Posted on 08/28/2006 11:20:06 AM PDT by freepatriot32
Fat is not a feminist issue, as Susie Orbach once claimed. Fat is a class issue. Rich, educated people are not fat; you see almost no children in private schools who are overweight. Fatness and obesity are directly related to lower education and lower incomes. What is sad is that at a time when this country is richer than ever and ought to have better schools than ever, we have far more fat people than ever — a dangerous explosion of flab. Last week the Department of Health issued a report grimly called Forecasting Obesity to 2010 and its findings were grotesque. Within four years, it predicts, a third of all adults — 13m people — will be obese. So will 1m children
Obese means not just podgy, but dangerously, disablingly, distastefully fat, as in American fat.
This is not just shocking; it has also happened shockingly fast. As the report says, a third of all men will be obese by 2010; in 1993 the figure was only — if one can say only of such a large figure — 13%, rising to 24% in 2004.
The same is true of women, although the rate is rising more slowly; 16% were obese in 1993, 24% in 2004, and the trend is expected to rise until 2010. The proportion of boys who were obese stood at 17% in 2003 and is predicted to rise to 19% by 2010, while among girls it is expected to increase more swiftly from 16% to 22%.
This presents an awkward challenge to libertarians. The libertarian assumption is that we should all be free to do what we want, as far as possible, and if some people’s lifestyle choices involve snacking on deep-fried Mars bars and triple-processed cheeseburgers, other people have no business interfering, still less the government.
Besides, there is the embarrassing fact that those who eat and drink junk do so for cheap comfort and because they are either too poor or too ignorant (or both) to prepare healthy food. It doesn’t come well from the consumers of steamed organic asparagus and free-range ducks’ breasts to criticise those who can manage only frozen reconstituted chicken nuggets and sugary baked beans.
However, obesity does not concern only the obese. It concerns all of us. Obese parents produce obese children, and obesity places a crippling burden on the National Health Service, quite apart from the many personal miseries involved. Currently 10% of NHS resources are spent on diabetes (two-thirds of which is the avoidable type 2 associated with obesity) and this could easily double within the next four years to 20%.
This is quite apart from the increased risk among the obese of heart disease and other serious illness. More young people are being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, something previously seen only in people over 40. In these circumstances even the most swivel-eyed libertarian would probably agree, for once, that something must be done and even perhaps by the government.
Curiously enough, however, in one of the few areas where our ever-intrusive government might for once justifiably intrude, new Labour does almost nothing. Possibly as a result of the ferocious lobbying of the food industry, ministers restrict themselves to making repetitive noises about healthy living and “small changes” that won’t cost anybody anything.
Tony Blair said last month that if the food industry did not agree to limit junk food advertisements by 2007 he would bring in mandatory rules, but he has said that before and more than once. Besides, why not bring them in straight away? His government has persistently ignored the demands of the Commons health select committee for a traffic light system of food labelling, enabling shoppers to make informed choices.
England’s chief medical officer warned in this year’s annual report that public health budgets were being raided to deal with deficits. That is the reality behind government talk of raising public awareness.
I have never been convinced that government health education has any effect. Despite the “five-a-day” campaign, only a quarter of people in England eat vegetables every day. About half of overweight men are in denial; they don’t see themselves as overweight, according to the report.
There is nothing complicated about being thin. Being fat is usually the result of eating too much junk food and taking too little exercise. Being thin means eating much less food, avoiding junk food altogether and taking exercise every day. It may be that nothing can be done about the plague of obesity; there is a growing epidemic in Europe and worldwide. Perhaps affluence is a disease to which only the fortunate few are immune. But if anything could be done about it, it would have to be radical.
Nobody who craves cheap comfort food will willingly give it up. But if over-processed, over-refined food and junk food were to become expensive while healthy fresh food became cheap — the opposite of the case today — people would be forced to eat well. This could be done through taxes or subsidies. Alternatively, you could ration unhealthy food.
There could be a public campaign against fattening food, just as there was against smoking, aimed at making everyone ashamed of consuming anything naughty but nice. I am just as greedy as anyone else but I have come to think of cakes, biscuits, crisps, sweets, white bread and puddings as more or less toxic. Foods like this should have health warnings — “cake can kill”. They are not just unnecessary, empty calories; they interfere with your blood sugar levels, affect your appetite and your mood; they may even induce food addiction. The same applies to alcohol: more than a modest amount makes you fat, interferes with your mood and is often addictive.
Just as there would need to be financial incentives to eat well, there should also be inducements to take exercise. The cost should be subsidised or declarable against tax. Employers should be required to give workers time off to go to the gym or jog. We could imitate the Japanese and have mass group exercises at work every day.
And that is the problem. Obesity, one of the trials of affluence, can be solved only, if at all, by the kind of interventionism that has been discredited by the failure of socialism. Liberty is indivisible; it belongs to the ignorant and the low paid just as much as to anyone else. Perhaps obesity is one of the many prices of liberty. Fat is a freedom issue.
Some things are impossible to cook right without pork fat. Fried chicken, for example, or refried beans. Want something to taste good? Fry it up in lard. It'll taste great no matter what it is.
Leda, see #175 - "square foot gardening."
It may very well have been a banana leaf - but there is another name for it. I've seen it used in both Cuban and Hawaiian cooking.
It could also have been a plantain leaf.
Damn squirrels got all my tomatoes this year.
Well, at least they didn't go for your nuts.
They won't go for nuts until next month.
Lucky you. The folks that bought most of the acreage across the road from me are planning on building a stable and barn for horses and some cattle.....I have a feeling I'll be getting as much "fertilizer" and I desire once they get that going :)
it took me a long time to learn that.............I'm a yankee by birth.
Speaking of frying.........I've onions to chop and chicken livers to fry up.......
Shred finely several heads of cabbage.Take a crock or large jar and rinse it out. (A 1-gallon mayonnaise jar will make a nice quantity of sauerkaut. Just be careful when you pour in the boiling water; tetter rinse it out with hot water to start with.)
Pur a layer of shredded cabbage in the bottom and sprinkle on som salt. Don't overdo it, however. You can always taste the brine the second day and add a little more salt if needed.
Continue layering the cabbage and salting the layers until the crock is nearly full. Put a stone on top of the exposed cabbage.
Boil a kettleful of water and pour it into the crock until it covers all of the cabbage and the stone as well.
Leave it alone for 3 days. The cabbage does all the work. In 24 hours, you will have strong cabbage water; in 48, young sauerkraut; and in 72, the real thing.
(Don't forget to drink the juice for breakfast.)
As I posted above, mine came out kind of weak, but the only big jar I had was only about a half gallon -- it might have held the heat better if it was bigger.
The Lithuanian church near me, at its annual fair, serves up homemade kielbasa and sauerkraut dinners. They put caraway seed in the sauerkraut; I guess it's a Lithuanian thing, though my family never did it. My mother just used the canned, but after she drained and rinsed it, she'd chop an onion and put a couple of tablespoons of bacon fat in the pan to heat it up.
(The church did put out a cookbook one year that included a recipe for sauerkraut -- it started with 40 pounds of cabbage! It discouraged me right there. I think it also suggested using a stone crock, but I was fresh out of stone crocks.)
Exactly!
I see what the welfare mothers are buying with their WIC coupons and it makes me cringe.
I can buy four dozen eggs for the cost of one box of cereal, which box might make it through 1.5 breakfasts with a couple of kids.
For the cost of two bags of chips, I could buy several pounds of potatoes that can be made into all kinds of yummy things, including just put in a microwave.
For under a buck, I can buy a bag of dried beans, add $3.00 worth of Polish sausage and have a pot of good stuff to feed the whole family a couple of times.
That's just the beginning.
In the end, it usually costs way more to eat crappy food than good, basic food.
Now to eat fine food, that's another matter.
Exactly!
I see what the welfare mothers are buying with their WIC coupons and it makes me cringe.
I can buy four dozen eggs for the cost of one box of cereal, which box might make it through 1.5 breakfasts with a couple of kids.
For the cost of two bags of chips, I could buy several pounds of potatoes that can be made into all kinds of yummy things, including just put in a microwave.
For under a buck, I can buy a bag of dried beans, add $3.00 worth of Polish sausage and have a pot of good stuff to feed the whole family a couple of times.
That's just the beginning.
In the end, it usually costs way more to eat crappy food than good, basic food.
Now to eat fine food, that's another matter.
Yes, the freezer and pantry are the biggest moneysavers in the food budget universe!
If you have space to store stuff, you can really take advantage of sales. I never pay full price for meat. When it goes on a nice sale, I stock up and put it in the freezer. It's wonderful.
You forgot gahhh-lic . . .
What a wonderful gift you gave your friend!
My one food splurge that has gotten out of hand is snacks. I find having the prepackaged granola bars etc. very convenient for football practice days, etc. But, boy, the expense.
I'm going to get resituated so I can start making more snacks at home. They will be a lot healthier and certainly cheaper.
Must be the Parisians...(grin) :)
I'm sure...
Man--what a great idea to use V8 juice! I'll have to try that, that sounds really savory with beef stew.
We used to live where we had a big lawn to mow and DH had long hours at work.
End result was I had to take over the grill duty if we were ever going to have grilled food. I started grilling a little extra each time. By the end of the week, we'd have a big pile of some of this and some of that in the fridge. Fire it up a bit in the microwave and enjoy the "mixed meats grill platter."
Yum!
Poor people in past centuries looked emaciated and thin because of the lack of food. They were living in the wrong century to be in style, I guess. The rich back then could afford roasted ducks and piglets, pate' and petit fours, and it was all the rage to not LOOK LIKE POOR PEOPLE. So, fat was all the fashion. FAT = IN STYLE
This day and age, the poor can afford generally pretty good food and plenty of it. Big Macs and fries, pizza and fried chicken, and they aren't too proud to enjoy it.
In this society, the rich, as usual not wanting to look like the modern poor, can afford the fat farms, exclusive spas, personal trainers, special gourmet diet foods low in fat and carbs, live-in chefs and so forth - so they can appear the way the poor used to back in the old days.
SKINNY = IN STYLE WHATEVER THE POOR CAN'T AFFORD TO BE = IN STYLE in other words.
All in all, I think the poor today have the right idea for the most part - enjoy yer vittles!
The one appliance I will insist on when we have the room is an extra freezer.
My parents had an old upright freezer in the garage, and that thing was ALWAYS full of meat.
This stupid side-by-side we have now has enough room in the freezer for one half-gallon of ice cream, 10 of those zero-calorie Italian ices in the tube, and two bags of unidentified vegetables Xena's Guy brought home from some family dinner. Nothing else may enter.
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