Hasn't this writer ever heard of those "fat cats" who pull the levers of commerce?
Besides, shouldn't the government at least set an example before presuming to offer impertinent advice to America?
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.
It's strange how they don't seem to be anywhere near as worried about anorexia and bulimia - psychological disorders as compared to just mere overeating.
I do think some people are too uneducated to know how to eat healthy and resistant to change, a welfare mother I knew several years ago would trade her WIC stamps for cigarettes and use her welfare food 'dollars' for daily's fruit drink and cheetos and popsicles because her kids 'won't eat nothin else'. But she's an exception.
But I do disagree, in a way. Maybe not many are too poor to eat healthier, but it is a challenge. I've found (since I've taken a cut in pay) that produce is not cheap. Just as one example - a single walmart red pepper, $1.43. No-name mac n cheese, 3 boxes for a dollar. And more filling, so some may be tempted to go with the mac and cheese. I've had to be creative, what's on special today and we can cut around that bad spot and so on. Meat, also the cheap meats, pre-made, fattier and less healthy (additives), are much cheaper than a nice or budget cut.
And it depends on location, too. I'm constantly amazed how my sister in a major city pays less for produce, meat and other grocery items than I do in a rural area. Of course, she pays more for many other items, but they eat well.
Fresh produce and meat costs far less than the prepackaged frozen stuff..
Produce (even though it's August) and meat (even hamburger) cost a fortune around here. Pasta, potatoes and bread are cheap. And you'll get fat on them. Stouffer's frozen stuff is expensive, but Banquet frozen dinners go for $1 apiece; their potpies are $.69.
Produce and meat are sky high in my area, too. Pasta, potatoes, bread, white rice, oleo are cheaper. If you have $3 for the week you buy those things instead of a bag of grapes. Of course portion control is so crucial. That being said, people come home hungry and stressed and tired like everyone else and tend to overeat. They do get fat and humiliated. I know people who do this and I have my poor times, too. I suppose the sin starts at being poor and stupid and ignorant in the first place.
I have helped a friend cut her family food budget nearly in half this summer by teaching her how to make some of the family favorites (like lasagna) at home instead of buying frozen ones.
I took the amount of money she was going to spend on frozen lasagnas and purchased meet, cheese, pasta, onions, and tomatoes and a couple of disposable foil pans. We then spent a day putting together the pans of lasagna she then put in her freezer. The same amount of money she would have spent on 3 meals of frozen store-bought lasagna provided her family with 9 meals of homemade.
French women don't get fat...
That's scary stuff.
It's true, what you say. Bottom line is, we're unhealthy on many levels. Fat is the physical. I won't get into what's become of morality.
You're probably right!!!!
You're absolutely right about that, but from an employment standpoint it's also much harder to regulate. You don't always know if a perspective employee is gay or very promiscuous, but if they're obese it's obvious.
Fat is a class issue. Rich, educated people are not fat;
Bravo Sierra! I am rich, educated AND fat.
Obese means not just podgy, but dangerously, disablingly, distastefully fat, as in American fat.
Exactly what the does this mean? 5'2" @ 110 pounds is considered "fat" these days.
This is not just shocking; it has also happened shockingly fast.
Easy to do when one keeps moving the goal posts.
Years ago there were these little chart thingys. They had different charts for men and women and they included 3 different bone structures. I think some even had a different chart for age groups etc. Do they still exist?
Generally true, because a box of Twinkies is a relatively inexpensive form of entertainment.
Produce (even though it's August) and meat (even hamburger) cost a fortune around here.
I totally agree with you. It drives me absolutely insane about the cost of chicken around here ---- the processing plant is closer to my house than the supermarket.
But that is the problem - shipping costs. Tyson and Perdue ship the chicken processed here down to the warehouse of the local supermarket chain in North Carolina and then it is shipped back up here.
Produce is not a problem, except in the winter, what I don't grown myself I buy it directly from the farmers (or they just give it to me).......but it seems that meat (of all types) is outrageously expensive every where.
Hasn't this writer ever heard of those "fat cats" who pull the levers of commerce?
Besides, shouldn't the government at least set an example before presuming to offer impertinent advice to America?
Too many carbs. :)
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