HAS OUR FOOD INDUSTRIES GOT TOO MUCH INVESTED IN UNHEALTHY FOODS TO CHANGE? PART 2

So, what is to be done in trying to clean up nations' unhealthy food and drinks industry? It is clear that, none but the most altruistic of food and drinks makers and supplies are going to voluntarily commit appropriate resources into cleaning up their act, as it were. Since they are committed to maximising their profits, which they can only or often only do, only by optimising their prices and  minimising their costs. Which will usually mean them using poor or poorer quality ingredients and reducing, where they can, their processes and health and safety safeguards.

Consequently, an essential aspect of ensuring the consumer is being provided with healthy or healthier foods and drinks, is for governments have appropriate and stringent regulations governing what food and drinks producers are using in their products, and the processes they are using in their production, storage and supply.  These regulations need to be stringently enforced.

Just as how, except in emergency situations, people are not able to successfully give up bad habits, whether it be smoking, over-eating, or drug addiction, etc., so should the producers and suppliers of unhealthy food and drinks products be given a realistic time-scale to cease the production of their unhealthy products, and replace them with the production of healthier products.

Similarly, responsible consumers cannot afford to wait on governments - which are often repleted with corruptible and corrupt officials - to necessarily act in the best interests of their citizens' health. Not with the economic elites being so closely allied with the political elites, and each guarding the others backs and massaging their accumulation of wealth.

And so it is vital that consumers, collectively, not only lobby for more effective regulations around food and drinks production, but also boycott the shops and supermarkets selling them. Again, it is important for these shops and the producers of the unhealthy foods and drinks to be given advance and reasonable notice of the plan to boycott them products; except in cases where immediate action is required.

As I have already indicated in previous posts, consumers also have a responsibility to avoid or reduce their and their families' consumption of unhealthy foods and drinks; especially those with unnecessarily high sugar, salt and fat contents. In the first instance, it has to be the parents' responsibility to  take greater care in ensuring that they are not conditioning their family, especially the children - the next generations - into developing an unhealthy life-styles, which are going to increase their chances of developing chronic health conditions. Such as diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart, liver and lung problems. Especially at a time when nations are finding it near impossible to meet the increasing and new demands on their already over-stretched health services. 

The future can be bright, if we are able to get beyond the illusion of the present being so.

How very much like us, the present generations, to kick the cost - financially and otherwise, of the short-term expedient decisions we make today, back into the future for our descendants to meet? The fact is that, us humans are indeed very adaptable, which is why we are still surviving. 

The question is now that of for how much longer can humans continue to survive and evolve, if we continue to allow artificially induced taste driven unhealthy foods and drinks to have priority over the necessity of eating and drinking healthier foods and drinks?