Is it me or am I in a supermarket checkout time loop?

Headline from yesterday’s Guardian:

“Removing sweets from checkouts could help tackle obesity – study”

Every dental professional who ever lived will probably shake their head and roll their eyes, (not a good look), when they read this, and mutter, “Isn’t that what we have been trying to achieve for years, or is it decades?”

Back to Google:

• “Supermarkets break pledge to stop tempting kids with chocolates at checkout.” Mirror March 2017

• “Lidl bans sweets at the checkout” Guardian July 2014

• “Choccies at the checkouts – have you noticed a change?”, “Which” Conversation May 2013
• “Sweets at supermarket tills ‘undermine healthy eating’,” BBC News April 2012
• “Chuck snacks off the Checkout!” The Food Commission 2005!!
• “Back in 1994, TESCO was the first British supermarket to remove sweets and chocolates from checkouts but only at the larger stores.”
• etc etc

The Sybil Fawlty award this time goes to the research published in PLOS (Public Library of Science) journal. I apologise to the good and diligent researchers who have shown again that putting sweets and snacks in close proximity to people means that those people will buy them – or pester a parent to buy them; and that removing them is good for our health by leading us not in to temptation but delivering us snack free at the exit.

BUT

Removing them reduces the risk of the supermarket making sales and therefore risks their profit margins.

We know all this. We all know this.

We know what causes/contributes to tooth decay, obesity, diabetes etc

We know that avoiding snacking is good for us….and have done for decades.

We know that checkout snacks are tempting and not a good thing.

So what will happen? Cognitive dissonance is a wonderful / dreadful thing.

 

Merry Christmas from ASDA (has this stuff got relatively cheaper over the years?):