Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-09-24-Speech-3-394"
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"en.20080924.34.3-394"2
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"Mr President, today we are discussing overweight and obesity and I think it is important – as several people have already said – not to talk too much about diet and waste, but to talk mainly about the need to eat healthily.
A couple of months ago I was very shocked when my daughter, an extremely slim daughter, came home and did not want to eat her second slice of bread because she would get fat. She had heard a lot at school about how above all you must not be fat, but she was not sufficiently aware of how you should eat healthily and what a normal helping is. A child of eight does not really understand when you are too fat. Thus it is very important to talk mainly about healthy eating and not about whether a person is too fat.
In fact, it is mainly the responsibility of parents to show children what is healthy and what it means to eat a balanced helping, and the responsibility of schools to pass this on and set an example. Parents themselves must learn more about food values and the fat content of products and so I agree with what was said earlier about labelling. We should therefore review that point in the legislation on labelling.
I also think that it is a good idea to talk a lot about sport and about the fact that children must be able to play happily outside. Therefore, we must in any case make a recommendation that in town and country planning more attention is paid to the wishes of children to have plenty of freedom.
As far as eating is concerned, the European Commission has a very good EU MiniChefs website. The website has already been improved. It now has vegetarian dishes as well, which it did not have many of before, but nearly all the recipes contain meat. Let us be honest about that, animal proteins are a major contributor to overweight. Apart from animal welfare, the European Commission should not be explicitly promoting meat consumption.
I just want to say a final word on VAT. Mrs Ries has just said that she is against our Amendment 6 because she wants to reward people, not penalise them. Therefore, she wants not a fat tax or higher taxes on unhealthy products and imports, but, in particular, lower taxes on healthy products. I certainly agree with that, but now it appears that, in the Netherlands too for example, all foodstuffs now fall into the low category. Crisps, lollies and the like all have a low VAT rating at the moment, but surely it cannot be the intention that you make that special exception for unhealthy products. Thus it is not a question of penalising; you should not reward products that are not healthy by giving them a lower VAT rating."@en1
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