h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Rejoice Comrades, the evil bourgeois smoking menace has been defeated, the forces of tobacco scattered from the field. Mopping-up action continues as we pursue the ragged survivors from the open spaces, but the battle is essentially won.

It is time comrades, to face a greater evil within our ranks. It is time for our glorious forces of liberty to confront the fatgits.

These enemies of the revolution steal nearly £7bn from our pockets each year. Were it not for their selfishness and counter-revolutionary acts, we truly would achieve a workers paradise. Fatgits work unceasingly to overload the glorious NHS and deprive the collectives of their labour.

The media battle has already begun, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7047244.stm and our main assault will follow.

Seriously, it looks like obesity is going to be the new health issue. There are reports of Fire Brigades contemplating charging for rescuing obese people. Hospitals regularly refuse surgery to obese people. Is this a real issue? Will we be banning the eating of eclairs in public places? Cream-cake munching shelters outside workplaces?

So long as they stay away from the s I'm happy.

If you eat too much and exercise too little there's a good chance you'll become overweight. It's not a particularly taxing concept to deal with. If you end up hospitalised through it that's fair enough: you paid for the NHS so should have the use of its facilities.

Still, it would be a good idea if people that ate too much and exercised too little sorted it out for their own sake.

It's the dangers of passive obesity that we should all be wary of -

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1646997,00.html

Ah, the madness of crowds. I suppose that ultimately that could lead to a reduction in the obesity problem as the number of peole that can fit in a room at the same time, and therefore interact with and influence each other, declines.

*waits for SoRB's bleeding spleen to turn up*

Thanks for the first laugh of the morning, Azathoth

I don't think it's as simple as too much food + lack of exercice = obesity = poor health.

Other factors are the fact that the cheapest foods are refined 'empty' carbohydrates. Empty in the sense that if you eat them you don't get the necessary nutrients to run your body properly but you do get high calories. At that point it becomes a metabolic issue not simply a behavioural one. I'd guess that if you eat refined carbs for long enough there is a point beyond which it is really hard to not eat them because your metabolism has maladjusted. I think this is especially so for children raised on empty carbs without other adequate nutrition, because the lack of nutrients coincides with the body's original growth. Obviously genetics is going to play a part as well.

This is why I'm not convinced that the problem is body fat per se, but what the body is being fed i.e. it's the diet and lack of exercise that causes an increased risk of things like diabetes. The fat is simply another symptom.

If society focusses on body fat as the problem, then you push people into reducing dietary fat and overall calories but that in fact just decreases overall nutrition because the base diet is still refined carbs.

Add to that the fact that many people overeat as a form of stress control. For people that are controlling mental and emotional health via food, pariah-ing them for being fat is hardly likely to help them, is it?


I also think that there is a social fad thing in this. The definition of obesity isn't an absolute thing, it changes depending on who is doing the defining and why. Some people can carry extra weight and be quite healthy and fit. Saying that everyone who has a BMI over a certain amount that they are unhealthy is incorrect and counter-productive.

You took the words right out of my mouth.

Kea: OK, I'll retract what I said about eating too much and exercising too little being a relevant. I sit corrected.

No. Drinkers are the new smokers, in the UK at least, anyone ever drinking more than .05 ML alcohol will fall dead of fatal drinking disease and die. Its all offical and scientific as well all of a sudden. I can't cope with the stress of all the worry about it so I'm off for a cigarette and a bottle of wisky.

We're all going to die of something.

Lets ban breathing and stop this at source.

I think they'd rather we died in a way that didn't inconvenience the NHS.

No! Not the sauce! its full of calories... oh, you said source... The big problem with all this stuff, is, that it would appear a very large number of people, who unfortuantely seem to also be the ones runnign the country, don't understand that most people even when given all the evidence, all the logical and scientific evidence, actually choose* of their own free will, to do things and act in ways that may* cause some damange to their helth and mean they don't live to be as old as otherwise they might be. They're also seemingly under the delusion that if we remove all* possible nasty things nasty things won't happen. Of course the basic premise that they can remove all bad things from our surroundings is faulse doesn't probably occur to them, they're clearly not living on the same plannet that I am Of course, maybe I'm being synical, we only have to look at all the previous government cmampaigns to see what a huge success they were in changing peoples habbits, the anti drugs campaigns spring to mind as one obvious success where the goverment had a real effect in... oh... err.. bad example...

Cocaine users tend to be slim; smack users tend to be slimmer. Class A drugs are the answer to the obesity problem.

They might cause a rush on the cardiovascular wards though!

Smack use and the increase thereof is the only way to go, think how it'd help in the pension crisis... especially now we've all quit smoking since the ban, and given up fatty foods and all take exercise three times a week or more for thirty minutes or more as per goven guidelines....

Smokers tend to put on weight when they stop.

Is there a connection?

Depressed people put on weight - we've had a Labour govt for 10 years.

Is there a connection?


Kea makes some good points. Anyone care to rebutt them?

Kea does make good points, and they are largely (IMO) beyond rebuttal, but it's down to the individual to know what they're eating, and down to parents to know what they're feeding their kids.

Personal responsibility is the best way to counter the nanny state.

I think it's a matter of both personal responsibility AND public concern. Yes people need to make better food choices, but the country as a whole needs to address poverty. You can want to buy the best food in the world but it ain't no use unless you can afford it.


Why does coca cola cost less than milk?

Of course there are people that can afford it and still don't, and that needs to be addressed too. But at the level of society and concerns about increasing rates of ill health, the best solution is to decrease poverty (and modern stress). The plus is that decreasing poverty will have all sorts of other flow on benefits for society.

There are actually good medical reasons why obese people are told to lose weight before surgery.

The drugs used to for anaesthesia are very soluble in body fat so in order to knock an overwieght person out you need to give them a potentially lethal dose for it to be effective. No need to be a rocket scientist to work out why there are problem in doing that.

That aside - comparing it to global warming in seriousness (as was much vaunted in the press in the UK this week) - oh please!

I think the press have finally gotten bored with the Diana storey, and Iraq has lost its novalty now, so they were trying* to make* news of the obesity thing, though its not exactly novel storey itself as its been coming in and out of press favour for a few years now I still think one of the big problems with peoples eating habbits is that when I look/listen to some of these stories I just have to yell obsenities at the fat idiots on the screen/radio. As I find it hard to understand or believe their level of absolute stupidity ignorance and why often more often than not they talk and act as if they're seriously sub-educational first rate prats. These are prople often in a lot of cases who've suffered through their poor educational attainment, they didn't do home economics at school, they barely read and write in any half-decent way and just by listening to them you can tell they ain' good at communication on any level whatsoever. Their lack of educational attainment turns them in to TV morons and they just lap up the culture* randomly and without any thought or insight into its potential consequences. Every now and then, useually when I'm at my Fathers I accidentially end up watching some BoB-damn awful 'reality' TV show on people being overweight, and quite frankly we're better off in the vast majority of cases as a society if they do just eat themselves to death.

*used in its broadest sense*