A GYM Owner from West Cumbria has spoken out on the governments new measures to try and tackle obesity within the UK.
Lee Butterworth, who owns Extreme Fitness Gym’s in Workington and Carlisle thinks that the new measures leave somewhat to be desired when trying to tackle the obesity crisis in this country.
On Wednesday,June 23 the government revealed plans to ban all advert's that promoted fast food before 9pm at night.
Products such as chocolate, burgers, soft drinks, cakes, sweets, and pizza would all be banned from TV as part of the scheme, with the aim of tackling obesity- which now affects more than a quarter of all UK adult's.
From the end of next year,will only be allowed to be shown between the hours of 9pm and 5:30am.
The government has found that obesity issues often begin at childhood and affect the poorest in society.
Lee Butterworth, however thinks that people need to be more educated on what they eat rather than banning adverts.
He said:"I don't think it will make any difference, you look at cigarette packets now they have people's lung's falling out and people dying and organs rotting, but people still go out and smoke them.
"I think it's the education on it that is more important and the parents jut saying no to the kids and explaining that it's not healthy to eat that much."
He particularly thought that the scheme would have little affect on tackling the issue at a young age, Lee said:"I don't think that adverts are going to stop anything, there's adverts for toys all day long, my little girl asks for toys. Every single toy she see's on an advert she asks for, but she doesn't get it,and its's exactly the same, it's down to the parent's I think."
"You would be surprised how many parents message me on a weekly basis actually asking for advice for their kids, it's always harder with kid's.".
The popular gym owner said that although adverts must have some affect with the huge sums of money companies pour in tho them society needs to look at different ways to address the problem .
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