So, yes , people are more likely to take notice of a graphical summary of the overall nutritional value of a food, just as they are more likely to take notice of a red light as opposed to a sign detailing all the reasons why they should stop at a given point.
OK, it would be interesting to see if there is any effect on obesity if a red/green/black colour label is placed on all (presumably packaged) food. Or do we need to similarly label fresh vegetables and fruit also because people are so ignorant they don't understand that fresh beats processed just for a start?
Perhaps we do expect the government to tell us what to eat. It seems we expect governments to come up with watertight legislation that protects people from themselves in ever losing money. And expensive campaigns to stop people smoking even though it's obvious to the most uninformed individual that smoking isn't actually going to enhance your health, so why not extend the nanny state into making it clear by coloured pictures what constitutes healthy choices?
I'm not sure at all that it's lack of education that's the problem, rather that people just decline to take responsibility for their own lives in many instances.
I was waiting for a friend at a cafe a few days ago and got chatting to a morbidly obese woman there on her own. She was tucking into a creamy cappuccino plus a huge piece of cheesecake accompanied by almost a cup of whipped cream and a scoop of ice cream. She said "oh, I know I shouldn't be having this, but it's so delicious".
So now we even have doctors calling for gastric banding type procedures to be more freely available to prevent the exacerbation of obesity related diseases, especially diabetes, so that those patients will be actually physically prevented from overeating. I just don't understand how we have come to such a point.
The notion of individual responsibility seems to have largely become a discarded concept.
Smurf: if I remember correctly the urging from nutritionists to consume virtually unlimited quantities of bread, pasta, etc started about twenty years ago. God knows what it was based on, as pretty obviously devotees would add heaps of butter or margarine, plus jams etc, rich sauces on pasta, so that not only did you have minimal nutrition in what's not much more than just flour and water in those recommended starchy foods, you're going to add lots of fat and sugar as well.
That pretty much coincided with people getting fatter.
You're right in suggesting the message became too complicated when all the different types of fats were recommended, then cancelled, then re-recommended etc. Olive Oil is worth mentioning. It seems widely accepted by all the so called experts that it's a source of 'good fat'. So then we have every celebrity chef using massive quantities of it, completely ignoring the fact that it's laden with calories. I've just looked up a nutrition website and 100 mls of olive oil contains 835 calories! Relativity = about 12 oranges or about 40 tomatoes.
A simple message would be to base daily intake on generous amounts of fresh vegetables, somewhat less of fruit, about 100 - 150g of protein, small amount of fat, and much less starchy carbs than many people consume now.
And I do hear this quite often in food recommendations but if people are determined to eat rubbish while avoiding exercise, there's a limit to how much governments can really do.
I'm interested to hear from others who do expect governments to hold people's hands to the point of telling them what they should eat, ie how exactly are you going to ensure they listen and act?