To think this article on Obesity makes some bold assumptions :o

[ChoochiWoo]

[http://news.sky.com/story/1423364/nhs-buckling-under-strain-of-obesity-crisisttp://news.sky.com/story/1423364/nhs-buckling-under-strain-of-obesity-crisis] Im not saying the entire article is bad or innacurate I went in expecting.a well though out article on how obesity treatment costs the nhs, statistics etc..but parts like this excerpt in particular. .... obesity, people who are obese will also have a poorer quality of life. Exercise tolerance, sexual health, confidence and self-esteem are low. Depression is more common in people who have a weight problem and they struggle to socialise. Were not what I expected or indeed anyone should Im overweight and strangely enough nor a hive of STIs nor a recluse , I don't think these generalisations are helpful Or accurate. AIBU to think this article was intended to be provocative??

I guess some of you wouldn't like the Japanese approach to controlling obesity rates. mic.com/articles/84521/japan-has-cut-obesity-to-3-5-in-a-controversial-way-that-wouldn-t-fly-in-america
The thing is ,obesity does have implications on a population level, and pointing that out isn't 'fat shaming'. We really have to get to grips with this, in the same way that we did with smoking, and need to do with alcohol consumption.
Now I'm off to make some lovely cakes .

I don't think it's the only thing people object to, it's just the most blatantly obvious bit.

It mentions causes of obesity which are, for want of a better description, not choice based - "hormonal disturbance and stress. Genetic predisposition plays an important role in the causation of obesity" - however this is kind of light and misses a whole host of other reasons why people might be obese in the first place.

Some of the diseases it lists as you being more likely to get if you are obese can also contribute to obesity and it can be hard to define what came first. For example, people who have symptoms of osteoarthritis may have reduced physical movement as a result of pain leading to weight gain before they are actually diagnoses. Similarly people who develop type 2 can have metabolic issues before hand (insulin resistance etc) which cause weight gain in the first place...the article doesn't really look at cause and effect very well

The obese people will have a poor quality of life paragraph is just rubbish writing

The paragraph on NHS costs is very poorly written

It only gives figures for the proportion which are "overweight or obese" in the UK - but some studies have shown that the "overweight" band actually has better health outcomes and longevity than the "healthy" band so grouping them together is poor, especially in an article talking about obesity.

There are many things that impact upon the NHS - alcohol, risky behaviour, drugs, smoking, obesity and dare I say it - children. We can pass the buck and point fingers a million times over but it will not solve the problem. The point of the NHS is that it is encompassing for all. There should be no 'blame' over who is using the 'most' resources but that if you have contributed, then you get whatever treatment you need for however long you need it.
They need to look at spending and managers roles and utilise more front line staff. I know one ward where 14K was spent on entertainment equipment - new tvs, x boxes, dvd players etc. 14k could've bought something vital like a piece of supporting equipment or paid for a health care assistant or a part time nurse.

Why is this paragraph poorly written, just because it's hard to understand (all one sentence)?

"Using the disease cost model and assumptions regarding the relationship between NHS and total costs from the House of Commons Health Committee report it was estimated that in 2050, the NHS cost attributable to obesity would be £9.7bn and the total costs would be £49.9bn at 2007 prices."

I think people SHOULD feel that about over-eating, smoking, drinking and drug taking. If you want to benefit from socialised medicine you have to treat your individual well-being as a collective concern.

Anorexia is different. It's a complex and dangerous mental illness.

As an overweight person, I actually feel strongly motivated to lose weight and get fit by the thought that it's more than just about me - that I've got a public public duty not to be a burden on the NHS if I can possibly help it.

Overeating and obesity are often complex and dangerous too though. Overeating has now been listed as an eating disorder so the fact if can be a mental illness is finally being recognised albeit slowly.

Incidentally 1 in 10 adult Americans now has diabetes.

That is where we're headed if rates of obesity continue to grow.

Do you honestly think the NHS can cope with that?

So is obesity mini fingers, especially if your talking about someone eating themselves immobile, theres no way that person isnt seriously mentally ill.

Mini fingers no one is denying that on this thread, its the poorly written uncertain certainties being thrown around. Weight has no baring on your socialskills

*Why is this paragraph poorly written, just because it's hard to understand (all one sentence)?

"Using the disease cost model and assumptions regarding the relationship between NHS and total costs from the House of Commons Health Committee report it was estimated that in 2050, the NHS cost attributable to obesity would be £9.7bn and the total costs would be £49.9bn at 2007 prices."*

Because it is not clear what they are saying? You said yourself it's hard to understand...but...total costs would be £49.9bn, is that total costs of the NHS, or total costs of obesity? Not clear. If it's total costs of obesity, what are the rest? And what is the total NHS cost based on the same time period so people can determine the scale. Why are they using 2007 figures when it's 2015? Have we really not updated figures since then?

I'd never get away with writing something as unclear/poorly articulated as that - and I write about numbers for a living.

I think this apparent obsession with " the cost to the NHS " is just an excuse to say " Ew! Fat people!"
All sorts of things cost the NHS money. People who may have left it quite late to start a family and are not conceiving naturally can get IVF. People sometimes choose to take the risk of having children knowing they may have a genetically inherited disease. Pale skinned people with moles get too much sun and subsequently melanomas.
We can't pick and choose who deserves treatment based on their perceived lifestyle choices.
And actually, what probably cost the NHS more is those slim, abstemious old people, just living and living, with one hip op after another!
Smokers, drinkers, and the clinically obese may have some medical issues, but they tend not to hang about the place using up resources well into their 90's.
And the last thing that will help people live healthier lives is telling them just how ashamed they should be of themselves.

choochi of course mental illness comes into it, at the extreme. No is really denying that.
That isn't the case for the majority though, is it? The fact is, most of us just like overeating and don't do enough exercise. Most people become obese gradually. Takeaways, big bars of dairy milk ,eat all you want buffets, massive dinner plates, 2 week feasting and drinking over Christmas, how many cream eggs can you eat in one go, etc. etc.

No it isn't ifnotnow. It's well researched, obesity is becoming a massive drain on the NHS and will be in the future.
I worked in the NHS in the 80's , when most people weren't obese, and even then it was easy to see a pattern.Obesity, smoking and alcohol abuse are the 3 major preventable factors in illnesses.
They may not 'clog the place up' into their 90's.They do in their 40's ,50's, 60's and 70's though.

I don't think it's that extreme. I think it's much more common than that and a lot of obese people will have some sort of addiction/ mental health problems which contribute to their problems. Not all obviously but it's certainly not that rare.

And that's the problem. Everyone is different and everyone will have different causes for their obesity so to try a one size fits all "oh just eat less and move more" approach simply won't help a lot of people. If
We want to tackle the obesity problem we need to help people tackle the root cause of the problem for them.

IfNotNowThenWhen - Don't trivialise the issue - I'm overweight and I'm worried about the impact of growing obesity on the NHS.

The reality of many overweight people's lives isn't that they die young, but that they live on into their seventies and sometimes 80's but with chronic ill health.

Modern medicine is very good at keeping ill people alive, but very bad at curing chronic conditions.

I used to have binge eating disorder & find it really hard to believe that (in absence of certain conditions like PradrWilly) very heavy people don't have a form of mental illness in their unhealthy relationship with food.

I mean very heavy, not just a bit chubby. You have to eat a lot to maintain a big body weight. That's a lot of denial.

I suspect that people who object to above are the same ones who say "Oh we should be absolutely compassionate about mental illness, it's really quite common and 1 in and 4 of us and we must sweep away all the shame BUT DON'T YOU DARE STIGMATISE ME OR MY FAT MATES BY WITH A MENTAL ILLNESS LABEL"

One day I will manage to write posts without typos...

I think if the point is costs to the NHS, then we need a huge improvement in how obesity is treated. Yes, undeniably, some people are obese just because they eat too much and don't move much, and if they eat less and move more they'll lose weight. But there are also many who will struggle - either for a physical reason or a mental health one. Proper testing for hormonal/metabolic imbalances needs to be far more readily available and offered. Counselling and other mental health support needs to be available. Nutritionists who don't give one size fits all advice - the BBC experiment where they looked at the best diets for different groups was interesting and I think gives a hint of direction needed.

Then you have more drastic interventions like gastric bands - people can be hugely judgemental about this procedure but in many cases it would save the NHS a lot more than it costs (I watched something about it fairly recently.) But every time it's mentioned you get people frothing about "lazy people who should just eat less..." Maybe they should, but if you are looking at hard numbers and saving NHS money then in many cases it will be the cheaper option.

I echo pretty much everything statistically has said. Great insight.

If rising rates of obesity are such a problem to the NHS then why aren't they and the Government in general doing more regarding prevention. The health and weight loss advice issued from the Government is wrong at best, morally corrupt at worst.

Why can there only be slimming clubs where there is profit to be made? Why does eating advice have to pander to large corporations? Why can it be cheaper to buy junk food than whole foods? Why is there little or no CBT or talking therapies easily available for those who have a psychological eating disorder?

That article is terrible journalism but also highlights a real issue in terms of how overweight people are viewed by society as a whole. The biggest threat to the mental health of overweight people is societies (media led) attitudes toward them.

Welcome to the wonderful world of Public Health 'denormalisation'

The language is not unfortunate, it's quite deliberate and the aim is to make overweight people appear sad, lonely, unhealthy and burdensome. This is partly to shame people into losing weight but mostly to prevent the next generation seeing it as 'normal' to be overweight.

Denormalisation has been a major strategy for tobacco control for decades and we're now at the point where on national TV and nobody bats an eyelid or questions the total lack of science behind the 'rotting' metaphor.

It works up to a point - some people will be shamed into losing weight or stopping smoking. However as already pointed out, for many people being overweight is a much more complex problem (same goes for smoking and numerous other issues) and the people that are left behind by this approach are likely to end up with their self-esteem in the toilet and feel too ashamed to access what help there is. It's not uncommon for people who are overweight or who smoke to avoid even going to the GP when they should because they fear they will be lectured and their symptoms will be dismissed as part of their smoking or weight issues.

With smoking, these people have been treated pretty much as collateral damage - it's worth continuing to shame them, even though it's counterproductive for quit success rates, if it helps prevent youngsters taking up the habit. All eyes are on the next generation.

I agree with StatisticallyChallenged about this article. If denormalisation of overweight and obesity follows a similar path to denormalisation of smoking, expect lots more dodgy science, spun statistics and increasingly emotive language and imagery.

Food, especially certain foods, are actually addictive. And food is a " safe" addiction, compared to many others.
Interesting that when levels of smoking dropped obesity rose. Sometimes people need a crutch. Its about so much more than " well just eat less". And yy to the pp about the gov doing sweet f.a that works to tackle the issue. Much easier to blame the fat for societys ills. Bit like blaming the poor for the strain on the welfare budget. These things can have complicated causes, and even more complicated solutions.

"Yes, undeniably, some people are obese just because they eat too much and don't move much, and if they eat less and move more they'll lose weight."

Look - obesity has increased 10-fold in a very short space of time. People haven't changed, the food environment has.

obesity has increased 10-fold in a very short space of time
That's a shocking statistic, do you have a link?

Yes, the food environment has changed, I didn't say it hadn't so no "looks" required. I was saying that when it comes to tackling obesity we need to recognise that a one size fits all approach isn't working.

What is being done just now clearly isn't working very well given that obesity is increasing dramatically. It's easy to say people just need to try harder, it's their fault, they just need to resist, whatever. It's not going to fix it though.

"The language is not unfortunate, it's quite deliberate and the aim is to make overweight people appear sad, lonely, unhealthy and burdensome. This is partly to shame people into losing weight but mostly to prevent the next generation seeing it as 'normal' to be overweight."

I agree with the main thrust of this comment.

But take issue with the use of 'overweight'

This isn't about being overweight. It's about the medical consequences of being obese. I think it isn't helpful to extend the risks of being obese into the category of 'overweight' as it's not accurate and just tends to muddle perceptions.

It's better to be in the healthy weight range than either under- or over- weight. But that's quite different from being medically obese.