Never fear, the Natural Health Service will sort you out. Launched last month (amid surprisingly little publicity), this is Natural England’s latest initiative to tackle the countrys growing rates of obesity.
The Natural England website claims that by 2050, 90% of adults will be overweight or obese. I’m not so sure about this rather spurious statistic myself, but one that is irrefutable is that 18% of children in London are currently classed as obese. Even Jamie Oliver may struggle to sort that one out on his own.So the latest idea is to get people using London’s ‘greenspaces’ more. We are rather spoilt for choice; even if you live away from the centre of town there’s Richmond Park, Greenwich Park and Bushy Park. The Natural Health Service is encouraging people to make the most of these areas; volunteering for conservation projects, going for a walk or jog, or simply relaxing in them.
Football fun in Hyde Park. Courtesy of Deror avi
This is not the first time that the benefits of green spaces have been proclaimed. Many studies have found that people who live near parks or green areas (and therefore presumably visit them more than people who live far away) have both better physical and mental health. Now researchers from Bristol have found, more specifically, that people who have easy access to areas of green space are more likely to be physically active and much less likely to be obese.
On this basis, Natural England is aiming to increase the number of households within a five minute (300m) walk of an open space at least two football pitches big. I’m not really sure how they plan to do this – roof gardens have been mentioned but it would have to be a very big roof, and I doubt the government will be willing to knock down a few blocks of flats to make way for a park. The scheme may not get the support they’re expecting either; when I mentioned it to a friend, there were immediate mumblings of “yoofs” and “hoodies” and “white lightening”…
So for now it would appear that we will have to make do with the existing parks. Not that I’m complaining, I have two near me, but apparently sitting looking at them won’t make me thin. Best get my running shoes on then.
A few weeks back, I was walking along the very lovely and very spacious parkland that forms the southern edge of High Barnet. In my 20 minute walk across the open space, I think I only saw one other person. This is a huge park with several housing estates backing onto it, and it was a sunny Sunday afternoon. Where was everyone? Don’t kids play outside anymore?
Many studies have found that people who live near parks or green areas (and therefore presumably visit them more than people who live far away) have both better physical and mental health. Now researchers from Bristol have found, more specifically, that people who have easy access to areas of green space are more likely to be physically active and much less likely to be obese.
As one who spent much of his life residing in the immediate vicinity of St James’s Park, I can only agree that the ready availability of such an amenity upon one’s doorstep is likely to encourage one to pursue a mode of life beneficial both to health and to wellbeing. I was regularly accustomed to circumgyrate both that park and Hyde Park; and, even in my 75th year, every twenty four hours I spent three quarters of an hour in exercise, half walking and half running, in the two parks. In such a manner, while the spirit relaxed, the body was strengthened. Yet to proceed from such generalisations to suggest an absolute causative link between parks and public health appears to me to constitute a logical fallacy.
A far more plausible chain of causation is that (1) areas of towns containing parks and open spaces are agreed to be more pleasant places of habitation than areas in want of such amenities; ergo (2) the prices of property within those areas are likely to be higher than elsewhere; ergo (3) they will tend to be occupied by the more affluent classes of society, relegating the less privileged classes to the more densely built upon areas of the town. That the less privileged classes are also the less healthy has been frequently demonstrated, but the reasons for such disparity are manifold, and the imbalance is unlikely to be greatly altered by the novel and peremptory imposition of a few patches of grass.