How Do We Solve a Problem Like Obesity?

[Steve_Wilkos]

How do we solve obesity?

Humiliate bloaters and blimps at every given opportunity.

[ICTChris]

The people on here who drone on about dishing out abuse to fat people are doing it because they like doing it.  Bullying is enjoyable for a lot of people.  If we are being honest about it, there's an element in all of us that enjoys humiliating others, making people we don't like or disagree with feel bad or stupid.  

When I was working in London a few years ago there was a story in the paper about a group of people who went up to women on the Tube and gave them a note that said "You are overweight, you are endangering your health, you should lose weight" or words to that effect.  Now that might have been accurate but if you think that something like that was motivated by a concern for the women's health or for the burden on the NHS or for the public finances I've got a bridge to sell you.  Strange it was only women they gave the notes to when obesity is split quite clearly between the sexes.  Assume there were no 20 stone nightclub bouncers available for them to give them to.

 

Found the story -   https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/woman-handed-card-tube-organisation-which-hates-fat-people-a6754706.html

 

[vikingTON]

22 minutes ago, coprolite said:

Totally agree that some people just need a boot up the arse.

But what works for them might not work for others and might actually be harmful. 

I don't really recognise the reality that you're describing. Fat people are routinely made to feel shit about being fat and that hasn't helped either

That's just not true though. Fat people and the criticism of 'fat shaming' has been sucked into the wider circular firing squad debates of identity politics, in which No One Must Ever Be Criticised. The UK has adopted the American approach of removing social stigma from an issue that would have been more regularly called on in the past. 

There has to be a system of both positive and negative social incentives just like for smoking. People who try as well as succeed in quitting tobacco are encouraged to do so, while those who continue are subject to mild stigma and moralising lectures from the right-thinking majority. By shrinking back from a frank debate with people who are overweight and providing both encouragement and disapproval at a societal level, we make the problem worse for more individuals. We also end up in an extended national lockdown, in part because our population is too fucking unfit to shrug off a virus that has little overall impact on healthy people. Everyone is paying right now for this failure to act and that's not acceptable. 

Edited March 4, 2021 by vikingTON

[Steve_Wilkos]

If we have to look at bloaters, let's at least get some entertainment out of it.

[The Moonster]

4 minutes ago, virginton said:

Well no, you claimed that it was acceptable to point out 'factual truths' to smokers, yet for some reason 'factual truths' about obesity must be danced around. Let's compare like for like: where is the line for 'bullying' of smokers and 'bullying' of fat people respectively? 

Given that nicotine addiction is a thing and doughnut addiction is not, if we were making a rational decision of which group we should more sensitive about, it would be smokers. The opposite however is the case in the UK today - which is why we have an ever-spiralling obesity epidemic while smoking rates are in decline. 

There's also little evidence of specific people being called 'fat c***s' on here, so even by your own terms there's no case for 'bullying' either. If people do not like a frank public discussion of this general issue then there are plenty of other threads, forums and indeed websites for them to read instead. 

I've already explained that I don't feel smokers are "bullied" by the examples you pointed out. Smoke makes you smell, damages their health and the packaging has warnings of what their choice means for them. I'm happy for unhealthy foods to come with similar warnings, I'm happy for people to point out what eating those foods will do to their body. I'm even happy for fast food adverts to stop. I'm not particularly happy for people to belittle or abuse others whilst they are doing so. You can point out the "blunt truth" of eating McDonalds every day without calling someone a fat b*****d or hurting their feelings. I wouldn't try and make a smoker quit by saying they disgusted me and should be ashamed of themselves. 

Do you believe that smoking is on the decline because smokers get abused by non-smokers or do you think that decline is due to long period of education on the ill-effects of smoking and the fact they are basically banned from advertising?

Not sure why you're pretending fat people don't get abused on here tbh.

[Jambomo]

3 minutes ago, ICTChris said:

The people on here who drone on about dishing out abuse to fat people are doing it because they like doing it.  Bullying is enjoyable for a lot of people.  If we are being honest about it, there's an element in all of us that enjoys humiliating others, making people we don't like or disagree with feel bad or stupid.  

When I was working in London a few years ago there was a story in the paper about a group of people who went up to women on the Tube and gave them a note that said "You are overweight, you are endangering your health, you should lose weight" or words to that effect.  Now that might have been accurate but if you think that something like that was motivated by a concern for the women's health or for the burden on the NHS or for the public finances I've got a bridge to sell you.  Strange it was only women they gave the notes to when obesity is split quite clearly between the sexes.  Assume there were no 20 stone nightclub bouncers available for them to give them to.

 

Found the story -   https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/woman-handed-card-tube-organisation-which-hates-fat-people-a6754706.html

 

I think there is a name for it but can't remember what it is. When someone pretends to be concerned about someone's health or well-being as a means of abusing or bullying them.

At the end of the day, why is it anyone else's business is it if somebody is obese? What does it matter to anyone else? The cost on the NHS is often used as an excuse but they pay their taxes so if they get sick, they are as entitled to be treated as much as the 20 a-day smoker or the person who drinks too much and fucks their body.

Years ago I used to do a lot of trail running and actually quite a lot of my friends ended up using the NHS because of falls resulting in pulled muscles, broken bones, twisted ankles - do we tell people they shouldn't run as they put a strain on the NHS? Indeed despite at one point being very overweigh (I am much less so now) I've never had any weight related illness but have had many sports-injuries that put me in hospital (fractured ankle, fractured collar-bone, fractured pelvis). The NHS is there to be used regardless of how you get there, we shouldn't be gatekeeping it.

[vikingTON]

1 minute ago, The Moonster said:

I've already explained that I don't feel smokers are "bullied" by the examples you pointed out. Smoke makes you smell, damages their health and the packaging has warnings of what their choice means for them. 

And obesity makes people visibly disgusting. Stating this general point on a public forum is not 'bullying fat people' though.

Quote

You can point out the "blunt truth" of eating McDonalds every day without calling someone a fat b*****d or hurting their feelings. I wouldn't try and make a smoker quit by saying they disgusted me and should be ashamed of themselves.

This isn't a professional support clinic for people trying to lose weight though. 

Quote

Do you believe that smoking is on the decline because smokers get abused by non-smokers or do you think that decline is due to long period of education on the ill-effects of smoking and the fact they are basically banned from advertising?

The same 'education' is freely available on healthy nutrition and has had zero impact whatsoever, so unless you have faith in the supernatural powers of advertising then we must return to the issue of social norms. A society that both treats obesity as socially acceptable and has cheap and plentiful food cannot show mock disbelief when it ends up with a chronically unhealthy population. Social acceptance of smoking has declined and with it has gone uptake of that practice.

Quote

Not sure why you're pretending fat people don't get abused on here tbh.

Old Firm fans get abused on here, players and football administrators get abused on here, posters get abused on here. None of this constitutes 'bullying' though because that requires a context of targeted,  systematic and effectively unavoidable abuse towards an individual. There's zero evidence of that on here so the entire premise of your pearl-clutching exercise is false.

[Bairnardo]

15 minutes ago, ICTChris said:

The people on here who drone on about dishing out abuse to fat people are doing it because they like doing it.  Bullying is enjoyable for a lot of people.  If we are being honest about it, there's an element in all of us that enjoys humiliating others, making people we don't like or disagree with feel bad or stupid.  

When I was working in London a few years ago there was a story in the paper about a group of people who went up to women on the Tube and gave them a note that said "You are overweight, you are endangering your health, you should lose weight" or words to that effect.  Now that might have been accurate but if you think that something like that was motivated by a concern for the women's health or for the burden on the NHS or for the public finances I've got a bridge to sell you.  Strange it was only women they gave the notes to when obesity is split quite clearly between the sexes.  Assume there were no 20 stone nightclub bouncers available for them to give them to.

 

Found the story -   https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/woman-handed-card-tube-organisation-which-hates-fat-people-a6754706.html

 

Certainly being online also makes it much easier to carry on like this without getting a punch in the mouth for picking on the wrong person.

@Jambomo also makes a very relevant point regarding drink. Plenty of people put themselves on a hospital needed trajectory with that. Some extra tax aside, there is literally nothing about society that demonises people who do this.  Whilst I am absolutely not saying the obesity epidemic doesn't need addressed, it needs to be encouraging healthier choices and lifestyles, not mandating them or shaming anyone who chooses differently, regardless of the motivation for said choice.

[coprolite]

8 minutes ago, virginton said:

That's just not true though. Fat people and the criticism of 'fat shaming' has been sucked into the wider circular firing squad debates of identity politics, in which No One Must Ever Be Criticised. The UK has adopted the American approach of removing social stigma from an issue that would have been more regularly called on in the past. 

There has to be a system of both positive and negative social incentives just like for smoking. People who try as well as succeed in quitting tobacco are encouraged to do so, while those who continue are subject to mild stigma and moralising lectures from the right-thinking majority. By shrinking back from a frank debate with people who are overweight and providing both encouragement and disapproval at a societal level, we make the problem worse for more individuals. We also end up in an extended national lockdown, in part because our population is too fucking unfit to shrug off a virus that has little overall impact on healthy people. Everyone is paying right now for this failure to act and that's not acceptable. 

What the f**k is a "wider circular firing squad debate?". I'm guessing this is some shite off of the twitter and therefore reality for a small number of people. 

Out in the real world, fat kids are still getting a slagging in the playground and fat adults are generally considered less attractive by the opposite sex. 

[vikingTON]

1 hour ago, Jambomo said:

At the end of the day, why is it anyone else's business is it if somebody is obese? What does it matter to anyone else? The cost on the NHS is often used as an excuse but they pay their taxes so if they get sick, they are as entitled to be treated as much as the 20 a-day smoker or the person who drinks too much and fucks their body.

Are 60% of the UK population being treated for smoking related lung cancers or alcohol-driven cirrhosis? Has the NHS been overwhelmed in recent weeks by obese people in their 40s and 50s who cannot deal with a bog-standard virus, triggering an extended and economically ruinous national lockdown? I don't see exactly how paying National Insurance and your taxes covers that cost. 

An individual's responsibility for their own health is superseded by society's responsibility to maintain the health of the optimal number of people. Which is, incidentally, the entire premise of the repeated lockdowns of the last twelve months. If we follow your argument that an individual's health is nobody else's business, then it is nobody else's business if a bunch of 20 year olds decide to organise a rave right now seeing as they almost certainly won't even end up in hospital, if they contracted a virus. Why is their risk of exposure and near-zero chance of serious infection anyone else's business? 

Edited March 4, 2021 by vikingTON

[ICTChris]

5 minutes ago, coprolite said:

What the f**k is a "wider circular firing squad debate?".

Saw them in the NME Tent at Reading in 1999.

[vikingTON]

6 minutes ago, Bairnardo said:

 

@Jambomo also makes a very relevant point regarding drink. Plenty of people put themselves on a hospital needed trajectory with that. Some extra tax aside, there is literally nothing about society that demonises people who do this.  Whilst I am absolutely not saying the obesity epidemic doesn't need addressed, it needs to be encouraging healthier choices and lifestyles, not mandating them or shaming anyone who chooses differently, regardless of the motivation for said choice.

If you live in an alternative universe in which 'alky' and 'jakey' among other terms don't exist, sure.

[The Moonster]

3 minutes ago, virginton said:

The same 'education' is freely available on healthy nutrition and has had zero impact whatsoever, so unless you have faith in the supernatural powers of advertising then we must return to the issue of social norms. A society that both treats obesity as socially acceptable and has cheap and plentiful food cannot show mock disbelief when it ends up with a chronically unhealthy population. Social acceptance of smoking has declined and with it has gone uptake of that practice.

Healthy nutrition education being available isn't the same as the targeted approach tobacco products have had. When fast food can't advertise and the packaging is all black with pictures of fatty hearts/arteries all over them then we can say the approaches are comparable. If we're pretending marketing and advertising doesn't have a huge affect on these things then I'll leave this debate here.

[101]

28 minutes ago, The Moonster said:

I've already explained that I don't feel smokers are "bullied" by the examples you pointed out. Smoke makes you smell, damages their health and the packaging has warnings of what their choice means for them. I'm happy for unhealthy foods to come with similar warnings, I'm happy for people to point out what eating those foods will do to their body. I'm even happy for fast food adverts to stop. I'm not particularly happy for people to belittle or abuse others whilst they are doing so. You can point out the "blunt truth" of eating McDonalds every day without calling someone a fat b*****d or hurting their feelings. I wouldn't try and make a smoker quit by saying they disgusted me and should be ashamed of themselves. 

Do you believe that smoking is on the decline because smokers get abused by non-smokers or do you think that decline is due to long period of education on the ill-effects of smoking and the fact they are basically banned from advertising?

Not sure why you're pretending fat people don't get abused on here tbh.

You also can't go too far the other way when it comes to giving up smoking you can go to far when it comes to modifying your relationship with food and eventually it's equally unhealthy. 

Smokers and obese people are not comparable.

[Aufc]

A big issue for me is that most initiatives that the government could suggest will always come back to some degree of responsibility on said obese person which is where it will fail. Something like subsidised gym memberships for obese people is a good idea but is dependent on said person going.

The only way to impact a lot of people and make them possibly change is to hit them in their pocket. The likes of a sugar tax dont work. How this is done i am not sure.

[coprolite]

2 minutes ago, Aufc said:

A big issue for me is that most initiatives that the government could suggest will always come back to some degree of responsibility on said obese person which is where it will fail. Something like subsidised gym memberships for obese people is a good idea but is dependent on said person going.

The only way to impact a lot of people and make them possibly change is to hit them in their pocket. The likes of a sugar tax dont work. How this is done i am not sure.

Use BMI instead of property bands for council tax. 

I'd eat tapeworm eggs and go bullimic if that came in. 

[Aufc]

The people on here who drone on about dishing out abuse to fat people are doing it because they like doing it.  Bullying is enjoyable for a lot of people.  If we are being honest about it, there's an element in all of us that enjoys humiliating others, making people we don't like or disagree with feel bad or stupid.  
When I was working in London a few years ago there was a story in the paper about a group of people who went up to women on the Tube and gave them a note that said "You are overweight, you are endangering your health, you should lose weight" or words to that effect.  Now that might have been accurate but if you think that something like that was motivated by a concern for the women's health or for the burden on the NHS or for the public finances I've got a bridge to sell you.  Strange it was only women they gave the notes to when obesity is split quite clearly between the sexes.  Assume there were no 20 stone nightclub bouncers available for them to give them to.
 
Found the story -   https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/woman-handed-card-tube-organisation-which-hates-fat-people-a6754706.html
 

Firstly, i havent abused anyone. Secondly, i understand it is an awkward conversation to have but it is one that needs to happen. I dont agree with fat shaming anyone. All i am saying is there needs to a serious change in how obesity is dealt with in this country. This has been exasperated by the covid pandemic

[HibsFan]

52 minutes ago, Jambomo said:

I think there is a name for it but can't remember what it is. When someone pretends to be concerned about someone's health or well-being as a means of abusing or bullying them.

At the end of the day, why is it anyone else's business is it if somebody is obese? What does it matter to anyone else? The cost on the NHS is often used as an excuse but they pay their taxes so if they get sick, they are as entitled to be treated as much as the 20 a-day smoker or the person who drinks too much and fucks their body.

Years ago I used to do a lot of trail running and actually quite a lot of my friends ended up using the NHS because of falls resulting in pulled muscles, broken bones, twisted ankles - do we tell people they shouldn't run as they put a strain on the NHS? Indeed despite at one point being very overweigh (I am much less so now) I've never had any weight related illness but have had many sports-injuries that put me in hospital (fractured ankle, fractured collar-bone, fractured pelvis). The NHS is there to be used regardless of how you get there, we shouldn't be gatekeeping it.

Think the term is concern trolling.

[TheScarf]

39 minutes ago, ICTChris said:

Saw them in the NME Tent at Reading in 1999.

They went on to become The Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster.

[Detournement]

It seems like every day I get junk mail from takeaway places. A huge amount of effort goes into encouraging people to eat shite because it's so profitable.