So...People are getting fatter and fatter and more and more people are being admitted to hospital with anorexia...

[BlaDeBla]

Is it that more and more people are suffering from eating disorders? If you lose your shape either way, it suggests that there might be something more than simply food involved.

it will get worse too with the flipping government telling kids they eat shit and are unhealthy. I overheard a 7yo telling her mum she didn't want any tea she was already too fat she looked too skinny imo

I'm also totally confused by the message that your waist must be 32" or any size smaller to keep diseases at bay. The message seems to be that thin is good, thinnest is better. Something's wrong.

Yes. more and more people are using food to punish and / or comfort themselves. Either by denying themselves food, or - the flip side of the same coin - by compulsively eating.

Anorexia, bulimia, binge eating disorder, compulsive overeating disorder.. - none of them have anything to do with food, the love or the hate of it.

32'' waist and less - really? That seems very small.

32" waist isn't particularly slim it equates to a size 16, now I am 5'10 so tallish for a girl and being a size 16 puts me into the slightly overweight category for my BMI.

I think part of the problem is that people have forgotten what a normal healthy weight looks like. Society in general has become so much bigger over the last few decades that we have lost perspective. I know when I was 18 I had around a 26 inch waist, now its around 36 " : ( and I see it as well defined, not FAT!

Sachertorte - how does that square with the images from the media getting thinner and thinner?

The person I think of an example is the late Diana, Princess of Wales. She had a beautiful slim figure but by current sleb standards would be considered fat.

I also think the government should just go with it. We have the pensions issue looming -the country won't be able to afford to keep old people in years to come.

Now we have a "generation that will die before its parents."

You'd think the government would be grateful. The obesity timebomb could defuse the pensions timebomb.

Or is that really cynical?

Hi wasabi, I don´t think the media project reality, do they? Princess Diana could be a case in point. Would she really be considered fat by today´s standards? If so, doesn´t that show what warped perceptions some people have?

BlaDeBla, I think the message is actually that for a woman, your waist should be 32" or less AND a certain ratio of your hip size (can't remember what that is, though, but it basically means that you do need to have a bit of fat around your hips...). Really skinny people would therefore still be unhealthy despite having small waists, because their hips would measure "too small" in comparison to their waist size - ie being the shape of a young girl or boy is not generally considered healthy in a woman. Therefore, really thin is not equated with healthy by the medical profession, even if the media abjectly fails to pass this message on.

However, I agree that FAR too much emphasis is put on slimness, rather than genuine health. I know plenty of slim people who never exercise, have unhealthy diets and drink too much and who are probably therefore considerably less healthy than many of their heavier counterparts. And measurements of waists, a bit like BMI and just using the weighing scales, I think, frankly, are pretty crude measurements that can't actually predict with any great accuracy who is likely to live a long, healthy life and who is likely to succumb to some nasty disease.

Marilyn Monroe would be fat then as well.

There is a problem but I do get pissed off with the feeling that I'm being lectured or hectored about my lifestyle.

Every time I see this Change4life stuff I feel my blood pressure notch up a bit.

I wonder if we'll see further rises in obesity as smoking becomes ever more taboo. It does seem that many people need something to help them through the day; in the past it was fags but now is more likely to be food.

Yes, people like their little habits, don't they.

The govt doesn't seem to take any notice of any other stat apart from waist size. Also, BMI is misguided at best - the taller you are, the thinner you have to be to be considered "normal" size.

I wouldn't mind being nagged by the govt. if they were all physically perfect, but most of them are a bit tubby. Gordon Brown, Jaqui smith, Ed Balls could all do with losing wieght.

there was something on the news this morning or was it yesterday? it's eating disorder awareness week, anyway, something like 1 in 5 teens is overweight but 3 of the 5 who are not overweight think they are

obesity is more prevalent than anorexia but embryonic anorexic thinking seems to outnumber it quite severely