The growing national obsession with obesity…
Obesity Epidemic Myth
by DAVID ATHERTON
16 May 2014
A new report out this week claims that the obesity is rising at unprecedented rates, despite increasing evidence to the contrary. It was headed up by Dr. Laura Webber, who believes that 75 percent of us will obese by 2030. Apparently about 66 percent of men are either overweight or obese and 57 percent of women, and this is projected to rise to 74 percent and 64 percent respectively.
When it comes to dealing with obesity Dr. Webber said “The UK and Ireland, where obesity prevalence is among the highest, possess unregulated liberal market economies similar to the US, where the collective actions of big multinational food companies to maximise profit encourages over-consumption.” She added:
“We need to make healthier food more affordable and less healthy food less so, by using taxes on sugary drinks for example and subsidies on fruit and vegetables.”
The obese will cost “the NHS an extra ?19.2 billion a year.” The children feature heavily too. “We need to protect children from this environment – important to restrict unhealthy food marketing to children on all media and in settings where children gather such as schools.”
Is there any empirical evidence to offer a persuasive case? The report exists only in abstract terms, which means the paper itself appears to not have been published and maybe going through peer review. In its absence, cynics may accuse Dr. Webber of science by press release.
However Chris Snowdon Director Lifestyle Economics at the Institute of Economic Affairs has been researching the facts. What Snowdon found from Health Survey England was a notable increase on obesity from 1993 to 2001 where male obesity or being overweight rose from 57 percent to 67 percent, but reached a plateau and has remained static with only minor variations. With childhood weight problems, there was a rise too from 1995 but in this case peaking in 2004, but has slightly declined or stabilised depending on your interpretation.
Even more ballast has been supplied by Dr. Patrick Basham, Adjunct Scholar to the Cato Institute and Director of the Democracy Institute in a paper published very recently, co-written with Mr. Nadeem Esmail and published by the prestigious Canadian free market organisation the Fraser Institute called “Obesity in Canada: Overstated Problems, Misguided Policy Solutions.”
Basham and Esmail found that “Between 2003 and 2012, there has been no statistically significant change in the rate of overweight (Body Mass Index between 25 and 30) among Canadian adults.”
Additionally “The rate of obesity among Canadian adult males appears to have stabilized or perhaps even declined, though adult females have seen a steady increase in obesity since 2003. Among Canadian youth (aged 12 to 17), rates of overweight and obesity are largely unchanged between 2005 and 2012.”
Contradicting Dr. Webber’s statist solutions, they point to “little solid evidence that commonly proposed government policy interventions could systematically reduce the prevalence of excess weight and obesity.”
I had an opportunity to interview Dr. Basham for his reaction. I asked if the prevalence of obesity is exaggerated why governments overstate the “obesity” epidemic? He replied: “They do so due to a combination of political and media ignorance that is exploited by successful lobbying on the part of both internal and external stakeholders, i.e. respective departments of health, NGOs, public health establishment, Big Pharma, and rich, well-intentioned but terribly misinformed philanthropists.”
I also asked who do you think has a vested interest in keeping the myth alive?
“It’s a perfect storm of rent-seeking interest groups: politicians seeking favourable “he/she really cares!” headlines; public health bureaucrats seeking larger budgets and more power over the unwashed; academics seeking grant money; pharmaceutical companies seeking more consumers for their weight loss drugs; lawyers seeking class-action suits against the food industry; diet companies seeking more clients; and, of course, good ol’ fashioned paternalists (the Left and the Right) who know what’s good for the rest of us and are fixated upon giving it to us good and hard!”
While certainly there are high levels of people being overweight and obese, it does seem for various reasons there is little evidence that the problem is an increasing epidemic.
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No more muffin tops or cankles: Minister calls for ban on ‘fat talk’ used to shame women over their bodies
12/11/2013
By Amanda Williams
Jo Swinson believes ‘body shaming’ language damages confidence
Has called for a ban on terms such as ‘thunder thighs’ from conversation
Comes amid campaigns by celebrities including Jennifer Lawrence
A minister has called for an end to so-called ‘fat talk’, including terms such as muffin tops, bingo wings and cankles.
Scottish MP Jo Swinson believes the ‘body shaming’ language damages people’s confidence and wants women and children to ban the terms from everyday conversation.
The equalities minister said: ‘It’s depressingly commonplace to hear women – and even young girls and children – insulting their own bodies.
‘Muffin tops, thunder thighs, cankles – fat talk and body shaming too easily become a habit and an expectation.’
Her comments – reported in the Sunday Times – come amid high profile campaigns by celebrities.
Hunger Games star Jennifer Lawrence last week called for the word fat to be ‘illegal to use’ on television, and American model Tyra Banks has launched a campaign with the Special K cereal brand to discourage women from using fat talk.
The 40-year-old supermodel and America’s Top Model judge, who said she uses the term ‘fiercely real’ instead of ‘plus size.
She told Huffington Post Style: ‘I don’t like the label “plus-size”.
‘I don’t want to use the term “plus-size,” because, to me, what the hell is that? It just doesn’t have a positive connotation to it. I tend to not use it.’
Research complied by the government has revealed that, regardless of whether they start off fat or thin, women with poor body confidence are more likely to put on weight.
It also found that girls who lack body confidence are less likely to do well at school and work.
Future campaigns will now focus on encouraging women to become healthy, rather than solely on losing weight.
A government source said: ‘Fatshaming, trying to motivate weight loss through self-disgust, is unlikely to produce sustained benefit.’
Read More.
2 June 2013
By Janet Street Porter
For the first time in Britain, an entire city is being offered free advice to change the way they live – gut-busting on a massive scale.
Up to now, I’ve derided the nanny state – the silly traffic lights on food, the meaningless calorie counts on menus, the dopey ‘five-a-day’ fruit and veg Government-funded website that has made no difference whatsoever to the amount of veg we eat.
So when I read that the citizens of Salford would be able to consult a team of specially trained life coaches at 22 venues throughout the borough for free, you might expect me to sneer.
The scheme lasts for three years and is funded by the Department Of Health and the council, and will be run by a group of local organisations and charities including The Big Life group.
Fans say that by helping to change the way people choose to live even a little bit, the NHS will save millions in hospital admissions.
The situation is Salford is desperate – unemployment is way above the national average, and it has been dubbed the UK’s ‘liver disease capital’. It also has the lowest life expectancy and one of the highest rates of chronic obesity.
You could argue that the people of Salford have chosen to eat rubbish, sit on their sofas and smoke themselves to death, so why should they get help for free – but that’s a rather cynical view.
If there are very few jobs on offer and you don’t know how to cook, what incentive do you have for exercising and preparing food from scratch – especially if you are managing on a jobseeker’s allowance or IDS-policed benefits?
Long-term unemployment breeds low self-esteem, which means you lose the will to change your lifestyle. And this thinking gets passed from generation to generation, so it’s important to try to break the cycle, otherwise young people leave school and fall into exactly the same trap as their parents.
I support this initiative because we cannot write off whole zones of the UK and let the inhabitants unlucky to live in areas of high unemployment die sooner than they should – in my book it just isn’t Christian.
Read More.
The state is now in charge of breakfast
The turkey carcass has barely been cleared, the last dregs of scotch remain, but nanny’s apron is freshly starched and she is ready to “do something.”
7 January 2013
By David Atherton
It didn’t take them long, did it? The turkey carcass has barely been cleared, the last dregs of scotch remain, but nanny’s apron is freshly starched and she is ready to “do something.”?
Andy Burnham the Shadow Health Secretary wants to introduce legal limits on the sugar, fat, and salt in food, especially breakfast cereals.? “A lot of the time people don’t realise just how high in fat, salt and sugar some of these products are, even when you’re trying to make healthier choices. The industry needs to show more responsibility and come forward with products that are going to be helpful to parents in making the right choices.”
Diane Abbott meanwhile has been banging on about banning the spread of fried chicken takeaways. I appreciate that it is rude to talk about a lady’s weight, but as a Shadow Health Minister she is in nautical terms a little broad at the beam herself.
Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary, doesn’t want to miss out either. After a promising start in October, when he tried his best to get onside by saying he eats his five-a-day, but doesn’t want a fat tax since he “also [likes]… Coca-Cola and crisps”, it seems Sir Humphrey has now got him house trained. Hunt recently admitted, “If we don’t meet our targets and continue to make the progress that we have to make, then we would consider legislation.”
It strikes me they want to make the “right” choices on our behalf.
So Tony the Tiger and the Honey Monster are looking for new careers. And the debate on Twitter was quite stimulating with uber Socialists Owen Jones and Dr. Gabriel Scully pitching in. Jones commented: “Not eating Frosties now I know they’re 37% sugar. I’ll reconsider if the sugar content is limited to 30%. What’s wrong with that?” Dr. Scully’s tuppence worth was “How about they don’t spend millions on promoting unhealthy ones to kids? How about we eat food from farmers rather than industry?” Of course, it is all for the children.
Cereal fans were not going to take this lying down and a new Facebook page has been created: Save Tony the Tiger and The Honey Monster.
Does this “eye catching initiative” have a chance of succeeding and is it medically correct?? The obesity “epidemic” appears to have started around 1980 in the UK and USA. Kellogg’s Cornflakes were invented in 1894 and Frosties have been marketed since 1951 so for between 30 and 100 years it appears cereals have not been adding inches to our waste lines.
A normal serving of Frosties with 125 ml of semi skimmed milk and no extra sugar is only 152 calories. A ten year old boy should consume between 1,600 and 2,200 calories a day. So barely 10 percent of daily recommended levels. It is extremely unlikely that the Great Satan Kellogg’s is adding extra notches to belts. Some might even argue this is an insufficient calorie intake.
Not only that, those who eat breakfast weigh less. This paper from 1992 covers 52 obese people who were put on diets; half had breakfast and hence three meals a day and the other half no breakfast and two meals a day.
“Baseline breakfast skippers lost 7.7 kg in the breakfast treatment and 6.0 kg in the no-breakfast treatment… Analyses of behavioral data suggested that eating breakfast helped reduce dietary fat and minimize impulsive snacking and therefore may be an important part of a weight-reduction program.”
Furthermore, this paper from 2010 not only found that those who had cereal breakfasts weighed less, but that they had far better levels of nutrients in their bodies. “Ready to eat (RTE) cereal consumers had more favorable nutrient intake profiles and adiposity indexes than breakfast skippers or other breakfast consumers in US children/adolescents.”
One can only conclude that Burnham and Hunt are at best not using evidence-based research and at worst on course to make people unhealthier. Yet another gravy stain on the tie of state intrusion.
With the cold custard still keeping the mince pies company in the fridge, and the cigar stubs emptied into the dustbin, the only silver lining for me is that government of all persuasions will be giving me lots to write about in the remaining fifty one weeks on 2013.
David Atherton is Chairman of Freedom2Choose, which seeks to protect the informed choices of consenting adults on the issues of smoking. Follow him on Twitter: @DaveAtherton20
Doctors will be paid extra simply for telling their patients to go on a diet, under radical NHS plans.
22 May 2011
By Laura Donnelly, Health Correspondent
From next year, GPs will receive a payment for every obese patient they advise to lose weight – on top of money for keeping lists of those who weigh too much.
The plans form part of a desperate bid to tackle soaring rates of obesity in Britain, with two out of three adults now classed as overweight or obese.
Doctors will be instructed to be more pro-active in raising the topic of weight loss in their consultations, while new NHS guidance will say health workers and local authorities should do more to stop children and adults becoming overweight.
Under a national payment scheme for all family doctors, they will be able to boost their income if they record giving “weight management advice” to obese patients, or offer them a free place on a diet club, which the NHS would pay for.
Tam Fry of the National Obesity Forum said he was horrified that doctors would be able to get richer simply from telling patients to go on a diet.
He said: “I am in favour of GPs referring more patients to weight management schemes, like Weight Watchers and Slimming World, where there is good evidence they work, as there increasingly is. But I think it’s appalling that GPs need to be paid extra to do this – and even worse that they can get the same reward just from telling a patient to lose some weight.”
A European conference on obesity will this week hear that people referred to the commercial diet clubs by their doctors are far more likely to lose weight than those who “go it alone”.
The trial by University of Birmingham found that of 740 obese patients who were sent to slimming clubs, or given NHS support or free entry to a local leisure centre, those who signed up with the clubs did best.
Previous research on obese patients in Somerset found that on average, those who signed up to the clubs lost around 11 pounds in 12 weeks. Weight Watchers clients fared best, with a weight loss of 11.9lbs followed by those who signed up with Rosemary Conley at 11 pounds and Slimming World at 9.2 lbs.
Some GPs had so many obese patients on their practice lists that one in three of all their patients were referred to the clubs.
Despite controversy over the use of taxpayers’ money to fund the diet club places, thousands of people have already been given free places under local schemes, in the hope that they will reduce obesity rates, saving the NHS money in the long-term.
Earlier this month a study estimated that illness caused by obesity and poor diet is now costing the health service more than ?6bn a year.
Government forecasts have warned that on current trends, more than half of adults and a quarter of children will be obese by 2040, when the associated costs could overwhelm the NHS.
The number of admissions to hospital for obesity treatment has already risen ten-fold in a decade, while surgery to fit gastric bands and staple stomachs has risen seven-fold.
The payments for GPs and expansion in diet club places are part of a Government attempt to “nudge” people into healthier lifestyles, by putting incentives in place.
The theory, based on a book of the same name by Chicago Business School economist Richard Thaler and Chicago Law School professor Cass Sunstein, has influenced David Cameron’s thinking so much that every minister was told to read it during last year’s summer holidays.
In other schemes endorsed by the Coalition, schoolgirls have been given Topshop shopping vouchers and Odeon cinema tickets as a reward for walking to school, while others classed as at risk of teen pregnancy were encouraged to spend time with toddlers in the hope that the reality of childcare would act as a deterrant.
Zoe Hellmann, Weight Watchers Head of Dietetics and Health Policy said: “Britain is facing a huge problem; when you think that two out of three people are now overweight or obese, that is a huge number of people who need help with their weight management.
“So many of us are now overweight that people don’t even recognise it any more; it’s more normal today to be overweight than not, which is a pretty frightening situation to have reached.”
Final details of the indicators for next year’s GP payment scheme will be agreed between NHS negotiators and the British Medical Association.
Food Matters
Towards a Strategy for the 21st Century
July 2008
Foreword by the Prime Minister i
Executive summary iii
1 Introduction 1
2 Trends and challenges 8
3 Future food policy: vision, strategic priorities
and approach 36
4 Supporting the consumer 49
5 Engaging the supply chain 67
6 Leadership, food and the public sector 95
7 Delivering the Government’s vision 111
Annex A – Project staffing 122
Annex B – Acknowledgements 123
Our offspring are becoming the footsoldiers of the re-education crusade
June 24, 2008
Mick Hume
Once upon a time, not so long ago, parents were supposed to educate children in the ways of the world. But the Government appears to have turned that arrangement on its head. Now it is deemed the job of children to teach parents right from wrong.
A Department of Health survey reveals that a third of parents say that their children know more than them about healthy eating campaigns. This will come as little surprise to those who are aware of how sermons on eating five portions of fruit and vegetables, recycling everything and never bullying a fly have replaced religious indoctrination in our schools.
For Dawn Primandproper, the Health Minister, the survey proves that children can teach ignorant adults a lesson. “We welcome the fact that children are absorbing our five-a-day messages and can teach their parents to eat more healthily.”
This follows on from public health campaigns that used children as a stick to beat adults into giving up smoking. Eco-campaigns also encourage kids to enforce recycling rules, with books such as How to Turn Your Parents Green (eg, fine them for letting the tap run while cleaning their teeth), that would turn any self-respecting adult green around the gills.
Our children are apparently being educated as self-righteous foot soldiers in a crusade to re-educate us in the official doctrine of “Healthy Living, Whether You Like It Or Not”. The innate tendency towards sanctimoniousness and zealotry among youngsters who see things in fairytale black-and-white terms (“five veg a day good, one fag a day bad”) makes them natural narks.
Amid all the talk of liberties and fears of an “Orwellian” state, these trends rarely get a mention. Yet there is a long history of authoritarian regimes using children to do their dirty work. The official “child heroes” of George Orwell’s 1984 were members of jolly groups such as The Spies, who bullied and informed on their petrified parents. We are some way from that and it was rather heartening in that survey to learn how many children use their knowledge of five-a-day simply to fool their parents about how many greens they eat. But still…
The nursery-rhyme dream of “a world ruled by children” has always seemed more like a nightmare to me. But the prospect of a world where children are taught to force feed their parents official lifestyle propaganda seems worse. How else might our kids be encouraged to re-educate us ignorant parents? Will they give us the party line on saving our pocket money, or bedtime, or what not to watch on TV? Or maybe one day they will come home from green sex education class, and tell us off for having them in the first place.
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Apr 19 2007
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The issue of obesity has been in the headlines more than ever over the past year, whether it be junk food in school meals, the amount of salt in breakfast cereals, or the growing waistline of the average Brit. But, as lawyer Elin Pinnell warns, the growing national obsession with obesity could land employers in hot water
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A RECENT survey has revealed that 93% of human resources officers say they’d rather give a job to someone slim than someone overweight – even if the two candidates had exactly the same experience and qualifications.
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Almost half believe obesity negatively affects employee output and more than one quarter think the issue is becoming a problem. But almost three quarters admit their organisation is doing nothing to tackle it. What’s more, many openly admit that obese workers spoil their company’s corporate image and that they’d be less likely to promote someone who is obese.
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Currently it is very difficult for staff to challenge discrimination on the grounds of their weight, as there is no discrimination law which directly concerns obesity as there is for other forms of workplace discrimination, such as sexism and racism. However, employers may fall foul of the Disability Discrimination Act if an obese employee can show that they have “a physical or mental impairment which has a substantial and long-term adverse impact on their ability to carry out normal day to day activities”.
