Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-09-24-Speech-3-408"
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"en.20080924.34.3-408"2
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"Mr President, overweight and obesity are a major problem for our society. We know that we cannot change consumer behaviour with legislation. Rather, changed behaviour throughout society has an impact on the individual: after all, who wants to be an outsider? Our health behaviour and diet are influenced by our social environment. There have been complaints that meat consumption is on the increase. However, it is on the increase because more people in society can afford to eat meat, not because per capita meat consumption itself is rising.
A healthy relationship with food and drink is particularly important. An obsession with being thin is as bad for health as compulsive eating. Eating habits cannot be regulated by law. People's dietary needs vary, and there is no 'one size fits all' requirement in terms of people's calorific or fat intake. People are different, and their individual energy needs differ too, depending on age, gender, occupation, and activity levels. Bans are a poor substitute for common sense. We do not need new legislation: what we need are information campaigns to impart knowledge. We need freedom, not nannying. Freedom also implies responsibility.
Our citizens are intelligent adults who can think for themselves. Traffic-light labelling is not representative as it only shows certain aspects in isolation, so it confuses consumers. What should I choose if a product label shows that a specific food has red, yellow and green nutritional elements? The food industry will pass the costs of the new labelling on to the consumer, driving up prices even further.
I am against a 'nannying' approach and mandatory front-of-pack nutritional labelling using colour coding, and I would therefore ask my fellow Members to vote against paragraph 37 of the report. If necessary, we can deal with this later in a different context, when we look at the issue of labelling. Let us take the White Paper on nutrition, overweight and obesity-related health issues as an opinion-forming tool which provides food for thought for society, not as an opportunity to impose even more conditions and create new legislation!"@en1
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