Obesity? This is a job for Supernanny (obesity concerns all of us...)

[The Straight Story]

Obesity? This is a job for Supernanny
Minette Marrin

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.

....cut...

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%.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2088-2330255,00.html

We don't exist for the state, it does for us. People should be free to live as they see fit, but the mantra is - 'we all pay for your healthcare, so you best live the way we tell you is best'. There is a problem in all that imho.

[Iris]

1. How come no one ever complains about how much influence corporate America

has over us? And I'm not talking about selling us junk, but chaining us to our jobs for more and more hours out of the day so that it's impossible to be physically active or to have the time to prepare appropriate meals for ourselves and our families?


Whyis it that people who want less government have no problem with the chokehold business has over the people of this country? The obesity epidemic is just once sympton of a system-wide problem.

[mcscajun]

6. This time the article is about UK obesity, not US.

The issue is spreading, if you will, to all the developed countries.

The reference to the "NHS" and the UK link were the giveaways.

[MADem]

2. "American" fat?

I've seen some pretty beefy folk over in the UK, too. And Supernanny is hardly the one to educate people--she carts a few spare stone around herself.

There's a shitload wrong with that diatribe, starting with the 'holier than though' attitude throughout! If the writer doesn't want the NHS footing the bill, start getting the high fructose corn syrup out of the beans, by regulation, for starters...

Sheesh. Love these assholes--they can't NOT look down their noses, can they?

[mcscajun]

4. The article IS on obesity in the UK, the author is using "American"

as a descriptive adjective.

[MADem]

11. I realize that. I'm pointing out that fat Brits existed long before

Mickey D's ever made it over that way. A steady diet of beer, butter, clotted cream and mushy peas can make that happen.

And it's way too easy to blame us for every ill, including their inability to regulate their own society by making say, good food affordable, eliminating use of excessive amounts of high fructose corn syrup in manufacture, and including nutrition education in their NHS efforts.

It's a cheap shot. The Germans have a Big McLarge Huge problem too, as bad or worse than we do, but since we have an asshole in charge and they don't, it's way easier to toss crap our way.

[mcscajun]

14. I agree, it IS a cheap shot, but then again, the article is FULL of them

They all rankle.

[sandnsea]

9. Along with the just plain sugar

and all the other garbage in food, including excess fat, trans or not. Every packaged item should be reworked to be as low in fat, sugar and salt as possible. So much food is loaded in that stuff that that's what people are accustomed to, the actual taste of food is buried under fat, sugar and salt.

[mcscajun]

3. This thread will turn ugly in 3...2...1....

:(

[Lindacooks]

5. Why do there have to be so many pejoratives in statements

about obesity?

Blatant prejudice is shown in phrases like 'distastefully fat', 'explosion of flab' and 'grotesque findings'.

And those who eat for 'cheap comfort' most probably have depression, which is a crippling illness in and of itself. 'Ignorance' has no part in this. Depressed people simply can't help themselves; they need treatment and probably medication to overcome that illness; THEN let's address overeating or eating for comfort. Don't make the easy, dismissive argument of 'ignorance'.

[mcscajun]

7. It gets worse if you read the entire article.

Lots of unscientific assumptions and insulting statements in the full article.

[Lindacooks]

16. Thanks - I won't read it.

My BS meter was going off just reading the excerpt.

[maxsolomon]

8. cue the debate!

:popcorn:

Americans may not be the only obese nation, but we are the gold standard. We lead the world in Bariatric Suite production.

[mntleo2]

10. Poverty Is A Killer In Many Ways

...I am getting sick and tired of people assuming "ignorance" is related to obesity. Let me tell you something: A low income family on food stamps is allowed $1.19 per meal, per person. A fresh tomatoe can cost $1.19, while canned tomatoes mixed with pasta can feed the whole family. Get it??????

The highest rate of obesity in America is in Mississippi, which DA-DA-DAHHHHHH! is also the poorest state. You can be as smart as a whip, but if you have to make your food stretch across a lot of people, you have to use a lot of starch. You have to find whatever means you can to fill your children's belly and if it settles the cries of hunger to feed them cereal, then that is what you do. WIC's allowance is almost all fats and cereals (milk, cheese, eggs and cereal along with 1 can of juice per week)because these are things considered to fill a kid. Sugars fill the hunger pangs and this is a fact.

Can you connect the dots here and please try to understand that poverty is not causing stupidity, however it IS causing mal-nutrtion?


Cat In Seattle

[gaspee]

13. You forgot

The dollar menu at McDonald's and other fast food places. No matter how much a person might want to eat well, when you have two bucks for lunch, those MickeyD's Double Cheesburgers for a buck each are going to fill you up pretty good.

Yeah, ignorance, riiiight. Just like people who don't "pull them up by their bootstraps" are lazy.

Kinda makes me crazy when I see stuff like this...

[mntleo2]

15. Except ...

...most poor would have a family to feed, so the dollar menu does not go far with three people. Three hamburgers + 3 drinks gets up there for people who have to count every penny. Poor people do not have a dollar to spend anywhere except for the bus to get to that McJob that pays them nothing (where they are busy trying to pull themselves up by a pair of torn sox, because they do not have any boots much less boots with straps).

If you are a working mom with three kids who commutes by bus 4 hours a day ~ tell me when will you have time to cook some elaborate meal that is chock full o' vitamins on $3.60?

Yeah it makes me mad too, people who have enough in life assume a lot of stuff that if they thought about it, well it just would not make sense, like assuming that poor people eat wrong because of ignorance (replace ignorance with 'stupidity' because that is what they seem to be thinking when they use that word), lol.


Cat In Seattle

[pinto]

12. I had to keep in mind that this is an Opinion piece and not a straight

"news" article. It's tone sure is inflammatory.