Healthy Town Intiative is Unhealthy

Everyone should strive to maintain good weight, eat wholesome food and enjoy an active life to burn any excess calories. While all this is laudable, I am strongly inclined to the view that it all remains within the domain of personal behaviour. It seems that the city of Manchester in the UK, among other local governments have completely bought into the panic created by a supposed obesity epidemic and are now spending public money in the quest to encourage healthy living to limit obesity.

The Healthy Towns initiative reported here is unworthy of the name purely on two grounds. First is that if the intention is to encourage healthy eating, then it is poorly designed. This is because everyone who purchases the favoured foods will receive this subvention even if they do not require it. Secondly, the scheme is unduly complicated and will obviously lead to unintended consequences arising from the adjustments to infrastructure and the expected demand for bikers. The programme's overall costs will go beyond the £30 million that is its face value. There's no reason to believe that people who are not inclined to take up cycling in the first place will do it in addition to starting a gardening project in the backyard.

Since the nine cities are keen to spend money, they should start by reading this earlier post and contacting the mayor of Varello. My advise would be to forget the loyalty programme and pay residents for real weight loss as opposed to paying for activity that may lead to weight loss. Even the mayor of a small and obscure town in Italy knows that.