But It Is Affordable – It’s Just Not As Convenient

And far too many people are lazy:

The government’s policy on obesity, announced on Sunday, sounds as though it’s tough on the supermarkets: they really must do better on the health front, ministers say

Calorie for calorie, a basket of healthy food costs more than twice as much as a basket of less healthy food, according to a report by the Food Foundation. That statistic sounds stark until you engage your brain.

If you engage your brain, that statistic just sounds like absolute bullshit. 

Even if supermarkets didn’t have racks of ‘buy it now’ yellow sticker meat, fish, fruit and veg, the cost of an average trolley full of processed ready meals is always going to be more costly than a trolley full of fresh meat, fish, fruit and veg. The missing ingredient here isn’t cash - it’s knowledge and desire to cook from scratch rather than stab a few holes in a film lid and stick it in the machine that goes ‘ding’. 

Processed food is cheap because that is the “process”: the relentless prioritising of the profit margin over every other consideration, such as nutritional value. What else are you going to use all that big, capitalist brain power for? Making food more colourful?

The range of breakfast cereals available on shelves suggest they long ago exhausted that option! 

The missing plank in this raft of suggestions is the only one that would make any difference: addressing the price of food. There is a reason that one in three children in deprived areas are overweight, compared with one in five in the general population – people on low incomes cannot afford healthy food.

Not at all - they can, easily. Countless tv shows have pushed this point, even Jamie Oliver (the Chav’s Chef) has tried, and to no avail. The simple fact is most people don't care, and cannot be bothered to cook - they want the convenience of processed ready meals, and to hell with the side effects of this attitude.

Is That Because They Are Usually Outsize Themselves?

Ayt least, the ones in the media usually are. Indeed, it's a wonder they can reproduce naturally at all! And no, it's not just the Western diet at play here. 

We lived in the shadow of factories bordering our beloved park. Companies such as the LeDoux Corporation, a chemical testing company that had worked on everything from the Manhattan Project to the moon landing, were just steps from the swings. While I was consumed by the potential danger of some shadowy, gun-toting figure, the real pain I felt was internal. My reproductive system betrayed me month after month, leaving me doubled over in excruciating pain. While the world validated my fear of violence, my period pain – marked by ER visits, surgeries and more than 30 Aleve each cycle – was dismissed as “in my head”. No one asked questions or explored its cause, let alone its potential environmental roots.

I’ve seen this film, Julia Roberts was great in it!

Black people are far more likely to live in areas filled with environmental toxins that can harm fertility. We’re 75% more likely to live near industrial facilities and breathe air that’s 38% more polluted than what white communities are exposed to. Discussions about toxins and the environment usually focus on cancer. However, a recent Human Rights Watch report found that air pollution is linked to gestational diabetes, pre-eclampsia and fibroids.

And yet, there seems no discernible decrease in their fertility - as the US welfare bill would appear to indicate. 

Last year, I began a documentary about how the climate crisis – flooding, heat, wildfires, hurricanes – affects Black people who are pregnant or trying to conceive. It was an urgent story that felt both intimately familiar and strangely distant, since many of their environments were marked by large factories, disastrous floods and devastating hurricanes.

I can’t help but feel this really isn’t something can could be considered a bad thing. If it is actually happening. She's pinning her hopes on that, because it's providing her a tidy living:

Reniqua Allen-Lamphere is a film-maker and writer. She created the documentary Infertile Ground and founded Oshun Griot, a digital platform for people of color navigating infertility. Her next book, Fertility Noir, on Black experiences with infertility, will be published by Penguin Random House.

Am I alone, Reader, in thinking that less black fertility can only be a good thing for society? 

Start As You Mean To Go On, Liz..?

The UK government could scrap its entire anti-obesity strategy after ministers ordered an official review of measures designed to deter people from eating junk food, the Guardian can reveal.

The review could pave the way for Liz Truss to lift the ban on sugary products being displayed at checkouts as well as “buy one get one free” multi-buy deals in shops.

I shouldn't get too excited, the blond buffoon said much the same thing, only to roll over like a Labrador offered a low-calorie Bonio. But still...

Health experts have hailed the levy as a key initiative in the fight against dangerous obesity.

“There doesn’t seem to be any appetite from Thérèse [Coffey – the new health secretary] for nanny state stuff,” one source said.

Officials at the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities, the part of the Department for Health that formulates policies to tackle major public health problems, were said by a source to be “aghast” at the prospect of Truss potentially discarding strategies to counter junk food that have been agreed and approved by parliament.

It is upsetting all the right people.