In thinking the govts new obesity strategy is

[laptopdancer]

well, a bit pants?

Xenia - I always had you down as such a libertarian

I am generally a libertarian but the planet has to cope with this and people are not in a sense taking free choices. The foods are made to entice them to have more. it's a bit like putting cocaine into something and feeding it to the baby so their decisions are not really freely taken given what is inside many foods to entice people to eat what isn't good for them. So the restrictions of the bad foods I would regard as giving people the mental freedom to take good decisions. If you're pumped full of sugar and white flour your brain works differently and you eat more and more of it until you're as fat as a pig in many cases.

LOL @ paying a "token" fee on going to the GP if you are over a BMI of 30. . Don't know what planet you are on, if you think that is just a token fee! That's not really going to encourage people to go for help then, is it! So someone is feeling under the weather, but because of the fee they decide not to go to the doc. Until they are seriously ill and have to be taken to Casualty, costing the NHS a lot more than they would have initially cost if they had been treated earlier at the GPs.

I think there are a lot of ideas in this thread that are really great and useful.

My entire family is fat, I'm a bit overweight, but I've never got above a size 12 (except in pregnancy). The difference for me is that I am constantly moving, I do things. I am not a sofa dweller. And long may it continue. Because I don't want my kids to go through the crap my parents have with arthritis/high blood pressure/poor self esteem etc. :(

Xenia Sugar and white flour as mind-altering drugs of dependence . . . oh come on.

And you are not "a libertarian but". You are just not a libertarian. Somebody who want to tell adults what they may and may not eat or tax their choices is not a libertarian.

Perhaps a lapsed libertarian, in which case please go and eat whatever it will take to unlapse you!

And in fact Xenia the planet will cope better if more of us die sooner . . .

DO NOT BAN ANY FOOD

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootleg_(TV_serial)

talking about what people eat is dull.

as long as everyone:

can afford decent food
understands how to cook
knows how to portion
understands what is "good" for them then I'm happy

I'm unsure that this is the case

OriginalGhoster - snap!
apart from a few things and the prohibition idea.

Andrewofgg - if you want to take the time, read from page 129 of this journal excerpt to see that Xenia isn't making it up about the sugar and refined flour, it's an idea that's been around for decades and is resolutely ignored all the time by various health professionals.

Some years ago I watched a documentary on a report that was produced in the early 1970s into the causes of increased CVD in the population - they came back with 4 food items, saturated fat, salt, cholesterol (wrong) and SUGAR - but apparently the Tate family (of Tate&Lyle, the Tate Gallery etc.) lobbied to have sugar removed from the report. Of course, it's just tv - but you like to think they had evidence of that occurring, else they'd have been sued for slander/defamation etc. - and they weren't.

I recently had to go to the local university library. I was absolutely shocked by how much munching was going on. The desks were strewn with crisp packs, food items soft drinks. It seemed that people just sat down started work and started comfort eating, it did not look like a lunch break. These are educated people they know what they are putting in their bodies. Years ago it was considered bad form to eat in the street, now you get on a bus and people are munching away. Why do clothes shops in fact any shop that is not a food shop have to have bars of chocolate at the till and those stupid offers where the sales assistant asks you at the till do you want a giant bar of chocolate for a knock down price?. If obesity is going to be tackled in the same way as lung cancer and alcoholism then we should expect a tax on unhealthy food, a ban on eating in non designated areas, like libraries, theatres, cinemas, only food shops to sell food and confectionery (or even more extreme maybe food shops will sell food and designated other shops to sell the crap so that you specifically had to go into a shop with the intention of buying crap) And Yes I do like eating chocolate.

Banning food from some places might help - I am surprised at a university library allowing food - I don't think I was back in the days I was student. Too much of a risk of damage to the books!

Taxing food, on the other hand, won't.

Who decides what is unhealthy? The vast majority of food is OK in moderation which is the key -it is about portion size and getting the balance between the very nutritious and the less nutritious correct. As I said earlier, diary products are high in calories and saturated fats, are you going to tax those too even though they have nutritional value? Carbs like potatoes, rice and pasta are all healthy in moderation but if eaten to excess will make you fat, whether they are brown or white versions, because they are high in calories.

And if you can't decide what is healthy and what isn't, what do you put in those shops which only sell junk food? It isn't about good food and bad food - I have seen people who eat a seemingly healthy diet and have very few empty calories but they are still fat because they have no portion control and they don't know when to stop. Banning junk won't help them because they don't eat it. We are simply eating too much as a society relative to the amount of activity we do. The balance between what we put into our bodies and what we expend has gone.

Banning things and restricting them only makes people want them more. It is basic psychology. You have to find other ways getting people to make their own decisions on healthy eating.

"Carbs like potatoes, rice and pasta are all healthy in moderation but if eaten to excess will make you fat, whether they are brown or white versions, because they are high in calories."

Not exactly. Carbohydrates are actually the lowest in terms of calorific value - the problem is that all carbohydrates are broken down eventually into glucose, which is stored in the muscles and liver as glycogen. Excess glucose (sugar) may be converted into fatty acids and stored as fat once the glycogen stores are full and once the cells that need to use glucose immediately have taken what they need. THIS is why excessive carbohydrate intake makes you fat.
Also, white carbs are somewhat lacking in any other beneficial nutrients, such as vitamins, fibre, minerals etc. - so they aren't the best foods to eat a lot of.

My grandmother explained to me that eating in public was not allowed because it was dangerous. She told me that when walking around or in a vehicle you shouldn't be eating anything incase you choke or don't pay attention to things going on around you. She had a point. I nearly choked on a grape as a teenager when my Dad had to do an emergency brake. I have see a few near misses of pedestrians almost being run over while on their phone, drinking coffee or eating something while crossing the street.

People used to eat so much in the library at university and it drove me insane. All I could hear most days was people munching away.

Food needs to be seen as a meal, a meal that you sit down to eat, that you enjoy and think about what you are doing.

People walk around with food in their hands shoving it into their mouths, this is not healthy and a lot of the food that is being eaten on the move is not healthy either, I rarely see a person walking and eating fruit whereas eating a burger or chocolate is more common.

it is common though now to see people eating whilst moving about. Taking the approch that food is only to be eaten at the table may help peopel confine their eating to meal times

Any law which restricts which retailers can sell a particular item is objectionable because it restricts that competition which not only keeps down prices - it keeps up choice and standards of service. (It's not a coincidence that standards of service at Royal Mail counters if not brilliant are far better than they were a generation ago and I know whereof I speak - it's the fact that there are fewer things which can only be done there.)

So, no, we won't stop clothes shops selling food - or food shops selling clothes. If we did we would only benefit the department stores and the online retailers - or do you want to restrict them too zebrafinch?

As for smoking bans: they can be justified only be the discomfort and harm done by passive smoking. So far as I know A can't get fat because B eats crap!

Thzumbazombiewitch - it doesn't much matter about the mechanism by which pasta makes you fat, the point it that it can be classed as good for you but if you eat too much of it it will make you fat. It has a lot more calories than gram for gram than meat or fruit and veg for example. People do get fat on eating too much bread or pasta or rice and yet nobody would call it junk food.

The very fact that we are having this conversation only goes to show how hard it is to tax the so called 'bad' foods because the definition of what is bad is so hard to pin down.

BBB - I disagree - it does matter entirely that you get the facts right when you talk about this stuff because one mistake will allow people to dismiss the rest of the information that you have given (Trust me, they do this).
Where on earth are you getting your information from? Carbs do NOT have more calories than meat, gram for gram - meat is made up of protein and fat, protein has 4 calories per gram, fat has 9 calories per gram - carbs only have 3.75 calories per gram - there is NO WAY that carbs have more calories, gram for gram, than meat does!!

Really, you have to be accurately factual to be taken seriously.

Brown pasta

www.weightlossresources.co.uk/calories-in-food/beef/Sirloin-Steak.htm

I think you are forgetting that many food aren't just all carb or all protein.

"Really, you have to be accurately factual to be taken seriously." Indeed.

Th and zebra are right and I only bang on about it occasionally because when I gave up processed foods I felt so good, stopped catching virtually any germs which earlier had been the bane of my life etc etc so it's hard not to want to tell others about how good it is. Given the effects of products such as fructose corn syrup which is in so many foods it's not likely people are likely to want to give many foods and I am 100% certain no Government would ban processed foods. The voters would be up in arms and the you would need international agreement to make it work which wuld not be obtained.

I agree that that the planet perhaps benefits most if people were removed from it. I remember watching a famous environmentalist squirm at an industry event when a delegate said if only 1 in 6 people on the planet live that is best for the planet (which indeed it is). Mother earth has little to be grateful for the spread of mankind over it in this very brief blink of an eye in which we happen as a species to be on that planet.

For now in terms of feeding children etc we would be much b etter going back to how they used to be fed - a breakfast with protein, no snacks, none of this constantly eating ( I have been at school carols erviecs in church and okay many of the people wouldbn't be Christian so may be don't realise you don't talk and much but even so.... where the parents arrive and lay out on the pew a range of foods and drinks. This is for one hour service only. If your child cannot not eat or drink for an hour there is something very wrong with its self discpline)... and some protein veg and a bit of carb with each of your meals.

It is very very cheap to eat well. I only drink tap water and probably earn enough to lay down a wine cellar buy vineyard in Italy and drink champagne every day but that tap water is probably one the reasons I feel so happy and am well. If parents did one thing they should try to cut out all fizzy drinks from the child's diet.

Hmmm. Well considering that their weights of protein and fat add up to only 28g out of the 100, I'd worry about what else was in their sirloin steak! I don't believe those figures for a second, sorry. You'd have to assume that over 70% of the steak was water, which is highly unlikely.

Yes of course there is a small amount of protein and a tiny amount of fat in any carbohydrate-based food - but as even your linked website shows, the predominant nutrient is carbohydrate, which still has the lowest calorific value of the three main macronutrients.

Most British women eat far too much carb and it will not be in pasta it will be packets of chocolate digestives, cakes and all the rest and nothing like enough protein.

It amazes me that anorexia is seen as a mental illness whereas obesity is a purely physical one.

No strategy, nannying or not, will address the problem that hundreds of thousands of people hate themselves enough to abuse their bodies, unless it includes therapeutic help, whether psychiatric, cbt or other therapy as appropriate.

If it were just education and labels people needed, this problem would not be expanding as it is (pardon the pun). Fat children and adults just feel shitter and shitter about themselves until they feel too uncomfortable to do anything other than hide away with a family bar of dairy milk.

Interesting you should say that, Blonderedhead - actually the people who write the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) are looking to include compulsive overeating in the next edition (no. V)

Thumb - I thought that a whole person (bones and all) was about 70% water so that seems quite reasonable for meat.

Just try drying some and see how small it gets.

Don't think that alters the rest of your argument carbs vs protein though.