Surrey

Local MPs get cooking for youth health

MPs Tom Brake and Paul Burstow cooked up a storm in Carshalton on Friday as part of the youth campaign Make Space for Health.

Young people from the area learnt how to make healthy chicken wraps and tasty fruit salads from Nestle chef Wayne, who also taught them about choosing what they eat carefully.

The MPs then led the young people in a quiz to find out who knew the most about healthy eating and who could design the best advertising slogan for the wraps they had just eaten.

The winning entry came from Harrison Cole, with his slogan “Slap it up, wrap it up, snack it up”.

Health minister Paul Burstow, the MP for Sutton and Cheam, said he was pleased to support Make Space for Health as policymakers have a duty to encourage young people to make the right decisions to enable them to live happy, healthy lives.

“Make Space for Health is a great example of this in action – with young people learning about health issues in a supportive, informal and fun environment.”Tom Brake, the MP for Carshalton and Wallington agreed, adding: “if we can get young people to continue on the trend of making healthy life choices, we have succeeded”.

Recent research for the Tellus 4 local authority survey of young people’s health behaviours found that more young people in Sutton were getting their 5 a day on a daily basis than the national average (21 per cent compared with the national average of 19).

However, levels of physical activity were not quite as positive with more young people than the national average admitting to doing nothing active over the previous week (40 per cent compared to an average of 35).