- Death of the dinner table means more eat junk food in front of the television
By Ben Spencer
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Anna Soubry says parents should ensure children have proper meals
Health Minister Anna Soubry has risked controversy by claiming that she can spot poor people in the street because they are usually overweight.
The Conservative MP, who has responsibility for public health, said a culture of unhealthy TV dinners and junk food has eroded family life and that many homes no longer even have a dining table.
The MP for Broxtowe, Nottinghamshire, said: 'When I go to my constituency, when I walk around, you can almost now tell somebody's background by their weight. Obviously not everybody who is overweight comes from deprived backgrounds, but that's where the propensity lies.'
Speaking at a conference hosted by the Food and Drink Federation, which represents UK manufacturers, she warned them that they should voluntarily cut the amount of fat, sugar and salt in their products or ministers may have to force them to act through legislation.
She said it was 'heartbreaking' that the poorest in the country were those at greatest risk of obesity.
'A third of our children leave primary school overweight or obese,' she said. 'When I was at school, you could tell the demography of children by how thin they were.'
But now, in a 'deeply ironic' turnaround, poor children tend to be overweight because their parents supply them with 'an abundance of bad food', she told the Daily Telegraph.
Miss Soubry put the responsibility for properly feeding children firmly with their parents, who should ensure that they have family meals. 'What they don't do is actually sit down and share a meal around the table,' she said. 'There are houses where they don't have dining tables. They will sit in front of the telly and eat.
The MP says the death of the dinner table has led to soaring obesity rates amongst children - particularly poorer ones
'It doesn't mean to say you can't ever sit in front of the telly and have a meal, but I believe children need structure in their lives, they need routine.'
According to Department of Health figures, the poorest children are almost twice as likely to be obese than the wealthiest.
Government figures published last month showed that 24.3 per cent of the most deprived 11-year-olds in England were obese, compared with 13.7 per cent of children from the wealthiest homes.
Miss Soubry warned in October that the food industry was fuelling the obesity crisis, when she told supermarkets that the cakes and other bakery products it makes were too big.
She said: 'I'm old enough to remember that when you went into a store and you bought a cake or a croissant, or some other product like that, a bakery product, it was probably half the size of what it is today.'
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