How Do We Solve a Problem Like Obesity?

[Jacksgranda]

1 hour ago, Hedgecutter said:

Supermarket checkout conveyor belts to double as treadmills so that the fatties can burn something off whilst waiting in the queue.  That and place large boulders in the trolleys.

As one of the major retailers would say, every little helps.

Other platitudes are available.

[coprolite]

5 minutes ago, virginton said:

No, 'society' wants people to exercise more and eat a healthy, balanced diet - not a stunt, short-term Diet - with treats in moderation. This has literally been the centre piece of every public health campaign for decades and is never off mainstream television either. That some people choose to take health advice from truly abysmal platforms like fashion magazines or Mail Online paparazzi snaps does not reflect the demands of 'society' as a whole.

We should not look at a population that is more than 60% overweight and pretend that is down to mental health in the vast majority of cases. That is being used to shut down discussion of the epidemic of piss-poor decision-making, that adults can and should take responsibility for. 

Mainly agree with your first point but completely disagree with your second. 

Apart from a tiny minority of physiological cases obesity is a mental health issue.

The vast majority is not related to mental illness though. 

Lack of discipline, laziness, instant gratification etc are all mental issues and reflect poor mental health in general. 

It's people's minds that need to be trained. It's a question of habits. Physical health effects will follow mental health improvements. 

 

[vikingTON]

2 hours ago, G51 said:

Reduce working hours and increase the minimum wage for a start.

There's no reason we should be working longer than a 30 hour week at this point in history.

Agreed with this general good, but without changes in societal level carrots and sticks, that's not going to come close to addressing the problem of obesity. 

1 hour ago, TheScarf said:

Are folk still punting Herbalife in 2021?

Mostly failing Scottish professional footballers: I think Michael Tidser (now Kelty) was padding out his Herbalife franchise or some other shan product as 'becoming a successful entrepreneur'. 

1 hour ago, 101 said:

 

Yearly check up with GPs including patients taking a weekly meal plan along to submit to a dietitian.

And plug in the results into a national fat tax on income/health credit that provides a direct incentive for people to change behaviour.

Taxing products that are deemed 'unhealthy' is regressive and does not directly point out the issue to those being targeted: a tax statement that says you're paying 3% more this year for not fucking into a salad regularly will soon change a lot of people's minds.

[The Moonster]

1 minute ago, Aufc said:

Depends on whether your lifestyle causes you health issues. Suppose it might catch up on you eventually which would be worry.

 

I don't want really want to divulge my personal health problems but for the best part of a decade now I haven't eaten anywhere near the required calories or nutrients that my body needs, of course it has given me health problems. Am I fair game for a bullying?

[vikingTON]

6 minutes ago, coprolite said:

Mainly agree with your first point but completely disagree with your second. 

Apart from a tiny minority of physiological cases obesity is a mental health issue.

The vast majority is not related to mental illness though. 

Lack of discipline, laziness, instant gratification etc are all mental issues and reflect poor mental health in general. 

It's people's minds that need to be trained. It's a question of habits. Physical health effects will follow mental health improvements. 

 

Behavioural issues and 'mental health issues' - diagnosable, medical conditions relating to the functioning of the brain, hormone levels etc. - are not the same thing and it's a growing bugbear of mine that contemporary society conflates the two on a daily basis. This could well be another spin-off topic that's not likely to end well though. 

People in very good mental health are just as capable of embracing laziness and instant gratification as those in poor health. If they continue following those stimuli in eating too much then they become obese entirely of their own volition. 

[G51]

5 minutes ago, virginton said:

Agreed with this general good, but without changes in societal level carrots and sticks, that's not going to come close to addressing the problem of obesity.

It's not the silver bullet that will fix obesity, but we're handicapping ourselves in the fight while we continue to follow a working week that was designed for a hundred years ago.

Reduce stress and tiredness, watch people make better decisions.

[coprolite]

2 minutes ago, virginton said:

Behavioural issues and 'mental health issues' - diagnosable, medical conditions relating to the functioning of the brain, hormone levels etc. - are not the same thing and it's a growing bugbear of mine that contemporary society conflates the two on a daily basis. This could well be another spin-off topic that's not likely to end well though. 

People in very good mental health are just as capable of embracing laziness and instant gratification as those in poor health. If they continue following those stimuli in eating too much then they become obese entirely of their own volition. 

No. Mental health is about wider behaviour. Your definition is of mental illness not mental health. 

A relevant analogy to physical health and illness would be that being overweight is not an illness but it is a health issue

 

[coprolite]

8 minutes ago, The Moonster said:

I don't want really want to divulge my personal health problems but for the best part of a decade now I haven't eaten anywhere near the required calories or nutrients that my body needs, of course it has given me health problems. Am I fair game for a bullying?

Not this week. Get in the queue behind the fatties please. 

[Tight minge]

1 hour ago, hk blues said:

There must be more to it than that though.  People in countries like Japan and Korea work longer than most .  They have an abundance of fast food options, and convenience stores are on every corner.  They consume alcohol liberally.  Yet obesity isn't as much of  a problem as it is in the UK.

When I first moved to Hungary, there was no McDonalds or such like and there was  no obesity issue, fast forward to now and its getting a different story.

Most of Asia hasn’t a weight issue but again it is changing. Probably the most obese is The Philippines imo, where McDonalds and similar is hugely popular.

There would appear a potential connection between shitty American (fast) food and casual dining places and obesity. 

There is plenty of ‘fast food’ in Asia but revolves around a lot of seafood and vegetables and is generally healthier and again, less consumption of carbonated soft drinks (although again thats changing). 

We would go a long way to solving this by bining all these fast food and casual dining places and dodging Carbonated soft drinks.

 

 

[HibsFan]

For what it's worth, I think the exercise side of things is massively overlooked whenever this debate pops up.

The Thatcherisation of sport, as it moved from being something belonged to the people and was played on every patch of grass/empty street to now being viewed by many young children as a television programme, has had a massive impact on how much we exercise. I love cycling, I quite like running, I like playing fives with my mates. Down in London these are all abundantly possible, but I don't think that's the case in many smaller cities and/or towns where the playing fields were sold off and there's no meaningful cycling infrastructure unless you enjoy close passes on A roads.

ETA: also, as @G51 says, cut down the amount of working hours (especially during the winter when people are seriously expected to go to and leave work in the dark) and watch as people make better choices for having more free time.

Edited March 4, 2021 by HibsFan

[ICTChris]

It’s not the fatties mental health I’m concerned about reading this forum tbh.

[Jacksgranda]

I've lead a sedentary life, walked round building sites fairly frequently but otherwise virtually no exercise - other than a bit of walking - since I left school, 50 years ago.

I enjoy my food - when I was younger I more than once ate two successive "meals" in the likes of Wimpy - and I still eat 3 meals a day with a good few chocolate biscuits/Tunnocks tea cakes/cherry bakewells in between. I've not eaten particulary healthily and I've never been heavier than 12 stone (which is my current weight).

Maybe smoking like a train kept the weight down, but I've put on very little since I stopped, some 8 years ago. I'm 6' 4"

I've ate all the usual supermarket pre-packed food shite and it hasn't caused me to become obese.

There has to more to it than just what you eat, although you would think that would be the biggest part of it.

[vikingTON]

4 minutes ago, G51 said:

It's not the silver bullet that will fix obesity, but we're handicapping ourselves in the fight while we continue to follow a working week that was designed for a hundred years ago.

Reduce stress and tiredness, watch people make better decisions.

Or watch them spend another eight hours a week on Netflix and phoning in a takeaway as usual. It's nowhere near as straightforward a link as you claim, without breaking the cycle of unhealthy habits band behaviours being left completely unchallenged by society as well. 

[19QOS19]

I can’t help but feel some of the more vocal protagonists here will be be akin to some of those on our terraces taunting footballers carrying a little extra.  Strangely the mirrors in their own house don’t seem to work properly.
There’s clearly an issue here that will take generations to resolve and a government willing to take some unpopular decisions.
As an aside, I’ve noticed a lot of people who, largely by dint of genetics, are a skinny as a rake but horrifically unhealthy and miles less fit than some people who are carrying a bit extra but still participate in regular exercise.

Always makes me laugh when you still hear "Dobbie, ya fat b*****d!". He's as lean as he's ever been but still gets tarred with the fat brush [emoji38]

I don't actually disagree with any of this, but just to pick up on one point here, you use the phrase "we". Not everyone will have someone else in their household who will help push them down this road of putting a bit more effort into finding healthy food and even more so to cook it. It's patently easier for a partnership to push each other and keep each other in line that it is for someone living alone. There's numerous other reasons that folk will opt for a takeaway too that G51 has pointed out rather well.  
Totally agree on education and totally agree that someone who is overweight needs to want change - my overwhelming experience is that these people do want change and either don't know where to start or in most cases are scared of what other people will think if they go out a jog (I'd say their fears are probably quite well justified given some of the comments you see on here). 

I get what you are saying with regards to a partner and there's a lot of truth in it. I'm not 100% in agreement purely based on my own experience. The Mrs went on a diet a couple years back and I wasn't interested. So some night would be her eating her healthy meals and me deciding I wanted a pizza (for the record I never did this out of spite, I let her know from the off I'd be eating as I always did). It never bothered her as she was in the right frame of mind. There's also been times where I've wanted a takeaway (probably the 3rd for that week!) but didn't want to suggest it and she'd say will we just get one, to which I'd obviously agree. My wee cousin is a big girl and she started dieting this year and we've been in touch to see how we are doing. She lives/d alone but her dad split from his partner and moved in with her a few weeks back. He's a bigger guy as well. I haven't heard from her recently and can almost guarantee she's put all that weight back on now.

TL;DR is that I think there are pros and cons to having a partner in the house with you but I have to admit I stand by 'you need to be in the right frame of mind to change'.

The "don't know where to start" comment is probably exactly the same thing as I'm meaning in regards to meals. A decent/simplified cookbook is the answer there for me. As I say, you can buy all the 'proper' ingredients but without knowing what to do with them it's pretty pointless.

[D Angelo Barksdale]

It's becoming clearer that Joe Wicks has been sent back in time like some Essex boy terminator to try and save us from a judgement day being prosecuted by the evil McDonald's and Coca Cola corporations.

[Bairnardo]

1 minute ago, Henderson to deliver ..... said:

It's becoming clearer that Joe Wicks has been sent back in time like some Essex boy terminator to try and save us from a judgement day being prosecuted by the evil McDonald's and Coca Cola corporations.

The franchise is going downhill rapidly....

[Detournement]

9 minutes ago, Tight John McVeigh is a tit said:

Most of Asia hasn’t a weight issue but again it is changing. Probably the most obese is The Philippines imo, where McDonalds and similar is hugely popular.

 

 

 

 

There is a Jollibee about every 100m in Manilla. Fillipino food is terrible compared to everywhere else I've been in Asia. 

Whether that is down to being violently colonised by the Spanish then the USA I don't know but compared to Thai, Malaysian, Vietnamese or Korean it's shite. 

Red Horse beer (6.9% in 500ml bottles) on the other hand is nectar from the gods. 

 

[madwullie]

1 hour ago, Bairnardo said:

Which, again worth pointing out, is more about telling women they don't have to hate themselves for not being built like a snipers nightmare, than actually trying to convince anyone that its somehow healthy to be overweight.

Sniper's nightmare  

[Aufc]

I don't want really want to divulge my personal health problems but for the best part of a decade now I haven't eaten anywhere near the required calories or nutrients that my body needs, of course it has given me health problems. Am I fair game for a bullying?

Well it sounds like its a mental health issue which has led to it so i would say no

[velo army]

2 minutes ago, HibsFan said:

For what it's worth, I think the exercise side of things is massively overlooked whenever this debate pops up.

The Thatcherisation of sport, as it moved from being something belonged to the people and was played on every patch of grass/empty street to now being viewed by many young children as a television programme, has had a massive impact on how much we exercise. I love cycling, I quite like running, I like playing fives with my mates. Down in London these are all abundantly possible, but I don't think that's the case in many smaller cities and/or towns where the playing fields were sold off and there's no meaningful cycling infrastructure unless you enjoy close passes on A roads.

ETA: also, as @G51 says, cut down the amount of working hours (especially during the winter when people are seriously expected to go to and leave work in the dark) and watch as people make better choices for having more free time.

I think this speaks to the question I had in my head as I began to write. I grew up in the 80's and 90's and the diet wasn't especially healthy. Dinner was some meat thing, some tattie thing and some overcooked veg. My mum was, and still is, the worst cook in East Kilbride, so there was nothing from scratch. I don't remember my pals ever having much cooked from scratch either (I'm sure everyone else had a post dinner de-brief with their pals to find out what they all had) but there was maybe 2 "fat" children in our year at school. So it couldn't just be diet.

Going back to visit now any time I go out for a kickabout with my brother (no weans, just two men in their late 30's and early 40's perfecting Cruyff turns) we have to walk for a good 25mins to get to a pitch. Growing up we just went round the corner, to the park next to the houses or to the Ballerup pitches (right next to our estate) for bigger games/golf/rounders etc. I grew up in a street of feral children who were all launched out of their houses between mealtimes to play and be active.

In EK, what was initially a planned town with plenty of green spaces and places to play, there are only housing estates and shops, with absolutely nowhere for children to play. While this is obviously only one end of the elephant, it's surely a vital one.

I'm also wondering about the changing family structure these days too. To wit, both parents working and communities being atomised to the extent that people don't know who their neighbours are. But I don't want to write a huge essay.*

 

*I do, I really do.