Stewart Paterson: How can Glasgow be a healthier city if we keep approving fast food drive-thrus

The latest in Glasgow is being built near Glasgow Harbour on greenspace land that is currently been cleared for the purpose.

On a normal day, pre-lockdown and probably again post-lockdown, this is beside one of the busiest roads in the city.

The roundabout that is to be located by is often blocked with traffic and as soon as there is an incident on the expressway or the Clyde Tunnel cars and vans are backed up on adjoining streets.

If other drive thrus are to be taken as a benchmark then there is potential for cars to be queued up at busy times waiting to get in, adding to the congestion in the area.

The site of the latest drive through fast food outlet is less than two miles from the SEC, the venue for the COP 26 United Nations summit on climate change.

It is hoped that world leaders, when they come to Glasgow will be able to strike a deal that will be as important as those in Kyoto in the 1990s and in Paris five years ago.

A Glasgow Agreement, it is envisaged, will be the outcome of COP 26 and will finally be the breakthrough that leads to meaningful action that will lead to a reduction in the practices that lead to climate change.

Glasgow will then become synonymous with action that will lead to the necessary reduction in greenhouse gasses and other actions to tackle climate change

As well as the big politics stuff that Joe Biden, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping of America, Russia and China, need to thrash out in Glasgow, it is also known that small actions taken together all over the world will make a difference.

It is hard to see how this one small action of felling trees, albeit not on the scale of Amazonian deforestation, to build a place where people drive cars, burning fossil fuels, and keep engines running while they buy food that requires many more trees to be cut down to produce their feed, in any way contributes to efforts to tackle climate change.

In the vicinity there are already other drive through fast food outlets. At least these are mostly in retail parks.

But there has been an explosion of drive thru outlets in Glasgow and others are requesting permission.

From the usual fast food giants to high street bakery chains and coffee chains all setting up across the city.

In recent years, the fast food giants have all made an effort to improve the health image of their products.

They all have animal welfare polices and sustainable farming policies that you can read on their website.

But it is inescapable that in order to meet climate change targets the world as a whole has to reduce its consumption of meat and dairy.

It is estimated that a 50% reduction worldwide is required. In the west and in the UK because we consume more than the average the reduction needed is considered to be higher, at around 70%.

Glasgow still has a lower than average car ownership, so there are many who will not be using the drive thrus.

But this is one area where people are not being excluded.

Outside every drive thru there can be seen a number of cyclists and motorcyclists working for the global delivery apps to bring the stuff to your door.

If those who dominate the market have their way everybody will be eating, and they probably are, more fast food takeaway.

That means more soya produced to feed the increasing number of cows and chicken that are reared to meet the rising demand.

Which in turn adds to deforestation. It also means the use of more resources including water and electricity to facilitate the insatiable need for profit by the firms behind them.

Glasgow like any other big city has a role to play on rising to the challenge in tackling climate change and pollution and the council, like the Scottish Government has high stated ambitions in this area.

One of the city’s other well documented long term problems is poor health and childhood obesity, linked to poverty and deprivation.

Again, the big global players have made recognisable efforts to reduce the fat, salt and sugar content of their products and there are certainly other convenience products available that are unhealthier than those on offer in the drive thrus.

And it is recognised that as part of a balanced diet the occasional fast food takeaway is not going to be harmful to health.

But again, it is difficult to see how adding even more fast food outlets will contribute to efforts to improve health and combat rising childhood obesity.

The latest drive thru might just be one more drive thru, so what harm can it do.

But it is one more drive thru added to the tens of thousands of others that have been, or are being, built all over the country.

Glasgow, rightly, has big ambitions to be a healthier city.

Glasgow, rightly, also has big ambitions to be city that tackles climate change.

It is difficult to find anything in granting permission for even more drive thru fast food outlets that contributes to the city achieving either of these desirable aims.