issues do not.

I was in two minds as to whether to address this very point. To conflate the involvement of one of the UK's richest hobby-farmers with the use of food-banks by a significant number of the country's least well-off may be very tempting, but misses all the other complex, difficult and interacting factors.

And that snap response from Ministers on a single strand is the opposite of what's needed in a national policy for anything.

Jonathan

[simonineaston]

I'm posting here three snapshots across recent decades, of some stat.s quoted by this Henry Dimbleby fella. Black vertical line represents boundary of healthy weight. He makes the point that the obesity "crisis" talked about mainly by politicians, has in fact been easy to see coming for some decades.

'bell curve' back in 1950

shape of bell curve starting to change

red 'tail indicates many many more individuals

(Please don't think I'm having a go at folks who are heavier than others - we're all different and the whole point of this initiative is look at what we eat and how it affects us and our health...)

[simonineaston]

Pleased to hear several members of the Lord's challenge piffle's dismissal of key National Food Strategy recommendations, yesterday on Today In Parliament... apparently the government is to publish its own strategy 'within 6 months'.

[Jdsk]

I'm posting here three snapshots across recent decades, of some stat.s quoted by this Henry Dimbleby fella. Black vertical line represents boundary of healthy weight. He makes the point that the obesity "crisis" talked about mainly by politicians, has in fact been easy to see coming for some decades. Screenshot 2021-07-18 at 18.18.22.pngScreenshot 2021-07-18 at 18.20.15.pngScreenshot 2021-07-18 at 18.20.55.png(Please don't think I'm having a go at folks who are heavier than others - we're all different and the whole point of this initiative is look at what we eat and how it affects us and our health...)

Where are these from, please? The LH graph in the third looks too high for fraction of the population with "Severe obesity".

Thanks

Jonathan

[simonineaston]

Address to Oxford Farming Conference 2020 here - segment begins at 8:05. If HD says where he got the data from, I missed it...

[Jdsk]

Thanks.

Do you think that the red area for "Severe Obesity" in the LH graph is consistent with the distribution for "Obesity" in the RH graph?

Jonathan

[simonineaston]

see too this animated chart here, from gov.uk's own Public health matters blog... similar shapes, but as for accuracy, I have no idea! It's tempting to assume that data posted on our goverment's own web pages must surely be reliable, but that's part of the problem with the tsunami of information available on t'internet - it's so easy to find things that look relevant and authentic, but from a layperson's pov - who knows??!! The plus of easy-to-find info is challenged mightily by the minus of not being able to trust it...

[Jdsk]

see too this animated chart here, from gov.uk's own Public health matters blog... similar shapes, but as for accuracy, I have no idea! It's tempting to assume that data posted on our goverment's own web pages must surely be reliable, but that's part of the problem with the tsunami of information available on t'internet - it's so easy to find things that look relevant and authentic, but from a layperson's pov - who knows??!! The plus of easy-to-find info is challenged mightily by the minus of not being able to trust it...

The Public Health England distribution looks plausible.

But I disagree about the problem being too much information on the Web. Or even too many lies. The problem is uncritical browsing and quoting.

And is it really that hard for a layperson to grade levels of evidence if they want to? There's lots of guidance out there...

Jonathan

[simonineaston]

But I disagree about the problem being too much information on the Web. Or even too many lies. The problem is uncritical browsing and quoting.

That's easy for you to say The reaction of the majority of internet users tends to suggest that you & people like you (ie educated, cautious & discerning) are something of an exception. My suspicion is that the closer we all get to the tons & tons of "freely-available" information, the harder it gets for us all to see the bigger picture - or what used to be known as we can't see the wood from the trees. Folks like you have no chance against the tide of information gatherers who less educated, less cautious and less discerning!
If you want to see that idea in macro-action, (and setting aside the ghastly memory of that weird orange golf-cheat...) consider our attitude to climate change, where although it is relatively straightforward to find convincing work which pin-points particular issues that should be of serious concern, the ground-swell or over-all reaction to the topic is to bicker, finger-point and prevaricate, indiscriminately using all sorts of easy-to-find spurious "information", to back up our many prejudices. Those who use the scatter-gun illogical approach outnumber the cautious, quieter, more thoughtful individuals many, many times over. The net effect is a sort of paralysed, confused inaction that will ultimately, I think, prove fatal to us all. Zoom out far enough, take the planet's own pov and it's as if we've done absolutely nothing to change our habits over the past few decades. Nothing that is but talk, endlessly.
Anyway, back to those graphs... I'm highly confident that the gov's own paper, due out by the end of the year, will be so dominated by the stranglehold of the processed food industry's lobbying that the work of the decent sensible national food strategy will be all but invisible.

[Jdsk]

Thanks

Jonathan

[simonineaston]

Mind you - it isn't all doom and gloom...
see full fact's website here

[cycle tramp]

What happens if people who are financially poor but rich in time and have some space, grow their own organic food? >cough< urban permaculture >cough<