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??

no, yelling abuse at anyone is never acceptable. No-one decent thinks that it is.

Well it kind of is about being overweight because the article conflates the two, as do lots of public health campaigns.

I have no idea of the risks associated with being 'overweight' as opposed to 'obese' I was just commenting on the public health tactics that are being used. I hope my post didn't give you the impression that I think these tactics are a good idea.

The sceptic in me thinks these things are all a ploy to get us spreading hate.

Look at the smoker threads on here, hurls of abuse for people who are doing nothing illegal and exercising their right to do something they enjoy.

I would bet my life that not everyone on those threads are slim of build and eating healthily.

So you have the smokers saying "well smoking suppresses my appetite so at least i'm not obese like all you fat people costing the NHS however many X million".

Then you have the argument that the obese are more likely to die suddenly say of a heart attack, which wont cause the NHS as much as a "generally healthy" person who has the misfortune of suffering cervical cancer or dementia in later life and the relatively expensive treatment and care that the NHS has to fund.

Its all 6 and 2 x 3s as far as I am concerned, and I don't think anyone of us is unaware of the risks of overeating, bad diets, smoking, or alcohol. But we still do it, and we are always going to do it because unless we are a smoker AND a drinker AND obese, we can all justify it by saying well i'm X but at least i'm not Y. And if we do happen to be all 3, we can then say well hey-ho, I'll probably die pretty young and save the state a fortune in pensions and winter fuel allowance and bus passes and old age care.

The whole thing is just bloody stupid imo. Lets say tomorrow everyone stopped drinking, quit smoking, and lost weight. We now have a whole generation of people paying considerably less tax, and statistically living longer. So maybe we've saved the NHS a few quid, but we've lost £13billion from smokers, £11billion from alcohol duty, however many million from multiple clubs, bars, breweries, and jobs created by these industries, AND we have a huge pensions bill to pass on to the next generation with a huge gaping whole in tax revenues.

Yeah, somehow I don't think the Gov and all the do-gooder busy bodies are going to be overly chuffed about that.

Live and let live

I think the government will have considered your last point Hamiltoes. There's a little bit more to public health policy than 'live and let live'.

Can I just add to above, the point I'm trying to make is that AS USUAL, its the divide and conquer tactic.

We're all so busy pointing fingers about who is to blame for the inevitable NHS crisis, the actual real problems are being swept under the carpet right in front of our noses.

Anyone who thinks the government have the interests of peoples health at their heart and want us all to live till we are 100 are delusional.

Gosh, I can't read that article at all as spreading hate or demonising anybody or even demonising obesity itself.
To me it reads as very factual statements of what's undesirable about obesity in the population, and why it's a public health concern for public health professionals and individuals.

Can't help but think people are bring own issues to this, they see prejudice because they want to see it.

Govt. damned if they do acknowledge the problems & damned if they don't do anything about them.

Now that more people survive the big killers: birth, giving birth, childhood diseases it is far harder to see genuine cause and effect.

The danger is that there is a desire for cause and effect. Some people look at fat people and want their obesity to be the cause of whatever problems they may have. They genuinely want the coincidence to be causality.

My boss was genuinely offended to read that diet and lifestyle have little or no impact on 2/3 of cancers. She wants people to be architects of their fate otherwise her life of abstinence is irrelevant!

I haven't read the article but surely part of the issue with claiming that obese people suffer from low self-esteem, lackconfidence, and have a generally poor quality of life is how you distinguish between simply being obese and the prejudice against the obese which remains one of the last 'acceptable' prejudices?

I used to be an overweight but fit person, who ran daily and astonished an initially sceptical midwife with my fitness levels throughout pregnancy. It wasn't my weight that stopped me running (thereby dramatically lessening my fitness), it was the regular mocking and abuse from people driving past, men at bus stops etc. I wore headphones and tried to ignore for a long time, but after there were a couple of daytime muggings along my usual route and joggers were advised not to listen to music, I stopped being able to ignore it, and it wore me down.

I think that's quite true GnomeDePlume. I think it's that people want to believe they can beat these things - that by eating right, being the right weight, not smoking, not drinking etc they'll be "safe" and it will only happen to people with "bad" habits.

Yes, tisiphone, exactly. The anxiety and depression that I have ended up from mocking and fat shaming and so on are probably more of a health problem than being overweight. It's made it so that I can't make myself change jobs because of fear. Things like that, on a bigger scale, end up causing more social problems than people realise. There's no way fat people need advice to tell them that they might have health problems; I doubt there is a single one who is not already aware of it. Nor does making them ashamed help. If people are really concerned about the cost to the NHS, then they would be doing all they can to reduce prejudice, accept people as worthy regardless of their weight, help with the anxiety and depression that comes with it all, and increase self-esteem first, which all go a very long way into helping someone be able to make the choices needed to lose weight.

There are so many straw man arguments in this thread now it's hard to know where to start.

First off, far from believing that they can ward off all ill health by eating well and exercising, most people I know who are very careful about their diets are actually vastly more realistic about the fairly high chance we all have of contracting a serious illness prior to old age. It's BECAUSE of this that they seek to reduce some of the risk factors that are within their control.

Secondly, most adults are not disgusted by overweight people, partly because a huge percentage of adults are overweight themselves. It's so common as to be completely unremarkable. We're vastly more tolerant than we were because fat it actually the new normal. That said, being CONCERNED about high and growing levels of obesity and its possible impact on a system of socialised healthcare is absolutely logical and reasonable.

Personally I can't see any government health promotion actually impacting on levels of obesity - there is too much money to be made selling people appalling and fattening food. Most elderly people are not fat, but I suspect when this current generation of fat 50 year olds hits old age the health service will disintegrate under the stress of caring for them.

here

Risks of obesity.

I'm really interested in the '10-fold' increase in obesity figure you used in your previous post, minifingers. Where is it from?

Gnome - are you really going to argue that obesity doesn't impact seriously on health?

It was an exaggeration. It's actually only quadrupled. Since 1995.

It's impossible to compare to the 1950's because the population studies of weight weren't done then. However, the average waist measurement for women is now 17cm bigger than it was in the 1950's.

However, severe obesity (bmi above 40) has increased from 0.25% of men over 16 to 1.75% in the same period...

Quadrupled? Are you referring to this? That figure applies to the developing world and has little relevance to the UK.

The attached image shows obesity rates for England over the past few years. It's from here.

There is a problem with growing rates of obesity. Nobody is denying that. 'Exaggerating' or lying about the true prevalence rates is not helpful however and I am not sure why someone would do that.

Minifingers you appear to be misinterpreting what I said. Many people are scared of their own mortality. Diseases like cancer and diabetes are frightening. Gnome had said "The danger is that there is a desire for cause and effect. Some people look at fat people and want their obesity to be the cause of whatever problems they may have. They genuinely want the coincidence to be causality."

I think that is true - you don't want to believe it could happen to you so when reports come out saying that obesity causes cancer or that actually gives some people a degree of comfort - because they don't smoke so they're "safe" or they're not obese, or they don't drink, or...

That's not to say that there is anything wrong with trying to reduce your risk factors, it's simply agreeing with Gnome's comment and acknowledging human behaviour.

Two more things about the 'quadrupled' figure in the BBC article:

• it's since 1980, not 1995

• The number of obese people in developing countries has almost quadrupled, not the percentage. This makes sense if you consider population growth. Digging into the report referenced in the BBC article brings up this: Globally the percentage of adults who were overweight or obese grew from 23% in 1980 to 34% in 2008, with the vast majority of this increase seen in the developing world.

But maybe your 400% increase since 1995 figure is from elsewhere?

Plenty - does it matter?

The first generation in which almost half of all adults are overweight hasn't yet reached old age, but it will do in 20 years time.

Does it matter? Does what matter? That you are making up statistics to suit your own argument? Yes I think it matters.

does it matter?

Yes! If you are going to throw stats around I think it does matter to at least try to be accurate or why bother in the first place?

Sorry teacher.

But if more than half of all adults are now overweight or obese is it really worth getting your gusset in a twist over how quickly this has happened?

If we don't know how fast obesity is increasing (or even if it is still increasing - I've read a couple of things suggesting that it has plateaued and begun to fall in the last year or two but don't have sources to hand) we can't predict obesity figures for the future. This makes it difficult to plan and allocate resources so it does matter. They don't amass all these stats and do pretty graphs for fun like I do.

My gusset is absolutely fine, thanks It is you who has posted about 10-fold increases and quadrupling rates in short time scales. I have responded because your figures seemed a bit off and it turns out they were. I find truth and accuracy are useful in discussions generally.