We have all been told how serious this problem is, how much it will cost our economy in health care in the future, no rubbish in school tuckshops, educate ourselves in nutrition etc etc. I fully agree, my problem with all this is actually reading the label on something, how many of you can actually read the label on a food product, understand the fat, preservative content? I get confused and to be honest, don't really have hours of spare time to spend in a supermarket working all that out as I am sure many others don't either.

We also need to keep fit, great, I can afford to go for a walk but that is about it as far as time and finances go, and I would assume many others are like this as well. Though it is our kids we really need to be aware of in regard to this, so of course we get them to play sport with all it's benefits. Thanks to increased insurance, rising costs of absolutely everything you can't exactly turn up to the Netball court with your $1 coin and have a game either. A friend of mine has 4 kids all playing sport, both summer and winter and it costs an absolute fortune, though she is happy to sacrifice certain things to pay for this for her kids, but how many parents can't? Call me naive but how about Governments help us out here and avert this 'future tragedy' they are all so concerned about?

Science proved Cigarettes were 'bad' for us, so they banned all cigarette advertising, doubled the price of them with tax and put horrible pictures of future problems on the front of the packets. Smoking is decreasing, so obviously that works. How about doing the same with junk food? Science can tell us what an acceptable limit of fat, preservative etc should be in a food, so how about doing that, anything over that prescribed limit be taxed to the razoo, no advertising of that product allowed, and awful pictures of fat, diabetic issues and the like on the packaging? We all would not need to go and get an MBA in Nutrition to work out the package labels then, would we?

Now I know that taxes on cigarettes used to go towards health, (unsure now though) so lets do the same here, put the taxes on all this bad food into school education programmes and more importantly sport! How about making it that the government absorbs all the ridiculous Insurance coverage costs so that each kid in the country can get back to playing the old weekend sport for the cost of a buck, help schools get more sporting facilities, subsidise uniforms and the like, make it affordable for the whole family to play sport and exercise?

Naive I know! Government and media is happy to beat up on the cigarettes (with good reason) but maybe not so brave to take on the major fast food chains and sneaky companies advertising the 'so called' healthy quick and easy snacks for kids to take to school. For a nation that elevates sportsmen (and women) to the status of heroes, we ourselves and our elected representatives are not exactly pro-actively protecting or seriously assisting our future in that regard.

Best Wishes, Noely, Community Site Co-ordinator