War on obesity

[laverte]

Following the indisputable success of global wars on poverty and terror, the UK government has opened hostilities on another mass noun.

i'm obese and have t2 diabetes, so i feel very much in the crossfire of this one. i'm just not yet certain whether the war has been declared on my tummy, or my food cupboard, or the sinister forces that saturate my brain with images of delectable ice cream. Am i a villain for guzzling too much gateau, or a victim in need of rescue from the caliphate of cake?

Either way, experience tells me that it's about to be an exciting time to be fat in public.

Most of this government's policy ideas, having served the twin purposes of suggesting that Something is Being Done and making lobby journalists feel useful, expire within days. But this war might just happen, as it is being sold as the prime minister's personal project in the wake of his encounter with coronavirus. Just as David Cameron used his son's death to revive the NHS and facilitate the lives of disabled people, so i have high hopes that Johnson's damascene moment will eliminate all shaming and discrimination against fat people. In any case, the main benefit as it is being presented is that getting us fatties out cycling and keeping us away from the biscuit aisle will save all the money for the NHS that leaving the European Union was supposed to.

Sniffing around in the OTF archives, i gather that issues around obesity used to be rather contentious. But we have mellowed in middle age, so i'm going to ask that anyone contributing to this thread understands that obesity has many causes and is often a symptom of mental and physical illnesses, of circumstances, and of access to resources. Fat people are aware that they are fat, because it is impossible to escape that message, and do not need to be reminded. Fat shaming is counter-productive. Not all fat people can or want to lose weight. Losing weight is really hard. The stigma of being fat sticks to some bodies more than others.

If you want to dispute any of that, please do so on a different thread.

Here, let's concentrate on a few things.

1: The politics. What should the government do? What measures are actually under consideration? Who are they really aimed at? Are new cycling lanes going to get new people onto bikes? What effect will banning television ads for sugary products have on a generation that doesn't watch tv? More broadly, this seems like a bid to blame certain elements of the public, rather than Tory party ideology, for draining resources from the newly resanctified NHS. It may also contribute to the tedious narrative of Johnson's transformation from jovial bullshitting bon vivant to responsible statesman daddy and slimline friend of science, in tune with the world as it takes an introspective, material, sombre turn. But can the Conservatives get away with using the state to 'nanny' in this way?

2: What is obesity? This is a tricky one. It's a public health issue, affecting many people and especially the poorest. But it's also portrayed as very much a private matter, of making 'responsible choices' and counting calories. This drive to make individuals “self-responsibilising”, in the jargon of neoliberal thinktankery, berates us for our bad habits and invites us to monitor our (and others') behaviour, while giving the state a pass on failing to achieve much of what it ought to do to help. It thrives on pointing the finger at deviants and threatening them with the removal of support. After all, why should the taxpayer fund your gastric bypass if you've been seen scoffing pizza in public? In these conditions is it impossible to promote “healthy” without further stigmatising “unhealthy”?

3: The personal level. What can each of us do? How can we talk about 'obesity'? How does it relate to eating? How do fat bodies, our own or others', make us feel? How do we show support and compassion for fat people who do and don't want to lose weight? Is it okay to compliment a friend who has lost weight? Should we worry about – and offer to help – a friend who has put on weight? What words should we use/avoid?

What does it feel like to be a fat person, or the partner or the parent of a fat person in this world? How frightening is the prospect? Does it ever feel like failure, and if so, how do we cope with that? To what extent are we set up to fail? Above all, how can we defend fat people from stigma and disapproval and whatever else the government and its media cheerleaders have in store for us?

These are not trick questions, and there are no 'wrong' answers within the limits set above.

(Sorry for the bombardment of questions, but it's a war out there.)

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

The "natural" body shape of most primates, certainly middle-aged ones, is to have put a bit of timber on. Go to a zoo and have a look at them. There aren't many orang utans that look like Seb Coe. Very obese is one thing, but the body image we're all meant to aspire to is actually not healthy either, if it comes at the cost of a starvation diet and over-exercise.

[EIM]

We were thinking about this the other day. It's basically impossible, isn't it? You need to reprogram and re-educate a large percentage of the population as well as regulate the food industry. But you also need to massively alter the income levels and work culture of the entire country. And that's before you have to tackle the mental health issues you touched upon.

[Snake Plissken]

And the bodies that we see in magazines as examples to follow, well it impossible to look like that because Photoshop means they don't look like that.

I've got to say that as an opening salvo in the war on obesity, running a nationwide offer that allows you to eat and drink at the pub for half price is an... innovative tactic.

[DCI Harry Batt]

There are also a lot of "public health" messages around weight which are, essentially, lies. So, you know. Fuck 'em.

[pebblethefish]

I've got to say that as an opening salvo in the war on obesity, running a nationwide offer that allows you to eat and drink at the pub for half price is an... innovative tactic.

It's the sort of comic timing that would have had it rejected as a plot in Yes Minister or Thick of It for being too unbelievable.

[My Name Is Ian]

I don't think it's a 'war on obesity' at all. I think it's a war on poor people, an extension of the "why don't poor people just eat berries and the occasional bowl of porridge" bullshit that we occasionally (okay, regularly) see from hard right Tories.

My weight has been up and down like a yo yo this last few years, and it's currently on a downward trajectory. I get considerably more nervous when this is happening than when it's increasing.

[Sporting]

Is it okay to compliment a friend who has lost weight?

Surely the easiest question among many more far harder ones. Yes: if you know for a fact that the weight loss is due to a deliberate attempt by that person to get rid of a few kilos. I know from personal experience that one's self confidence is suitably heightened.

[Wouter D]

We were thinking about this the other day. It's basically impossible, isn't it? You need to reprogram and re-educate a large percentage of the population as well as regulate the food industry. But you also need to massively alter the income levels and work culture of the entire country. And that's before you have to tackle the mental health issues you touched upon.

Couldn't you put up the same line of reasoning with respect to smoking?

Right on cue, the state of Oaxaca has banned the sale of sugary drinks and junk food to children. Prohibition has taught us that outright banning may not necessarily be the best of ideas. But if a government would decide to impose extra taxes on soft drinks and sweets, I could get behind that. Just like Scandinavian countries have high taxes on alcohol: I don't necessarily like the idea of paying extortionate amounts of money for my beer, but I am a supporter of governments steering the population in this manner, rather than banning stuff.

I appreciate that it's not quite likely that the tories of all people will increase taxes on anything.

[Sporting]

A couple of extra questions (sorry if already covered):

Has any proper research been done into how much more expensive it is to eat foods which don't contain a load of calories as opposed to those which do?

How about exercise, hardly mentioned so far? How about increasing the funding of sports for children in particular? Increasing PE times at school?

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

It's fairly empty political gesturing - they can give out some subsidies to existing cyclists, mark out some cycle lanes, restrict advertising, all at very little real cost and then package it all up and call it a "war on obesity". In much the same way that the brave "New Deal" actually involved a load of stuff already budgeted for, of which the flagship project was fixing a bridge in Sandwell.

Similarly the Eat Out deal isn't really going to single handedly save the hospitality sector, but firstly they will always claim it did, and secondly it achieves its aim of getting some photo opportunities for the Chancellor.

[Nefertiti2]

A couple of extra questions (sorry if already covered):

Has any proper research been done into how much more expensive it is to eat foods which don't contain a load of calories as opposed to those which do?

How about exercise, hardly mentioned so far? How about increasing the funding of sports for children in particular? Increasing PE times at school?

There are all kinds of issues that have to be taken into account before comparing. Costs of power for cooking and refrigeration, cooking equipment, spices and flavourings, storage and so on.

Also time. those working low paid jobs and looking after children often don't have time to cook

That's why comparisons by the posh are usually about shaming the poor.


Didn't see the point about exercise.

Sports centres and swimming pools and recs and playing fields used to be provided by local authorities , as part of a total system of making the ability to keep fit available and affordable - Schools had playgrounds.

Arts centres offered music dance and theatre all of which have health as well as cultural benefits toth soe who participate.

Most of these have been turned into profit centres. Playgrounds and playing fields are sold for building.

[ad hoc]

Couldn't you put up the same line of reasoning with respect to smoking?

I guess the big difference with smoking is that nobody has to smoke. Everybody has to eat. So making cheap processed food more expensive needs to also be accompanied by making other food (not necessarily "health" food, but just generally OK stuff) cheaper and more accessible to all. Personally I'd like to close down every McDonalds in the world, but that's only partly driven by concerns about how unhealthy their food is and mostly by my occasionally riled-up vegetarianism.

[laverte]

Food is different from smoking too in that it is tied up with various social and emotional factors (status, comfort, pleasure, the desire and ability to provide). i think part of Johnson's 'appeal' is that he looks like the kind of chap who would let himself go at a buffet, rather than the super-controlled bourgeois types around him who would restrict themselves to three olives and a glass of kale juice. Now that we're all going to be 'belt-tightening' this might not be such an asset. Hence the rebranding.

[Sporting]

Sports centres and swimming pools and recs and playing fields used to be provided by local authorities , as part of a total system of making the ability to keep fit available and affordable - Schools had playgrounds.

Arts centres offered music dance and theatre all of which have health as well as cultural benefits to those who participate.

Most of these have been turned into profit centres. Playgrounds and playing fields are sold for building.

Exactly. Shameful and disastrous.

[Sporting]

Personally I'd like to close down every McDonalds in the world, but that's only partly driven by concerns about how unhealthy their food is and mostly by my occasionally riled-up vegetarianism.

I have no desire to give up meat but if the emphasis on meat-eating in the "developed" world could somehow be diminished then there would be all kinds of benefits.

[Wouter D]

I guess the big difference with smoking is that nobody has to smoke. Everybody has to eat. So making cheap processed food more expensive needs to also be accompanied by making other food (not necessarily "health" food, but just generally OK stuff) cheaper and more accessible to all. Personally I'd like to close down every McDonalds in the world, but that's only partly driven by concerns about how unhealthy their food is and mostly by my occasionally riled-up vegetarianism.

Yes, that makes a whole lot of sense. The point of my post was not to draw full equivalence between the two; it merely serves as an example of why I feel that EIM's "It's basically impossible" line of argumentation does not hold. After all, to reduce smoking, we would also need to reprogram and re-educate a large percentage of the population as well as regulate the tobacco industry. EIM's next sentence on income levels does tie in neatly with your argument that non-unhealthy food must be made cheaper and more accessible; I have no qualms with that.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Convenience food is definitely that, 'convenient'. It's certainly not cheaper. As someone said above, people don't eat takeaways because they're poor, they eat them because they don't have the energy or time to spend half an hour cooking, let alone shopping for food. Perhaps one policy solution would be to force employers to give all employees two hours paid leave a week to at least do a weekly shop.

[Wouter D]

Food is different from smoking too in that it is tied up with various social and emotional factors (status, comfort, pleasure, the desire and ability to provide).

I do agree with the rest of your post, but I imagein smoking is/was also tied up with various social factors. Perhaps not so much the ability to provide, but surely status, comfort, pleasure. Smoking ads seem to sell that impression.

[DCI Harry Batt]

The "it's not cheaper" thing is...well, it needs a fair whack of unpicking, at the very least.

Has everyone read Jack Monroe's piece from the other day, after that piece of shit Annunziata Rees-Mogg tweeting some ignorant patronising shit about how cheap potatoes are compared to oven chips?

You don’t batch cook when you’re suicidal (formerly: The price of potatoes & the value of compassion)

my main point is that poverty and privilege are largely accidental. You don’t choose to be born into an income bracket, a country pile, a housing estate, a double barrelled name or a damp tenement bedsit. But ignorance is a choice. And choosing to use your privileges to patronise people whose lives are entirely beyond your experience and comprehension, is a choice. Choosing to use the powers vested in you by the constituencies you serve, to deprive those same constituents of light, heating, food and home security is a wilful and deliberate act. And it has to stop. Because I am one of millions of people who has lived in bitter, life-changing, cruel poverty in this country, and I will continue to tell my story with all of the uncomfortable details and horror and fury until that changes for the better.



And if your response to people in crisis is to simply lecture paternalistically about how you would be better at being poor than they would, I suggest you put your money where your flapping great mouth is, and give it all away. To women refuges, child support services, food banks, and every other organisation trying to patch up the screaming great holes in the social security safety nets that millions of children are falling through. You may well know the price of potatoes, but in order to tackle food poverty on a real level, not just a pontification for a jolly brouhaha on the internet, you need to understand the value of compassion as well.

[EIM]

They also don't really provide food for people who live cook eat alone, unless you want the same dish three meals in a row (I don't have a freezer). People don't know how to cook. People don't have time to cook. People don't realise that healthy food can be tasty. There's so many strands to it. Our food culture is just really bad in this country.

As ever, the easiest way to solve it would be to destroy capitalism, but people seem strangely coy about this.

As an aside, i don't exercise to lose weight. I exercise because it's good for my body and my head. I eat well to lose weight.

[EIM]

Convenience food is definitely that, 'convenient'. It's certainly not cheaper. As someone said above, people don't eat takeaways because they're poor, they eat them because they don't have the energy or time to spend half an hour cooking, let alone shopping for food. Perhaps one policy solution would be to force employers to give all employees two hours paid leave a week to at least do a weekly shop.

When I didn't have a pot to piss in, the priority was feeling full. I could get a frozen pizza for 99p. That would be my goto over a nice salad, or some grilled chicken and veg, which were expensive.

Daals and chickpea curries were also a staple. They cost pennies, as long as I had the spices in, which aren't cheap. Plus people don't know how to cook them and don't know that they're really fucking nice.

[EIM]

I'd massively tax junk food operations both on health grounds, and to pay to clean up the streets. Two enormous fucking pizzas for a tenner is bleak. McDonald's being in the eat out to help out deal is bleak. Two mile queues to get a KFC drive through is bleak. We're all a lot better than this, but there's this sort of driven need to consume piles and piles of shit caused by the insidious relationship between mega mc corporations and our society.

There's a huge brand spanking Ronald McDonald house at the hospital in town. It does great work for parents with sick kids, and is largely funded by charity events, despite the burger clown branding. Over the road, literally opposite, is the hospital's diabetes centre. It's housed in two portacabins. It's so stark.

[Erskine Bridges]

Following the indisputable success of global wars on poverty and terror, the UK government has opened hostilities on another mass noun.

i'm obese and have t2 diabetes, so i feel very much in the crossfire of this one. i'm just not yet certain whether the war has been declared on my tummy, or my food cupboard, or the sinister forces that saturate my brain with images of delectable ice cream. Am i a villain for guzzling too much gateau, or a victim in need of rescue from the caliphate of cake?

Either way, experience tells me that it's about to be an exciting time to be fat in public.

Most of this government's policy ideas, having served the twin purposes of suggesting that Something is Being Done and making lobby journalists feel useful, expire within days. But this war might just happen, as it is being sold as the prime minister's personal project in the wake of his encounter with coronavirus. Just as David Cameron used his son's death to revive the NHS and facilitate the lives of disabled people, so i have high hopes that Johnson's damascene moment will eliminate all shaming and discrimination against fat people. In any case, the main benefit as it is being presented is that getting us fatties out cycling and keeping us away from the biscuit aisle will save all the money for the NHS that leaving the European Union was supposed to.

Sniffing around in the OTF archives, i gather that issues around obesity used to be rather contentious. But we have mellowed in middle age, so i'm going to ask that anyone contributing to this thread understands that obesity has many causes and is often a symptom of mental and physical illnesses, of circumstances, and of access to resources. Fat people are aware that they are fat, because it is impossible to escape that message, and do not need to be reminded. Fat shaming is counter-productive. Not all fat people can or want to lose weight. Losing weight is really hard. The stigma of being fat sticks to some bodies more than others.

If you want to dispute any of that, please do so on a different thread.

Here, let's concentrate on a few things.

1: The politics. What should the government do? What measures are actually under consideration? Who are they really aimed at? Are new cycling lanes going to get new people onto bikes? What effect will banning television ads for sugary products have on a generation that doesn't watch tv? More broadly, this seems like a bid to blame certain elements of the public, rather than Tory party ideology, for draining resources from the newly resanctified NHS. It may also contribute to the tedious narrative of Johnson's transformation from jovial bullshitting bon vivant to responsible statesman daddy and slimline friend of science, in tune with the world as it takes an introspective, material, sombre turn. But can the Conservatives get away with using the state to 'nanny' in this way?

2: What is obesity? This is a tricky one. It's a public health issue, affecting many people and especially the poorest. But it's also portrayed as very much a private matter, of making 'responsible choices' and counting calories. This drive to make individuals “self-responsibilising”, in the jargon of neoliberal thinktankery, berates us for our bad habits and invites us to monitor our (and others') behaviour, while giving the state a pass on failing to achieve much of what it ought to do to help. It thrives on pointing the finger at deviants and threatening them with the removal of support. After all, why should the taxpayer fund your gastric bypass if you've been seen scoffing pizza in public? In these conditions is it impossible to promote “healthy” without further stigmatising “unhealthy”?

3: The personal level. What can each of us do? How can we talk about 'obesity'? How does it relate to eating? How do fat bodies, our own or others', make us feel? How do we show support and compassion for fat people who do and don't want to lose weight? Is it okay to compliment a friend who has lost weight? Should we worry about – and offer to help – a friend who has put on weight? What words should we use/avoid?

What does it feel like to be a fat person, or the partner or the parent of a fat person in this world? How frightening is the prospect? Does it ever feel like failure, and if so, how do we cope with that? To what extent are we set up to fail? Above all, how can we defend fat people from stigma and disapproval and whatever else the government and its media cheerleaders have in store for us?

These are not trick questions, and there are no 'wrong' answers within the limits set above.

(Sorry for the bombardment of questions, but it's a war out there.)

Great post Laverte, very thought provoking.

I’m reading The Obesity Code’ and it has some interesting things to say about the causes of obesity in the modern western world. I will try to summarise later but I have a traumatic day ahead of me.

[DCI Harry Batt]

I'd massively tax junk food operations both on health grounds, and to pay to clean up the streets.

Ever since they were first invented here, I've never understood how we let McDonald's get away with selling stuff that ends up all over the floor all over the place, and don't expect them to deal with it.