Posted on 09/27/2010 10:43:51 PM PDT by smokingfrog
An NHS advisory group suggested offering incentives to people to quit smoking or eat healthier food can lead to positive changes.
A pilot scheme saw pregnant women being awarded supermarket vouchers to give up cigarettes and the obese paid to lose an agreed amount of weight.
Children were also offered toys as a reward for eating more fruit and vegetables.
The independent Citizens Council, run by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) and made up of members of the public, has backed the scheme.
The wider public are now being asked to give their views before Nice considers whether to implement the policy.
Sir Michael Rawlins, chairman of Nice, conceded paying people to quit smoking was a "divisive issue".
But he said it was important to consider alternative policies.
"The Citizens Council makes an important contribution to the work of Nice by providing a snapshot of what the general public thinks about controversial health challenges," Sir Michael said.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.sky.com ...
They're so serious! I expected one of the Monty Python characters to pop in there somewhere.
We should also pay skinny people to gain weight. Short people to grow taller and tall people to shorten themselves. We can have a perfect world yet! But it’s going to cost the taxpayers.
Giving people money to lose weight allows them to buy more food.
How about no more pizza?
Observing the speed limit?
No flushing alligators down the toilet in NYC?
But NOOOOOOOOOOO! Instead the nannies have legislated fat people into lives of obesity!
My theory is there are too many chemicals used to grow our foods, too many chemicals fed to livestock. People's bodies are not accepting these chemicals and thus gain weight.
Instead of the gov placing the blame on people, they should make sure that food is grown naturally. I find "organic" veggies to be a ripoff.
When you gain the weight back do you have to repay the money
(Tommy Lasorda)?
My theory is that the average person in the free 21st century world has access to high sugar, high calorie foods in vast amounts never before placed in front of so many humans, at prices so cheap, at one time. MANY many people use carbonated sodas or sugar drinks as their main source of hydration. That alone is probably responsible for probably 50 percent of the problem.
It's too simple for most people to handle, and too frightening to contemplate that the monster government that we have failed to limit would in a heartbeat make such beverages illegal, and if things continue on the same path, most certainly will some day.
But it's the truth. Sodas and sugar drinks as daily habit are as stupid -- probably stupider in their way -- than smoking cigarettes.
People I know who eat with common sense and purpose don't seem to be bothered by the "chemicals" used in food and livestock production.
A limited government that serves the people has zero business placing the blame for obesity on anybody. Only a statist government served by the people would presume to "blame" an entity for the individual dining choices of free people.
The real solution to obesity is to reject it, and that is also human nature. People who allow themselves to become obese will have reason to change their behaviors if they're rejected and made uncomfortable. Except our statist government that would have us serve it, frowns on discriminating against obese people. You'd better not fire, or fail to hire, an obese person based on that person's weight, no matter how big a red flag the condition raises of "someone with issues!" Why, the government that demands your service will even fine you for doing what human nature tells you to do.
Today, we think it's compassionate to interpret obese people as pitiful victims of something gone awry, when the truth is what's gone awry is the social, civilized way of controlling obesity, combined with a stubborn resistence to identifying a major culprit -- sodas and high sugar drinks instead of plain water, tea, or coffee. Kids who are obese feel terrible about it, of course -- but they're also assured that it's not really their fault, as if fault had any relevance in any case.
It's not a function of "fault," it's a function of self responsibility. The behavior needed to remedy any individual's problem of obesity depends on only ONE THING: self responsibility. If there's any fault at work, it's that of a society that relieves self responsibility of the blame for the consequences of badly done behaviors such as the regular eating and drinking stupid things like sodas and potato chips.
1 in 5 gay men has HIV.
So, will they pay gay things to stop being gay? HIV treatment is very expensive.
Get out of our lives, Government.
Heck no. HIV+ is an honorable pursuit.
This is the sort of bureaucratic job that Republicans should eliminate.......
“I expected one of the Monty Python characters to pop in there somewhere”
Mr. Creosote, perhaps? ;-)
Ewww! Mr. Creosote is gross!
That’s him in post 15, isn’t it? Now, if only he had an after dinner mint........
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