Letters: Eat, drink and be merry— but feel guilty afterwards

Capitalist food culture is rife with hypocrisy (Picture: Cheshire East Council/ Flickr)

So the Christmas season is over. For the past few weeks we have all been bombarded with advertising telling us to drink, eat and be merry. The supermarkets will have made billions in profits during December.

Now that January has arrived, it’s time for us to feel guilty if we are overweight and to embrace wellness. The hypocrisy of the system knows no bounds.

The judgement and even abuse that people get for their weight is terrible. We will be told what a burden we are on the NHS and to take out a gym membership, join Slimming World, cut out alcohol or follow a fad diet.

Some 45 percent of adults in Britain are trying to lose weight, including just over half of women. The Independent newspaper recently reported that Britain’s diet industry is worth £2 billion annually, a figure that is only slightly less than the budget for accident and emergency care. The reasons why people gain weight are diverse.

Food insecurity distorts our relationship with food. It means that when people do get hold of food they can feel like they need to eat all of it.

When it comes to weight loss, there are no quick fix solutions. Eating regular meals and taking regular exercise, like walking, all help.

The government could invest in school sports and in promoting exercise for everyone as an enjoyable activity. We don’t all need to be Olympic athletes or international footballers. But these are much less sexy and definitely less profitable for the diet industry than following the latest fad diets.

Meanwhile, in 2024 more than three million people needed to access a food bank compared with 40,000 in 2010. Capitalism is destroying our health. It really is time for change.

Lynne Hubbard, NHS dietitian

Dorset

Refugees need your donations

Asylum seekers are at the sharp end of capitalism. They arrive in Calais and Dunkirk often with just the clothes they are wearing.

They are cold and hungry, having left families and don’t know what their future holds. Care4Calais is a solidarity organisation of mass distribution. We are donating to asylum seekers in hotels and dispersal houses and settlements in Calais and Dunkirk.

On the Care4Calais website, there is a section for donations. It is important people stick to the priority list of donations.

What we need is on the priority list. What we really need is pop up tents.

Asylum seekers in Calais are forced to move a lot, and the police conduct clearances very frequently. We should only donate quality stuff. We throw away more stuff than we use. And the cost of living crisis means donations are down.

Asylum seekers have a hellish time as a result of the horrors of capitalism and the crisis it created. We need to treat them with respect.

Simon Shaw

East London

New report shows that flooding will get worse

In recent months people in Britain and the world have been no strangers to the chaos of climate change.

Capitalism has unleashed climate chaos. The British state left people to life-threatening repercussions of Storms Bert and Darragh. In Valencia, the Spanish government left people to drown. Cyclone Chido killed 22 people just before Christmas on the island of Mayotte.

These aren’t accidents—they are disasters manufactured by fossil fuel companies and the governments that pander to them. But a new report from the Environment Agency assures us that it’s only going to get worse. By 2050, a quarter of houses in England will be at risk of flooding.

Shockingly, it’s the first time the Environment Agency has accounted for climate change projections in its flooding models.

It poses the question—when are those in charge going to take this seriously? Probably never—so we must do something ourselves.

Anne Timms

North Yorkshire

Pensions for nothing

I’m on a state pension after working over 50 years and Labour took the winter fuel allowance from me.

A friend prophetically said, “Pass go and do not collect £200. Labour has axed the passing go and collecting £200 benefit.”

Yet Boris Johnson has just bought a £3.8 million mansion. He “earnt” £790,000 for every after dinner speech. He has also “earned” £510,000 for his memoirs. It’s been slated for nonsense such as his consideration to invade the Netherlands to secure Covid vaccine.

Peter Marsden

Preston