With the crackdown on spending in all Government sectors including the NHS it is vital that we all look after ourselves. Taking out private health insurance is something that more and more people are considering because they are losing faith in the national health system. They also cannot afford time off work with chronic illnesses when private health insurance would see them in hospital, treated and back out at work quite swiftly. This would not happen if you joined one of the long waiting lists to be seen by an NHS doctor.

One of the important things we can do for ourselves is take the route of preventative health care in the form of diet and lifestyle. Everybody knows through the media and Government advertising campaigns how bad it is for us to continue smoking, drinking alcohol to excess and burning the candle at both ends bringing on stress. But how is this possible when you look at the cost of living and the price of a loaf of bread or bag of potatoes these days?

Private health insurance application forms like to see that you indulge in a healthy diet of fresh fruit and vegetables as well as balancing that with small amounts of meat, bread and rice. That's all very well but when you look at the incidence of obesity and how the UK is fast catching up with America in this epidemic, then somehow the message isn't getting across. It has been found that those with the poorest diet come from those groups of people on the lowest incomes.

And I'm not surprised. It costs a great deal more to be able to supply a family with fresh fruit and vegetables than it does to get the pre-packaged mush. On top of that, while we're running around like headless chickens to pay for this mush, we have no time to cook the proper stuff and we also have to work that much harder to pay our extra private health insurance premiums.

The price of fruit and vegetables has jumped dramatically in the last year with some getting a massive twenty nine percent price rise. Bread has gone up over twenty per cent and rice over sixty percent. Wages do not rise at this rate so how are we meant to continue to feed our families appropriately when this is the case?

The price of fuel for the home and car has risen dramatically so how is a family to continue living within the guidelines recommended for cheaper private health insurance? It seems impossible but we are truly missing out when you look at the health benefits that could be gained. A third of all cancers, that's 95,000 people, a year could be saved from the ravages of cancer with simple diet and lifestyle changes.

Womb cancer alone is twice as common in the obese and kidney cancer is also linked to obesity. Breast cancer is much harder to detect in those that are heavily overweight and while the genetic link is still there, lives could be saved by pertaining to a sensible weight and picking up the problem earlier.

It is recommended that we eat whole grains and pulses to supplement the good things in our diet but how are we meant to afford them at today's rates? It seems we need the private health insurance to fix all the things the NHS will make us wait years for. We need to work harder to pay these premiums that keep going up because we can't afford decent nutritious food. Where will it all end?