Child weight wellness in Salford is currently under consideration, as the council is consulting over whether to ban new fish and chip shops (as well as kebab shops, and chains such as McDonald’s) from serving hot food before 5pm if they are situated within 400 metres of a school. But even though 23% of final-year primary school children in the area are obese, and such a measure could guard their wellbeing against a myriad of health concerns, locals aren’t too keen on the idea, accusing the council of creating a “nanny state”.
According to John Wild, a spokesperson for the Federation of Fish Friers whose own fish-and-chip shop, in Heysham in Lancashire, is near two schools, ‘It’s ridiculous. Think of all the other places you’ve got on the way to school – newsagents, Tesco Express selling sweets and crisps. We get one or two kids coming in, but they don’t come in every day. It’s everything in moderation. We have got a problem with obesity, but it’s been coming on for years – parents won’t let kids play out, kids are sitting in front of the TV, people don’t know how to cook from scratch any more so they’re buying ready meals filled with salt and sugar.’
However, Sarah Conly, academic and author of Against Autonomy, argues, ‘Legislation that protects you can only be a good thing. It’s a misnomer to call it a ‘nanny state’ because that suggests someone who thinks they know better, making you do things you don’t want to. In fact, paternalistic legislation is about helping you get the things that you yourself value. The paternalism that I endorse helps you get your long-term desires fulfilled, rather than acting on short-term impulses.’
‘When it comes to food, all of us want to be healthy and have longer lives, but what happens, in the face of temptation – when we smell french fries, or something in a bakery – we give in and buy something for the immediate gratification, even though it doesn’t give us enough gratification to outweigh our interest in having a healthy, long life,’ Conly explains. ‘I think that in order to learn to make good decisions, sometimes we need training. When you have a child, you don’t let it make its own decisions about what to eat. You teach it what things are good for it. I think some of that goes on even when you’re an adult.’
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