Food Glorious Food!

A leaked UK government white paper on food strategy enthuses neither environmentalists nor nutritionists (https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jun/10/worse-than-half-baked-johnsons-food-strategy-fails-to-tackle-cost-or-climate). The paper was a real opportunity to advocate strategies for dealing with both the obesity epidemic and climate change. In the event, here is no attempt to make 'junk foods' less attractive, by taxing additions of sugar and salt. It's apparently up to people to make healthy choices about what they eat! The health consequences can just fall on the National Health Service. 'Choice' is, of course, easier if you are relatively wealthy. There also appears to be no attempt to get people to consume fewer meat and dairy products (also known to be unhealthy). Meat and milk production takes up a very substantial amount of the UK's limited farmland. Some of this land could be turned over to crop growing or even used for rewilding (conservation of biodiversity is said to be supported by the UK government). Such a changed useage would have the added bonus of reducing methane (a very potent 'greenhouse gas') production by herds of cows. The only sectors likely to be encouraged by the 'plans',in this white paper, are food processing companies, retailers, fish farmers and producers of venison (deer meat).