Mark Dolan: It's time Britain went on a diet

Earlier today, this headline, courtesy of the Mail Online, caught my eye.

Inspectors at HMP Downview in South London said that a 'large proportion' of the 210 female inmates were 'overweight', with many gaining weight over lockdown.

Women are locked in their single cells for around 22 hours-a-day, with just 30 minutes allowed out for exercise, with many ending up feasting on snacks in their cells instead.

Very often, when anyone tries to change their life, there is a moment, a trigger point. How many people go on a diet when a favourite pair of jeans suddenly don't fit anymore. When they see their holiday snaps – wow am I really that fat?

Perhaps the story of female prisoners breaking loo seats because they are so fat could be one such moment. A small story, that sums up the big health problem that we've got in this country. Broken loo seats are the bellwether, a metaphor, for a broken health system. We spent two years fretting over a potentially nasty but largely mild virus, whilst ignoring the elephant in the room – obesity.

We are fat. We're a nation of porkers. Lard arses, chubby cheeks, we are heavy boned, we’re double chinned, we're a nation of Fat bottomed girls and Fat bottomed boys. And our collectively high body mass index has exposed us to the worst of this virus. Covid is a predominantly lifestyle related illness, with the overweight by some distance the most likely to suffer severe illness or sad death.

Covid is effectively a brutal diagnostic tool for poor metabolic health. Don't give me that guff about healthy people getting Covid and going into intensive care. If Covid sends you to hospital, you were not healthy in the first place. Now there's no fat shaming here. In 2018 I was getting a beer belly, I was rocking the dad bod. I cut processed carbohydrates–bread, pasta, potatoes, the aforementioned beer and sugar and lost three stone.

Richard as it has been, the pandemic should have been an opportunity to address see disastrous state of public health in this country. Which is getting worse not better, and with childhood obesity our latest headache. Covid should've thought of something, lessons should have been learned, And policies should have changed. No such luck.

Lockdowns have made the problem even worse, Which case some way to explaining why those female prisoners I've piled on even more pounds, locked in their cells all day with no activity. And over the last two years, we've seen so-called health measures, that include closing gyms and public parks, whilst keeping open pubs and fast food restaurants. Yeah, follow the signs.

Two years on and still not a squeak about public health about tights about exercise. The answer apparently is not any of those things, it's covering your face with a filthy rags explain the signs on that one to me, and vaccinating yourself every 10 minutes.

Whilst I welcome the arrival of the chair, especially for those most vulnerable, good public health is the ultimate vaccine. No will be city no pandemic. Now I'm a liberal, and so if you want to eat yourself into an early grave, knock yourself out.

There are lots of things that are on paper and healthy. Some people take drugs some people drink too much some people ride motorcycles, Go skiing off piste, Life is dangerous, It turns out. And you've got a secret right to decide what happens with your body.

Badly sovereignty is the last frontier of human freedom. When that goes, it's over. So it's your decision what goes into your arm and into your gob for that matter. But I don't know anyone that says wait who wants to be. This body positive crap, attempt to normalise what is essentially ill health.

If you're a size 20 22 and beyond, there is no judgement here but don't tell me you're well. No fat shaming is the most evil thing, up there with any other nasty prejudice. And I see anyone that save weight, and I have been overweight myself as a victim of the toxic food environment in which we live. But to have a high body mass index opens the door to type two diabetes, cancer, dementia and susceptibility to respiratory infections like Covid.

The NHS, for all its excellent work in particularly its emergency services, and of course in coping with the hellish demands of the pandemic, is failing when it comes to wider public health. You go to the doctor and the solution is always a pill. The NHS is a medication dispensing service. Your doctor is a drug dealer.

Prevention of illness and better public health are an afterthought. But managing preventable lifestyle conditions like Type 2 diabetes is costing billions – upwards of 10% of the NHS budget and growing. In the end lifestyle related illness will bankrupt health systems not just here, but around the world.

The food industry makes billions marketing and selling us horrific junk – I wouldn’t even use the word food. It’s stuff – a food-like substance, carefully engineered to be tasty and addictive - and the pharmaceutical industry profits at the back end, when our health fails as a result.

Big food and big Pharma have a symbiotic relationship and they literally feed each other. And the cost of obesity to the NHS goes beyond the direct cost of chronic conditions like Type II diabetes. Unprecedented numbers of knee replacements for folk under 40. You should be 80 before you need a new one of those.

Gastric band operations, heart issues, lung problems. If you're overweight it's hard to conceive and high BMI is linked to addictive behaviours, time off work and depression. We all deserve better. We all deserve to be well. But that won’t come out of a pill jar or through a needle. Many medics and now describing dementia as type three diabetes, linking so-called metabolic syndrome with going senile. So how do we fix this?

Well the answer is not a nanny state, it's not finger wagging, it's not lecturing. And I'm not even sure it's about taxing soft drinks or sweets. We had soft drinks and sweets in the 60s and the 70s and the 80s, and obesity was a fraction of what it is now. But it's just got out of hand. There are more treat days than there were in times gone by.

Eating junk is a 24/7 business model now, where it used to be an occasional indulgence. 16-year-olds in high viz literally bring the rubbish to your door on a moped. Sickness and death rings your doorbell as it delivers another bag of so called food. So what IS the answer? The NHS focusing its resources on preventing ill health rather than expensively dealing with it, when it’s more costly and often too late.

Bringing back proper food education in schools – it used to be called home economics. Teach children how to cook real food and taking seriously alternative diet ideas like the aforementioned low carbohydrate approach. Former labour deputy leader Tom Watson did it and lost seven stone.

He literally lost another human being. He followed the guidance of figures like Dr Michael Mosley and Dr Aseem Malhotra, who recommend that we cut sugar and processed carbs and the fat melts away. Michael Mosley’s latest approach worked for me.

Let me stress always consult your doctor first. But speaking of doctors, how about Dr David Unwin a humble NHS GP, who has transformed lives, by sending the diabetes of countless patients into remission. The NHS and the Department of Health should be looking at Dr David Unwin’s practice and asking what has he done and why is it working.

Too many arrogant, closed minded medics are attached to the, in my view, failed model of low-fat, now discredited by Doctors Malhotra, Unwin and many more. A wretched ideology, which has seen a vast increase in sugar and carbohydrate consumption and spiralling obesity. Heavy-handed government health measures that aren't working. Does that sound familiar at all to you?

In the end, we need to look in the mirror. Britain needs a diet. This health emergency will be with us and will get worse long after Covid has gone. And exercise is great for health, but a red herring when it comes to weight loss. It let’s the food industry off the hook. You've always had some lazy inactive people in society, but you haven't always had obesity. It’s the food stupid. You can't outrun a bad diet. And the government methods to get us trimmer are just not working.

They’ve released health apps, they’ve had campaigns and yet our waistline is growing not shrinking. So here's my prescription for Britain. Give us all of the information we need, with which to get healthier, based upon on a broader set of nutritional principles. Ones that look afresh at the official dietary guidelines, the so called eat well plate which I think is the eat ill plate – far too many carbs on there still, and seed oils the health benefit of which is contested.

But with the correct information, let us get on with it as free individuals. The prescription is information not instruction. We've had enough orders and instructions for the last two years over the last two years to last us a lifetime.

As we exit this pandemic, I'm very optimistic for this country. I'm convinced that the economy will roll back to life and eventually this pandemic will be a distant memory. And let's take a positive legacy from what we've all been through, and emerge not as the sick man of Europe, but the fittest.

Anything is possible. And it starts with what's on your dinner plate. The tenants to tackle a B city must not come in the form of more control, And more diktats. If the state thinks it can decide what goes ON that dinner plate, it can get stuffed.