| Food
Glorious Food!
It
is inherently cheaper and easier to purchase ready prepared meals
than ingredients that require hard labour.
Why collate fruits and vegetables and risk cooking a meal that
was unsatisfying.
Particularly when someone has made it their business to produce
food that was of great quality.
Hamburgers,
Soft drinks, deep fried processed chicken pieces (or "nuggets"
as some prefer to call them) and fat soaked chips are of very
little nutritional value.
But they fill a hole!
It
is any wonder we are becoming a larger nation in more ways than
one.
As it stands, it seems that the Federal Government is happy to
sit idly by while people increase their risk factors for chronic
disease states.
Chronic disease states that require expensive medications and
long term hospital costs.
Something
more than a heart foundation tick is required to educate the people
of Australia what is nutritious and healthy food and what is not.
Furthermore, they need to have their current eating habits reassessed.
Perhaps
a tax on ready prepared food, or food not classed as "nutritious"
by a determining board of some kind is the answer.
This tax could offset "nutritious food" costs.
A
tax on food?
Forcing people to make healthy choices?
A denial of a persons right to wolf down a greasy burger?
Such a tax would certainly be unpopular.
But
is it much different to smoking cigarettes and the associated
taxes?
Risk
factor prevention should be the aim.
Furthermore,
pharmacy's role in smoking cessation has proven itself to be worthwhile,
and one hopes that this can continue.
Why not expand this role to weight loss also?
The frequency in which patients are told by doctors to "try
and lose some weight" is almost staggering.
Through
its smoking cessation work, pharmacists are trained to be aware
of the states of change of a person.
The pharmacist is a non confrontational, non-judgemental source
of information.
Pharmacists are trustworthy.
Weight
loss in addition to other disease state management, information
and education is pharmacy's ticket to greater acceptance as a
member of the multidisciplinary health care team.
Hopefully, we as a profession, can decrease risk factors with
resorting to relegating Big Macs to the black market.
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