Obesity witchhunt is a 'moral panic' - sense out of Texas

Stats

I like the way the bootnote actually proves the NHS's claim: alcohol is more affordable than it was in the 70's. The fact that cars and TVs are too is not actually relevant, is it?

It was about time that happenend ...

... before it furthermore swept on the mainland after having infested Britain and the US.

Eat this, stereotypers: A fit "overweight" is statistically happier, healthier and has a longer life than a thin, unfit person. The later is just as prone to illness, diabetis and the likes as unfit "overweight".

Yes, you heard right, big people are NOT unhealthier than others. Big people were once even considered the healthiest in a society, and the only ones to be able to survice bad times as opposed to those not being able to get as much calories digested from the same amount of food.

AN ALIEN: because they are laughing at us for our combined stupidity!

Tax Me! Tax Me!

I didnt realise it before but i think i am doing things which are bad for me, but which only attract regular amounts of tax.

I drive, not walk. This is only taxed a small amount..... Oh, hang on, wait a minute, no....Its Taxed through the bloody roof!

I drink alcohol, which only has 15% vat on it now. .... Hang on, No it also has MASSIVE amounts of DUTY as well

I eat thick sliced white bread. This seems to have escaped the massive tax harpees thus far, but is still well over a quid a loaf.

i watch too much television, but at least i dont need to pay for that......, Nope wrong again....VAT on the telly i bought, licence fee and sky charges (with VAT).

I play computer games (yes the ones that attract VAT).

If i SMOKED, then this would also be TAXED TO THE HILT,

So, stop banging on about how bad for me everything is. If i didnt do any of it, you ministers wouldnt have your fat country pads and massive expense accounts.

I agree...

With this article to a point. However, most fat people are fat because they eat too much and do too little exercise. Whilst I believe there is some basis to claim "witchhunt" I think it dangerous to pin the hope on doctors being the sole cure, as the changing of someones lifestyle is akin to leading the horse to water, and making it WANT to drink it; which is not always difficult.

The answer is : STOP EATING SO MANY BURGERS YOU LARDY ASS LAZE MONKEY.

What we need is...

smart rationing cards based on the holders BMI. For those with High BMI their ration would be lower than "standard", conversely for those with low or normal BMI their ration would be higher or normal against standard as appropriate. Food bought outside the ration for High BMIs wanting a top up would be available but with 100% VAT.

Since we all have to eat, we will all need a smart ration card with biometric details, registered on a national database, to ensure that fraud and impersonation are not carried out. Thus it would provide two complementary services ration control and personal identification.

No card, no problem... all you can eat at twice the price!

Hey!

=Im stringy, and i'm actually underweight on my BMI by one point (yes, ONE), and i show every sign of living to a ripe old age - 80+...

AND THERES NOTHING I CAN DO ABOUT IT!!!

(Exept top myself (not gonna happen))

its all down to my metabolism, recently ive been eating a 5,000 calorie diet per day, and i still haven't gained a pound! so shove that in your pipe and smoke it.

AC for obvious reasons.

Just let me get a mars bar to munch on - its in one of these pockets, im sure of it!

Nice one, Reg

Nice to see this sentiment somewhere on the Reg. Devil's Kitchen has been telling doctors to "shut up and patch me up" for ages. You can also find this kind of sense being talked about less rhetorically and more scientifically on the excellent Junkfood Science blog. It's about time we stopped listening to the health fascists and realised that people are individuals and have different priorities from each other.

Page vs Coren

Players vs Gentlemen. Now there's a grudge match I'd pay to see!

A Simple Solution...

...to completely eliminate the obesity * hysteria:

Require that all places where calories can be obtained (supermarkets, pubs, canteens etc.) have doorways of less than 1 foot in width.

Think of the boost to the economy of all those jobs in joinery and manufacturing slimline wheelchairs!

Imagine the amusement watching those of borderline rotundity stopped -just- out of reach of a vending machine!

* Ignoring any silly BMI related definitions, let's just assume it means "fat".

Thank you

Riiiight... thank you, Mr Page, for reminding this rarely drinking, non-smoking 12 stone 5'10" (if I've converted those heathen units properly) man that he will be a drain on society. Eventually.

Hey, maybe worrying about it will shorten my life. In which case this article wasn't just amusing and instructive (as your articles usually are), but actually useful in real life. :-)

Not the medical profession's fault

I'm surprised at you Lewis.

As rough and ready and as completely useless as a reliable indicator of future health problems BMI may be, we are kind of stuck with it, because people want numbers - as a society we are absolutely OBSESSED by weight and BMI as a measure of overall fitness - and no *real* method of ascertaining the ratio of fat to lean tissue is even remotely as accessible.

On the BMI scale, at the borderlines between the categories it imposes, there is a lot of leeway and it is entirely up to the individual's judgement (or their health professional's if they really need help deciding) as to how to interpret the result - and whether they want to investigate properly. At the extremes of the scale there is almost no room for doubt, save for extremes of body type i.e. pumped up body builders vs willowy couch potatoes. It is the willowy couch potatoes who need to worry, as the BMI system won't flag them up (whereas the body builder would probably come out as morbidly obese but there is no way they are not going to be aware of the shortfalls of the "system" and will probably know their body fat percentage to a tenth of a percent). On the other hand a big fat bloater can have no doubt when BMI tells them they are just that - a big fat bloater.

Bottom line is if you're fat, you know it. BMI and the medical profession are not at fault - they are only trying to get the message across in terms that even the terminally hard-of-thinking can understand. It is the diet companies like Weight Watchers and Slimfast who prey on peoples obsessions who need to be given a slap.

Tried every diet going and can't seem to shift the weight? Do really well but always put it back on again? Well then here's a diet that's guaranteed to work - it's called THE EXERCISE DIET. Put down the fork and get on your bike.

Moving goal posts

It doesn't really help that health "professionals" have moved the goal posts drastically regarding obesity in recent years to massage their statistics. Obese used to mean so overweight, one can barely move without assistance. These days, it's a bit of a belly and a double chin!

hmm...

What a great article. I sure all those fat persons reading it will be so happy for the ammunition. But wait, you claim that you want facts to be used? I loved the 'have a go at the cost of skinny people bit', that’s brilliant, but kinda contradicts the very assertion you made at the start of the article. You want to stick to facts… Ok there is some grounds for concern over the BMI thing, but the facts are clear - Fat people need to learn to stop eating as much food. If you do this, you will live longer and I won't have to pay taxes to pay for the myriad of problems poor diet has on your health. Furthermore, I might actually be able to sit on a train/bus seat without interruption cause some chubber chooses to sit beside me and can't confine his/her bulk to the one seat they paid to occupy.

BMI isn't perfect but....

is it really that bad a place to start?

Most people aren't muscle queens, or rugger buggers so if you do have a high BMI there is a strong chance that you are a bit of a porker

There are other tests which can be run,

give the side of your gut a smack... wait.... wait.... wait.... is it still wobbling about?

Yes? then you're fat, deal with it

Although this doesn't mean I agree with taxing the hell out of anything mildly enjoyable, it just seems that people always get so arsey about the BMI. It is only a guideline, you know if you are fat or if you are thin you just don't want to accept it

I don't need the BMI to tell me

What my tight britches tell me every day....too much lard in the bucket.

Correlation != Causation

BMI should only really be a starter for 10, not Judge Judy & executioner.

The conversation should be "I see you have quite a high/low BMI, let's have a closer look at other risk factors like your parachute jumping and interviews on the Today Programme" rather than "I see you have quite a high/low BMI, you're going to explode/implode and DIE!"

Quetelet never claimed health implications - BMI was only intended as a population classification mechanism to see if it fitted a standard probability distribution. It's the flipping insurance industry that added them as a magic risk indicator. AIG's recent performance should tell you how good magic risk indicators are...

Another extreme to consider

Your realize that there are actually people with strange metabolisms.

There are those who eat with wild abandon all manner of calories while sitting around doing nothing and gain no weight.

There are those who eat intelligently and in moderation while engaging in modest exercise and lose no weight.

For these groups, the BMI is less than useless. You'd need some sort of endocrine system analysis to assess the health of someone like that.

Though I reckon the skinny lay-about would rather stay that way while the rotund power walker would gladly take medication to help with a hormone problem.

BMI may not be good, but increasing weight is a problem

Generally there is a problem with people getting fatter, less healthy etc. My old section officer was probably hugely obese by any scale but could cover 100 yards quicker than most and take someone down at the end of it, mind you after 100 yards you were home free as he bounced to a halt then.

My first resuscitation on ambulance duty was for someone equally overweight and it took eight of us to lift him out of the spectator stand he was in (footy fan, go figure) and cart him upstairs to somewhere I could jump up and down on his chest. He was so large that effective CPR was impossible, so whether its genes, depression or lack of self discipline (believe what you will, the food he regurgitated told me lots), Darwin got him in the end. Not that that is much comfort to his family as he was only about 40ish.

For whatever reason you are overweight, its a question of by how much, as at sometime you might need to be carried somewhere, and usually there's only two of us coming to help you. Remember the article on El Reg a week or so ago about fire crews having to come and lift heavy patients? It really can be that bad.

Eat Drink and be Merry by all means, but I'm not going to stuff my back for you after a certain point. I have a family to support.

The BMI "overweight" threshold has changed over time.

BMI is not that bad.

The accepted thresholds for being BMI normal and overweight, etc have changed. The thresholds 10 years ago were different to the values accepted today.

And BMI is not designed to tell you if you will have lots of health complications later. It doesn't make that claim, even if others might.

It does correlate very well, in the general global population, with body fat, and as such is a useful tool.

Does it work for everyone? No, not much does. But stop all the whining. And stop the excuses. It doesn't work for you if you are very fit or very very unfit. That's probably not you.

Re Fatties vs Shotputters

I'm not overweight. Just not tall enough.

@ Anonymous Coward

"i recall when i was younger and according to the BMI I was obese. 6" tall (1.8m), 26" (66cm)waist and 48" (122cm) chest"

When reading this I first thought '26" waist and 48" bust? phwoarrrr' but now I see I'm thinking of the wrong gender.

Keats

"it's totally unclear that dying expensively early on ... is a worse result for society than the alternative."

Yeah, thank God John Keats, for example, died so young. We might have had a few more of those boring poems.

And you a writer, Lewis!

I'm not suggesting that as long a life as possible should be anyone's aim but neither can you measure the benefit to "society" of what comes out of someone's life across their lifespan in purely economic terms.

On the larger questions -

Obesity *is* an increasing problem - haven't you seen some of the people walking - rather, waddling - down the street? or some of the men standing around in the supermarket queues with bellies that make them look like they're pregnant? Never mind their lifespan - in the long run we're all dead, as Keynes said - but can they possibly be enjoying life as much as they might? At the very least the poor prunes couldn't run for a bus without panting, wouldn't dream of throwing a ball for their children, and probably wake in the night burnt with acid reflux. But, of course, this is none of the government's business. I'm with you there, if that's what your thinking. And, since the current administration can't even manage governmental functions with a modicum of competence, they'd better not poke their nose into things outside their proper role.

As for Coren, I bet you could take the little weasel with no problem.

Let's work this out then...

Fact - A human body only utilizes energy ultimately presented in ONE form; glucose (stored as Glycogen in the muscles and common body fat in fat-storing cells)

Fact - Whether fructose, maltose, lactose or dextrose - it will all be reformed into GLUCOSE (sugar by any other name is just as sweet and deadly)

Fact - A body gets glucose from ingested food, fat stores or de-aminated protein muscle ONLY

Fact - A human body can ONLY make body fat from glucose, NOT from directly ingested fats, so eating fat DOESN'T make you fat...

Fact - Up to 85% or more of ingested carb content by mass (anything from ANY plant) converts to glucose

Fact - 80 to 90% of protein ingested by mass is WATER

Fact - ONLY a maximum of 10% of ingested fats can be converted to glucose by a human body (hence occasional floaters in the loo after a fish-n-chip dinner :)

Fact - Fibre-rich foods also provide glucose, just in lower amounts over a longer period

Fact - The liver can and regularly does break carbs, proteins AND fats into glucose; you cannot utilize them as an energy source otherwise

Fact - Most humans go through life following the primary energy path - energy derived from ingested food

Fact - Most humans would need to cut ingestion of carbs while maintaining protein intake to lose bodyfat (low-carb diet)

Fact - Most doctors preach ingested carbs as part of a 'balanced diet', when they can safely not be eaten (see Carnivore in your dictionary of choice)

Fact - Carbs are more responsible for blood-sugar fluctuations than any other food group

Fact - Categorizing carbs into simple and complex carbohydrates doesn't paint the correct picture on what is good for you and what is not. The amount of glucose ultimately derived from a food is the best way to rate how useful a food is to your system over a given period of time (glycemic index is the closet match)

Fact - Carbs are the CHEAPEST food produced and sold to people in the developed world today

Fact - Poor people tend to consume more useless carbs than other groups of people because THEY CANNOT REGULARLY AFFORD MORE

Fact - the £10,000 available for gastric banding to morbidly obese people could be better spent on an annual fitness regime and planned meal structures to effect a true lifestyle change.

Fact - This comment has been written by a morbidly obese person age 28, who has lost a combined total of over 40 stone over the last 8 years but gained it all back because i could not afford to maintain the regime that assisted me in my weight loss.

Fact - my biggest ever weight loss was over 8 months, when i lost eleven stone (2004)

Fact - i currently weigh 41 stone (260 kilograms)

Beer + chocolate = unappetizing? N'ah, c'mon.

You've obviously not tried Brooklyn Chocolate Stout. Mmmmm, double-ultra-yummalicious. Ideal. Combines two of my favorite comfort foods: chocolate and stout.

And I'm still hanging in there at 6ft, 165lbs. Got the kind of metabolism women hate -- the kind that runs like a Carerra on the Autobahn at 4am.

just ban all cars bigger than a SmartCar

and the lardies will have to walk to the pub....

(might get cold on the walk)

@ Pierre - 17th March 2009 23:13 GMT

Which part about glucose and carbs is wrong? UP TO 85% of carbs consumed by mass converts to glucose?

That is actually a fact (some nutritionists actually believe its up to 95% of certain carbs as consumed by mass)- as i said; it depends on what carbs you are consuming. Obviously not 85% of a celery stick will convert to glucose, but how much will a bowl of white rice? Pure carb with very little fibre content.

Please do not confuse losing muscle with losing body fat - the two are very different. If you want to lose lean body muscle you can go ahead and munch on carbs and cut down or remove protein (some vegetarians/vegans do this, and they end up looking like bean poles) because your body will strip down your non-essential protein mass to shore up essential functions (hence the whole essential amino acid boo-haa-haa)

Look, you can gain fat whether you follow a carnivorous or vegetarianvegan eating pattern. This is because ultimately the liver can and regularly does break carbs, proteins AND fats into glucose. Eating rice and salad as a meal will not provide you with amino acids, so you may lose some weight, but you.re not gonna lose fat on that - GUARANTEED. You lose more lean body muscle than fat when you bias your diet towards vegetarian/vegan eating habits, and that is unhealthy too.

Just as the human body can only use energy presented to it as glucose, also it needs essential amino acids to synthesize or replace key protein structures.

Try again with the formula, and speak from a technical point of view, not an emotional one if you can please.

@Tony

Thanks!

@the fact overweight AC

Wow. Your leg muscles must be huge. I know my leg muscles can't lift that much weight. let alone walk around as well.

Congrats on the weight-loss by the way. If you are that successful why not start your own slimming world or something. That way you can get the money to keep yourself more trim, if you really wanted.

Jolly Rodger, coz his BMI is minimal

It's just another kind of fascism

Now that it isn't acceptable to vilify people for being darker-skinned or gayer than some kind of "norm", then the mob has to have a new target. And fatties will do nicely thanks, because "it's their own fault".

Bullying isn't right, no matter how you wrap it up in pseudoscience. Doctors are mostly failed vets and Giles Coren is an overeducated cock who hasn't even got the decency to be as funny as his old man was, which wasn't very.

Beat you

6' 3" and 17 stone... I was told that my 'ideal' weight was 13 stones the last time I had this discussion, to which my response was "which limb do you want to chop off first?". There's no way I carry 4 stones in fat and I actually gain weight when I exercise regularly, because muscle is denser than fat - shock!

The BMI is a piece of shit, anyone who's been subjected to a medical knows that.

Here's another idea - why not just use your common sense, enjoy eveything in moderation and ignore all the hysteria-bullshit perpetuated by these publicitards.

You can only get so fat...

The UK and Europe are catching up to the US, more fatties, but there comes a point when everyone can only get so fat, average of around say 22-25st. I know, that's what happened to me before I woke one day and realised I'd be dead soon if I didn't shift it pronto!

My local town centre is about 50% fast food places, 50% every other types of shops. We only have at population of about 60,000, yet we have 7 pizza places, 8 curry houses, 11 chinese takeaways, 5 chip-shops, 3 kebab houses and 3 major supermarkets! Just one little tin-pot place in the middle of the country, definately nothing special about our town that attracts so much crap fast-food!

I must say there definately seems to be a rise in the number of tubby kids now, maybe I just notice them more!

Hmm. Texans. Witchunts.

Run, fat boy, run!

Needed saying. I've just downed a rather good bread pudding.

Feeling a bit sleepy now.

@lIsRT

Require that all places where calories can be obtained (supermarkets, pubs, canteens etc.) have doorways of less than 1 foot in width.

So i have to leave my todger out of doors? Surely you jest!

@Pete - taxing sperm

I don't think they'll stand still for much of that taxing business...let me know how it goes when you round them up and lay a tax on 'em.

Fact eleventyone!!! By Lee Posted Wednesday

Hi Lee,

Please look up Glycogenesis and get back to me yeah? And read the reply above this one from me if you'd like to correct some assumptions about my lifestyle.

thanks..

Fat Bloke

@ AC By Pierre...

Please explain a weight loss of ELEVEN stone over 8 months by following a low-carb regime, and i will be a happy person.

I don't consume copious amounts of Cola; i've been off fizzy drinks since Dec 2006

I don't eat bacon or other high-salt foods because that would trigger high blood pressure, and my 140/82 (measured last week, twice) will do me fine for now considering my body weight

I have never hired a personal assistant as part of my fitness regime; i walk uphill to my gym (20 minutes), spend half an hour on the treadmill at 50% incline and 4/9 on the speed setting, usually completing a 4-5km walk and sweating like mad... then i walk home again...

I eat takeaway maybe twice to three times a month; it tends to be chinese or carribean, as i can't even stand most pizza sold in the country (stodgy, oily and stinks)

I can tell you that i consume alcohol up to 4 times a year; i know this because i only go drinking with a select group of friends and this is only when we can meet up. I have never been drunk

You seem to be judging a book by its cover - i stopped doing that ages ago for the obvious reasons...

Hi AC

I'm not going to argue over a diet now, because I'm not a nutritionist (thank god for that) and *my* diet qualifies as "very poor" because I'm mostly a lazy bast*rd. However, we are the same age and I weight 65 to 70 kg (depending on how much I exercise) for 175 cm. A bit on the thin side probably, blame it on me being lazy and/or too busy, I tend to skip meals (and I do exercise quite a bit).

Anyway, my point was that your so-called facts are mostly wrong (except for the bit about the gastric band, and also the fact that trash food is heavily advertized, easily available, and appetent). My detailed rebuttal -which was sniped by the moderation team, probably for being uselessely long and boring- was a scientific (physiology and biochemistry) one. I'm not going to retype it because it would take quite some time, it would probably be killed again, and I don't really give a fuck anyway -and I'd bet you don't, either.

Your weight loss on a low-carb diet can probably be explained by the fact that your energy intake was adjusted to fit (or be a bit below) your energetic expenses, and not by the "low carb" part. These diets -in my very modest opinion- are mostly trends, but again, I might know a thing or two about normal human physiology (my paycheck would tend to say so), but I'm in no way a specialist in obese people's metabolism, so I might very well be mistaken. Extreme cases might, after all, call for extreme measures. Understand me well: I still don't believe in these trendy diets, but I have no way of proving they are rubbish. Put in another way, your "facts" were scientifically wrong so you certainly failed to prove that your diet has a scientific basis, however, there still might be one. I doubt it though.

In short, whatever works for you is probably good, and, as a psychologeek friend of mine would put it, "Obesity starts in the head" (yeah, he's a strange guy).

Be careful not to be abused by charlatans and swindlers. They abund. "Rip off the fatso" is one of the most lucrative occupation in western countries since "investment bankers" is getting risky. If the "facts" you presented here were given to you by a "nutritionist", I strongly suggest you kicked his/her probably skinny arse and find a real one.

PS

Just to finish on a (dim)witted note, I almost regret not being overweight because I will never get to use the good old "I'm not big, I'm near".

Correction for Lee

I immediately apologize - that was a typo.

The process i meant to refer to is Gluconeogenesis.

Two specialists (NHS), one private consultant, three nutritionists later, they cannot find what is wrong with me. I lived on exactly the same food and exercise regime as my brother (who is thin and of socially acceptable proportion) for six months. He lost two pounds; i gained three stone. We kept a food diary and took it to my GP, who promptly accused me of cheating. We were sharing a flat, going for exercise together (gym discount) and working at the same company. Go figure.

Hey, at the end of the day, if the penny-pinchers have decided that fat people are going to be taxed based on their BMI, there is nothing i can do to stop it. I may be in the minority, but i have a serious problem, and i have tried and continue to try every day to lose the fat that seems to burden the society i live in. Pity society refuses to accept that this is a problem; maybe because they associate eating with pleasure and as such must somehow have made the assumption that people who eat more than others are seeking some sort of pleasure more than everyone else.

I am stuck between wishing that none of you EVER know someone real close who is fat e.g. your kids/eventual spouses etc, or that you ALL get fat and get lumbered with that which you thought you could resist till kingdom come.

@ annoyingly clueless AC

"that was a typo. The process i meant to refer to is Gluconeogenesis."

Would you please be kind enough and stop this cut'n'paste of random cool-looking words from some Wiki article that you didn't understand?

Given the bad faith you display here, it's probably safe to assume that even the personal "facts" you gave are at best inexact. That closes it really. Go back to eating lard, as you seem to believe it's good for you.

Oh, and about your food diary: put the bloody things on the scale. Stangely enough, "pizza" is a single line, but one slice of pizza is not the same as 2 pizzas and a half.

And this is the problem with the world...

Such closed-mindedness coupled with prejudice usually belongs to people to whom misfortune has not yet befallen..

I will continue on my path, costing you idiots an arm and a leg on the NHS, taking two seats in trains and planes while paying for one, forcing you out of queues whenever i feel like, and generally making your lives a nuisance with my physical presence, simply because when i asked for help, i was told i didn't need it.

Is that more along the lines of what you wanted to hear? Prejudices satisfied? Job done...

Off to find something fattening, and you'll pay for it in the future :)

Bon Appetito, dumb azzes!!