On What Our Children Are Telling Us ~ the Government's report on tackling childhood obesity

Foodbank collection at All Souls', Cheriton's Harvest Festival, October 2019

I have decided to post a few pieces here that, like my article on Operation Christmas Child last week, contain my immediate reaction to happenings that mean a lot to me. They might be shorter than my usual sharings, less polished, and I'm sure not entirely complete ~ there is always more to say ~ but sometimes it feels important to say something, rather than nothing at all. I have quite a long list of beautiful blog posts I would like to share but I am struggling to find the space for writing & so I hope that you will forgive me, dear reader, for these occasional, less perfect, deviations.

Today, I want to write about the Government's strategy on childhood obesity.

When I first read Prof. Dame Sally Davies' ideas about tackling childhood obesity by, for instance, banning food & drink on public transport I was niggled, then I was angry. Now I am enraged.

You can read more about it here.

Whilst I agree with her that company profits are being put before people, & that that must change, there is clear evidence from a range of studies over decades that obesity is now linked to poverty; unlike in the past when the poor were starving & the children of the rich were obese.

These studies, funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council, the Medical Research Council, the Academy of Medical Sciences, and the Wellcome Trust, concluded that the "powerful influence of the obesogenic environment [growing up in an environment that encourages, or at least facilitates, unhealthy eating] has disproportionately affected socioeconomically disadvantaged children", and that policies to prevent childhood obesity have been "ineffectually focused". Naturally when the Mail Online reported on this study in March 2018 they resorted, as ever, to 'victim shaming', suggesting that the report blamed rising childhood obesity on cheap junk food & declining activity levels. This, of course, is an oversimplification and it seems that today's Government report follows the same pattern.

Instead of tinkering around the edges, we must address the deeper issues affecting our children. Instead of reinforcing the age-old stereotype that the 'lower classes' need the kind, paternal hand of the 'upper classes' & Gvt to control ourselves, that we are some how more at the mercy of our baser instincts, maybe some thought needs to go into changing the fact that the well off are now growing 'fat' on the misery of the poor; if not physically then certainly in terms of wealth & power.

I have seen many people today, rightly, rejecting the recommendations in this new report whilst suggesting that parents need to be educated in how to feed their children healthy food, particularly on a budget. Whilst, I agree that we can all learn more about how best to care for our bodies, I reject the insidious and internalised blame masquerading as care which is thinly veiled beneath these, no doubt well meaning, comments.

In feeding ourselves and our children we cannot, and must not, discount the anxiety, lowering of self-esteem, and all-pervading depression, caused by decades of Conservative rule. The people feeding their own children now are the children of the children of Margaret Thatcher's brutal Government. So many of us knew that this would happen, have been screaming it into the wind. And depression spreads like poison in the blood. If adults are desperately unhappy, their children, through no fault of the parent or the child, live in a cloud of despair. Who wouldn't reach for a sugary or buttery treat?

And even without the depression, many parents are forced to take several jobs to make ends meet, working long hours, & so unable to cook for their children, sometimes even then compelled to use foodbanks.

Several years ago I read a horrifying report that food which needed to be cooked was being returned to foodbanks because some couldn't pay their gas/electricity bills & so were unable to cook at all. Whilst I accept that this may not affect large numbers of people (and it should be none at all), how easy would it be to make good & healthy food choices whilst living like that? And, of course, working long hours makes us desperately tired and more likely to reach for the quick energy-hit of sugar.

And then there is our disconnection from the outdoors, an issue which disproportionately affects children from low income and BAME households; so many playing fields sold off & built on, so much woodland and other open space lost to development in the name of greed. And we are encouraged not to care, to self-medicate with television and cheap snacks  ~ and, by the way, making the cheap snacks more expensive, as suggested in this report, only makes people poorer. There is no suggestion that healthy food should be made cheaper! ~ And, of course, even if children do have open spaces around them, their parents are often too tired or despairing, or just too busy working, to take them out, and we are so threaded through with fear by the media that many children never go out alone. 

And that disconnection; the loss of even wanting to be out, or being too afraid, of being tied to computer screens & televisions, of not knowing about the world of wonder, & messiness, & play to be found outside. I weep for our children and for all the 'Lost Words', whose loss has lessened the wonder.

I have worked as a counsellor with primary school children, mostly boys and mostly from poor families. They aren't lazy. They don't want to live on snacks. What they mostly want to do is play football or just run about. Instead, we make them sit still in classrooms, putting more and more pressure on them younger and younger to perform, to succeed, but only to succeed within the narrow parameters we have chosen for them to be of use in the world of work. No wonder that they eat.

This is the world that we have made. Looking at the most shallow level ~ the symptom, not the cure ~ won't mend it. We have to start thinking of ourselves, both as individuals & our society, as an ecosystem, a web of interconnections & relationships, & our ecosystem is dying. Our children are telling us that. It's up to us to make the system healthy again; but not with rules & petty blame, but with care, intelligence, and love.

And I am still in a rage. We all should be. How dare they talk about our children in this way!?

References:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/time-to-solve-childhood-obesity-cmo-special-report

https://theguardian.com/society/2019/oct/10/childrens-health-england-must-be-put-ahead-of-profits-says-chief-medic

https://www.nhs.uk/news/obesity/children-poorer-backgrounds-more-affected-rise-childhood-obesity/

https://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/2018/mar/01/improving-childrens-access-nature-addressing-inequality-bame-low-income-backgrounds

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/may/21/how-can-we-get-our-children-playing-outside-again

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jan/13/oxford-junior-dictionary-replacement-natural-words

https://heated.medium.com/weve-sold-the-definition-of-food-42062e6c4a14

Souptemple ~ Stirring Up Belly, Heart, and Spirit in the Midst of the UK Election 2015

This has been a terrible day. It became clear by 6am that the Conservatives had won another term as the Government of the United Kingdom and, worse still, that they have gained a majority in the House of Commons. That this has happened is almost beyond belief, the pre-election polls having suggested that, at worst, another coalition would be required. Many had hoped that, despite their shortcomings, this coalition would be led by the Labour party and although certainly not perfect that would have led to an end of the hated Bedroom Tax, an end to the badger cull, and the continuation of the Hunting Act which bans fox hunting. That we now have to endure a further five years of a Right Wing government who, without the softening presence of their coalition partners, will go full steam ahead with their austerity agenda is a devastating blow. I know very few people who have not been in tears all day. For myself, I am heartbroken and a little bit of my belief in people has died. I am ashamed of my country and ashamed to be English; two things that I never thought I would say. That this neoliberal ideology is running rampant across much of the Western world is of little comfort to me. This is my land, a land that I had thought was inhabited by people who were ultimately caring, compassionate, and tolerant. Today, I believe otherwise. Maybe tomorrow it will be different.

This increase in Conservative power will lead to the further persecution of all that is vulnerable and wild in this land. I fear for the poor, the disabled, the young, the old, the homeless, the low-waged, and the mentally ill. I fear for the forests, the badgers, the foxes, and the song birds. I fear for our hearts and I fear for our sanity. I fear that not all of us will survive. Many feel utterly broken, and yet perhaps in that brokenness we will find our power. We human beings are very good at cutting off from our emotions, from the reality of what is happening around us if that reality is too hard to deal with. No doubt this ability holds powerful evolutionary benefits and yet it seems that it is also susceptible to manipulation by those who want to have power over us; they distract us by turning us against one another, offer us shiny bribes that appeal to our baser instincts, and encourage us not to see what is really going on beneath the surface of the spell they have created. And who would want to see the truth when that truth is so obscene? We would have to see people driven to suicide, starving, weeping as they are forced to leave their homes, animals maimed and screaming, forests cut down for new housing estates that few can afford to live in...

And yet, some of us do see and we keep on looking; some of us weep for those who can no longer cry, some love for those who can no longer love, and some see for those who keep their eyes firmly shut. It may break our hearts, we keep on looking. It may feel that it breaks us; we keep on looking. We can't help it. It is who we are. And so, for many of us who can see what has gone before and what lies ahead, this is a day of mourning. Many are still on shock. Many have lost hope. Soon will come the anger. These feelings matter. It is disconnection from what is sacred; from the land, the self, and community, that has allowed people to vote the Conservatives back into Government. Without that disconnection how could anyone bear to put their cross in the box marked 'austerity'. It is monstrous to even imagine that someone could have seen the reality and still done so. The tiny part of me that still believes in the good of my fellow human beings refuses to believe that that could happen. Those of us who have not succumbed to that disconnection are feeling the pain and the empathy that so many seem not to feel and in that we keep hope alive. We have to keep breathing deeply, allowing ourselves to be broken open and, in the days and months and years to come, we have to live from the heart and live fierce. What I have come to think of as the 'Tory death cult', which could just as easily be the capitalist or patriarchal death cult, suffers from a profound disconnection. It is led by people who persevere with policies towards the natural world that will ultimately kill us all, even though that includes them. What greater disconnection could there be than to continue with something that holds within it your own annihilation? And yet continue they do. Those of us with our hearts open are an answer to that. We are the pulse of Life, with a capital L, and for me that pulse of Life is Goddess.

And yet feeling isn't enough for times like these, sitting in prayer isn't enough. If today has been anything it has been a call to action, a call to sacred and connected activism in the face of unbelievable greed and indifference. A few years ago I was shocked to read in the newspaper that many food banks were reporting that food was being returned to them uneaten. Appallingly, this was food that needed to be cooked being returned by people who could not afford the gas or electricity to do so. I was moved to angry tears contemplating the feelings of those who, not only had to suffer the shame and indignity of going to a food bank in the first place, but then had to admit to not being able to cook their own food. I am sure that many took the food knowing that it would never be eaten, too ashamed to give it back. That this could happen in the sixth richest country in the world is almost impossible to understand. It is shameful and shames us all. I began to think of ways in which we could help one another; perhaps those who could cook could offer to do so for those who couldn't, perhaps we could create community kitchens? And yet all options left me feeling uneasy and despondent and, after some thought, I realised why; in trying to help, in offering a hand to the poorest and most vulnerable amongst us, as of course we must, we would be creating the 'Big Society' that David Cameron has eulogised on so often. This ideology, based on volunteers filling the gaps left by austerity, was a flagship policy of the 2010 Conservative manifesto and suggested that it would take power away from politicians and place it with communities. In reality, this was far from the case, with essential services being brutally cut and volunteers expected to fulfil the roles of those who had previously been paid. And so, in helping those in need, it felt that we would be not only absolving the Government of any responsibility for the care of the most vulnerable in society but also proving them right. This insidious turning of those with good intent against who they were trying to stand beside and offer a hand to is one of the reasons why I despise the Tories; they are treacherous and would like us to be just the same, or perhaps they assume that we are already.

And so I gave up my idea of somehow helping people to cook their food and tried to take action in other ways but the idea has kept coming back to me again and again. Today, devastated by the election results, I went for a walk, pressed my body against a tree and cried, gathered up some hawthorn blossom and buried my face in its creamy petals, breathed in the scent of what is real and of the earth, and the thought came back to me again. This is not a time for sitting and mourning what could have been. This is a time to take action like never before. I have no doubt that, just as I am writing this, there are people, worn down by the previous ConDem coalition, who are contemplating five years of an, even more heinous, Conservative majority and wishing that they were dead. No, this is not the time for those of us with open hearts and tears in our eyes to sit and mourn. We no longer have the luxury of that. People are dying. And perhaps those of us who can still feel and know that the world is broken are the ones who have to do something about that. Maybe we have to be the whisper of the wild in a world gone dead and cold. This is hospice Britain and someone has to care.

And so, something that I have spoken of with friends before came back to me, but this time with a name; Souptemple. It has often been suggested to me that I found a Goddess temple; something which I feel no enthusiasm for at all and yet the thought of something pulsating with the love of Goddess for us all, but with a practical purpose in reaching out to the most outcast, does seem bright with hope and promise. It seems to me that in times like these, when the vulnerable amongst us can't afford to make themselves a hot meal, that this is an idea whose time has come. I sat in the café and wrote everything that popped into my head and I am sharing it now just as it is and with, hopefully, some of the energy that I felt when I wrote it...

Souptemple ~ food for the belly, heart, and spirit

Provide free food, nutritious and made and served with love, containing as many wild and foraged foods as possible. Made to look beautiful and bright. Providing nutrition, dignity, love, and solidarity, together with connection to community and the natural world.

Could be in beautifully decorated vans but would be good to have a building to provide a place to be, together with workshops building self-esteem through creativity and connection to the natural world and one another.

Sacred activism ~ campaigning against food poverty and against loss of dignity and self-determination of the poorest and most vulnerable in our society.

Provide wild medicine/herbalism.

Create the beauty of the hedgetemple wherever we go.

And so there it is; the seed and the sowing of an idea. I don't know where it will go. It is an idea that never leaves me and, today of all days, it wanted to be made more real. I feel unequal to the task of making it happen; too scared, to shy, too wobbly, too inexperienced, but I am lifting a prayer for its growth and for the continuation of Life amongst all of this. If anyone has any thoughts please do let me know. There is much more to do and we will do it. I refuse to stop believing in the good of people. And, in the meantime, I spit on David Cameron's 'Big Society'. This isn't 'volunteering'. This is love.

Comfrey Fritters, made by Will Greenwood, April 2011.

I Stand With the Badger People…

                                               

                                                 (Photo by Richard Bowler, used with permission)

                                

Wild wood wanderer,

Druid of old Albion,

Blessings on the Brock.

May our most ancient Briton,

Ever walk our old straight tracks.

(Martin Pallot)

Badgers have been present in the British Isles for at least 300,000 years, since before the time of the Neanderthals. Modern humans arrived here only 33,000 years ago.

Badgers live in complex underground burrow systems, known as ‘setts’. Some setts can be centuries old, as can the paths that the badgers follow above ground. Their tunnels and ways thread and weave their way across the land like memory…

Much has been written about the cull of our badgers; a Government led attack which began in the summer of 2013 and is continuing in 2014. Licenses have been issued in spite of an independent panel reporting that, “controlled shooting – shooting of free-running badgers – could not deliver the level of culling needed to bring about a reduction in TB in cattle and was not humane”. In spite of the cull's massive unpopularity with the public (more than 304,000 people signed a petition against it). In spite of Parliament voting against the cull. In spite of evidence that the method of culling used was not only cruel but that it could only serve to spread bovine TB further as badgers, no longer connected to their family clans and ancient landscapes, fled for their lives. In spite of the fact that badgers are protected in the British Isles under the Protection of Badgers Act 1992 and schedule 6 of the Wildlife & Countryside Act, 1981. In spite of the fact that badgers were declared a ‘species of conservation concern’ in the UK Biodiversity Action Plan and are listed under appendix III of the Bern Convention. Moreover, the cull itself cost £7.3 million to organise and to police, a cost of £4,100 per badger. This cost was considered reasonable in spite of the fact that large numbers of vulnerable people are having their benefits cut and some families are surviving only by relying on food banks.

At the Conservative Party Conference in September 2014, the chancellor, George Osborne, stated that, if re-elected, a new Tory Government would cut benefits by a further £12 billion and freeze benefits for 10 million households. None of this seems to make any sense and yet, for me, these attacks on our badgers and on the poor amongst us are not unrelated. In the way of radical honey, I am drawn to the root, to the ideology that lurks beneath so many of our Governments decisions. Badgers are dying. People are dying. The wild, in human and non-human animal, is under attack. One of this Government’s very first acts was an attempt to sell off our forests. The Infrastructure Bill, which exempts fracking companies from trespass laws, also contains a proposal that “any animal species that "is not ordinarily resident in, or a regular visitor to, Great Britain in a wild state" will be classified as non-native and subject to potential "eradication or control", therefore preventing the re-introduction of extinct native species. George Monbiot comments that, “this a deliberate attempt to pre-empt democratic choice, in the face of rising public enthusiasm for the return of our lost and enchanting wildlife~. As Baroness Parminter, who argued unsuccessfully for changes to the bill, pointed out, “it currently creates a one-way system for biodiversity loss, as once an animal ceases to appear in the wild, it ceases to be native.” (quoted in The Guardian, 21^st July 2014). All that is wild, untamed, labelled ‘unproductive’, and vulnerable is being attacked. The poor, the people of the soil, like the badger people, have always been outcast, painted as the villain; we have much in common.

Badgers will eat several hundred earthworms every night but also love to feast on insects, bluebell bulbs, and elderberries.

The name ‘badger’ is thought to derive from the French, ‘bêcheur’ meaning ‘digger’. In Welsh badgers are known as ‘Moch Daear’ or ‘Earth Pig’. Until the 18^th Century badgers were known as‘brock’ in England; names that smell of earth.

Badgers are an inconvenience to many landowners. Since its election in 2010, the ConDem Government has again and again brought in laws, or done away with old ones, which protect the land. The presence of badgers, a protected species, holds up planning applications, and badgers interfere with the gaming industry by eating grouse eggs which are being ‘lovingly’ raised for shooting. A lot of money is at stake. The only instance when a badger can be legally ‘removed’ is if it is vital in order to control the spread of disease. With bTB there is evidence that better dairy farming practices, which would lead to stronger, healthier cows, lessens the impact of bTB on dairy herds. Just as the much vilified urban fox comes to show us how much we throw away and waste, so the badger has come to teach us about our unsustainable farming practices. Instead of listening, we attack. There is also evidence that badger vaccination has a vital role to play and does not lead to family groups scattering to other areas. And yet, in its supposed aim to eradicate bTB, the Government continues to insist that culling is the only answer. Of course, were bTB to be truly eradicated, there would be no excuse to legally remove badgers from land when planning permission was being sought and that would indeed be inconvenient.

                                                                  (Photo by Richard Bowler, used with permission)

Badgers are incredibly clean and tidy their sleeping chambers by dragging old hay, grass, and bracken outside tucked under their chins.

Badger cubs are born in February, with two to three cubs per litter. By March and early April they are exploring the tunnels and chambers in their family setts and, by mid to late April, they are making their first visits to the outside world. By twelve weeks old, they are being weaned and begin to forage outside with their mother. By fifteen weeks, they are brave enough to forage alone. By the time that autumn comes they are almost the same size as adults and are enthusiastically building up body fat which will enable them to survive the winter.

There is something very inconvenient about our poor and vulnerable too, with our (much eroded) right to healthcare and support and with our calls for hearth and home and family. In a recent survey of 2000 mothers it was found that “1 in 5 regularly go without meals to feed their children, 16% are being treated for stress-related illnesses and one third are borrowing money from friends and family to stay afloat. Teachers have reported that thousands of children are going to school hungry, exhausted and poorly clothed. A study by Tesco estimated that one in five people was going hungry.” (quoted by Nick Cohen in ‘The Spectator’, January 2014) Only those in work, and even moreso ‘hard working’, are considered productive enough to be worthy of support and respect, and only then if we keep quiet. Like the badgers, we get in the way. I am lifting a prayer that we always will.  Like the badgers, we smell too much of earth and what is real. Like the badgers, we remember. Like the badgers, we are not broken and we have a long history of survival.

Taken as separate issues, it is easy to become overwhelmed. Everywhere we look there is something that we find impossible to stomach or to believe. Many of us, understandably, turn away. I believe that if we are able to dig underneath each issue to the radical roots, if we can claw at the bark until we find the rot below, we will find that, rather than being separate, these attacks on badger and human have the same source; a wish to control and to possess, and a belief that what is vulnerable has no value. We have something valuable that those who think only of money and power can never have; “like the badgers, we smell too much of earth and what is real". If we look for the kinship and the connections between us; between badger and farmer, cow and human, we will see that we are not alone in this fierce fight. We can call upon the spirit of the badger people in our own struggle against draconian moves to sell off the NHS and to withdraw benefits, just as they should be able to call on us in stand up against their murderers. No matter which thread of protest and action we might choose we are fighting against the same belief and declaring that we are of value to life. Badgers are fierce in defending their homes and their clans. In fighting for them, we are also reclaiming our right to be heard. We can stand with the badger people in reclaiming the land that was always ours.

In the badger spirit I find…

Ancient digger, old tunneler, keeper of the deep earth songlines, wild forager, quiet earth hunter, Brother Night, Sister Night, dark earth belly, beloved of the Elder Mother, lover of the soil, warrior spirit, carrier of the earth scars, watcher of time, guardian of the land, mapper of memory, protected by nettle, thorn, and rose, by holly and bramble, beating earth heart, honour in connection, power in belonging, breathing earth moving, snuffling the pathways, digging the songlines, earth mover, earth turner, deep heart holder, earth heart holder, wisdom of home and hearth and clan, keeper of the ancient tales of land and tribe, enduring memory of what has been, of what was, unseen warrior, fierce and peaceful deep earth ancestor…

I stand with the badger people…

                      (Photo: Jacqueline Woodward-Smith, taken at the march against the badger cull, June 2013)