Evening Extra<\/a> programme that there needed to be a “wider conversation” had about the “impact of the cost of living crisis and the fact that many low income families simply can’t afford more healthy options”.<\/p>\n“That is the elephant in the room,” Fitzpatrick said.<\/p>\n
She believes that a “different position of unhealthy food in the supermarket or a different pricing structure is not going to change that very stark reality for many families in Northern Ireland”.<\/p>\n
Without action being taken to make fresh fruit, vegetables and other healthy options more accessible to low income families, “we’re not going to see a massive dent in those obesity figures that are on the rise”, according to Fitzpatrick.<\/p>\n
“I think we need to have a broader discussion about growing more local produce and making it more easily available to people here in Northern Ireland,” she said.<\/p>\n
Professor Susan Jebb, chair of the FSA, said the proposals were designed to help people eat more healthily.<\/p>\n
“We’ve all had the experience of going shopping with a list and somehow when we come home we’ve bought a few extra things as well,” Jebb told Evening Extra.<\/p>\n
“And often those extra things are foods that are high in fat, in sugar and salt and they’re just not good for us. They’re leading to ill health.”<\/p>\n
Jebb said that with the policies in place in England, some businesses have “tried to get around the restrictions a little bit”.<\/p>\n
“So what we’re also interested in is thinking how we can potentially introduce these policies in Northern Ireland in a way which makes them most effective,” she said.<\/p>\n
The DoH and FSA is interested in hearing from retailers, food businesses, manufacturers and local authorities, along with public health organisations, consumer advocacy bodies and the general public.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Some concerns have been raised, however, that these proposals may negatively impact low income families. Dr Ciara Fitzpatrick,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":550910,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[134,111,139,556,69],"class_list":["post-550909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nutrition","tag-health","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nutrition","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=550909"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550909\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/550910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=550909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=550909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=550909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}