We have Julian Baggini, a philosopher - supposedly someone who therefore knows how to think - telling us that the cure to obesity is the overthrow of market capitalism:
If the government wants to help people to eat better, its main priority should be ending what is often called food poverty – more accurately described as poverty, full stop. The poorer you are, the more likely you are to be overweight, almost certainly because of the way poverty limits your food choices. If people cannot afford good food, or the fuel to cook from scratch at home, telling them to eat less and better is pointless.
Of course we should all try to take responsibility for our own health. But we can be responsible only for what we have the power to do. That is limited not just by basic biology, but by what is on our shop shelves and in our wallets. Tackling those problems requires controls on business and greater redistribution of wealth. The government rejects both on ideologic grounds, and instead promotes dieting and personal responsibility, preferring flawed common sense to the evidence.
Good food being defined as food not processed by the Big Bad Companies which must be controlled etc.
One useful filter for an argument - it is only a filter, not a proof against - is that if the course of action is what would be recommended anyway then we can discount this particular justification for it. The Guardian’s opinion pages are going to recommend less income inequality, more control of business, because the Sun rises in the East so this particular, obesity, justification doesn’t carry that much weight.
We can also discount it because it doesn’t make sense. The claim is that eating processed supermarket food is cheaper than home cooked. This simply is not true in any manner. The saving is in time, not money and while time is indeed money confusing the two at this point leads to the wrong conclusion. For if it is time to home prepare food that is lacking then it is the dual earner family that is to blame, not the food factories.
But look deep into the heart of the argument here. The base human problem since Ur of the Chaldees has been how does everyone get enough to eat so that they don’t starve to death? We have, in this past century in this country, rather later in many other places, finally solved this problem through industrial, free market, capitalism. The claim is now that because the poor can eat we must therefore overthrow the system that allows them to do so. Truly, any reason at all to overthrow the system, even the successes are to be used as evidence against.
As to the actual claim itself, food poverty, the average household weekly food bill is £61.90. If you prefer to do it over the income range, for the bottom decile it is 53 % of the top decile’s or about 65% of that average. We assert that it is entirely possible to eat healthily on that sum. We’ll even prove it if anyone is looking for a TV show - “ASI Does Benefits Street” has a ring to it. No takers? Then that initial claim isn’t something that people really believe, is it?