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"Obesity likened to climate change"
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
Ignoring the patronising bleats of the likes of Chico, Mika and Dove for a minute...
"The public health threat posed by obesity in the UK is a "potential crisis on the scale of climate change", the health secretary has warned"
"Alan Johnson said the magnitude of the problem was becoming clear for the first time and "it is in everybody's interest to turn things round". "
Source: Beep beep
What do you think should/can be done? I don't really think proposals of more efforts into healthy eating/exercise will have a huge profound effect as people generally don't like being told what's good for them by the government, but I don't think it's a matter that should be ignored either.
I think the mixed messages that come from advertising, marketing and the media certainly don't help but as long as they have a profit to make, and are effective in selling a quick fix that people want, it's not likely to change.
"The public health threat posed by obesity in the UK is a "potential crisis on the scale of climate change", the health secretary has warned"
"Alan Johnson said the magnitude of the problem was becoming clear for the first time and "it is in everybody's interest to turn things round". "
Source: Beep beep
Professor Klim McPherson, of Oxford University, and Tim Marsh, of the National Heart Foundation, predict that within 15 years 86% of men will be overweight - but not necessarily obese - and within 20 years, 70% of women.
What do you think should/can be done? I don't really think proposals of more efforts into healthy eating/exercise will have a huge profound effect as people generally don't like being told what's good for them by the government, but I don't think it's a matter that should be ignored either.
I think the mixed messages that come from advertising, marketing and the media certainly don't help but as long as they have a profit to make, and are effective in selling a quick fix that people want, it's not likely to change.
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Comments
Banning Dairylea would be a start as well.
Or making good food cheap?
Teaching better cookery in schools - teach it as nutrition and then how to make good meals. If this was just brought in quietly, rather than being a big media issue/govt propaganda then it might work better as people wouldn't feel like they were being patronised.
You cant do that! Kids will do anything for a Dairylea
Not sure. Things tend to change as certain ingredients come into vogue (look at the impact Omega 3s have had) but as for restricting ingredients, I don't know.
I'd like to see that happening anyway
Yeah. I also think it would help if education (not just in schools) focused on why good food is good as opposed to just saying it's good, and nothing else i.e. if I had been told complex carbs would help me to stop slumping at 11am, and prevent me from craving sugary carbs for a sweet fix, it would have motivated me to change my eating habits earlier than I did.
I'd happily stick products like this in the skip because the people pictured got to look like that by just pressing a button :rolleyes:
Just a note, it's interesting how Mika doesn't get slated for 'promoting obesity', yet if there was a song about 'skinny' girls he would be blamed for anorexia.
I think that in school kids need to be taught how to make decent meals. In my lessons we only did cakes and quick stuff because we only had an hour to do it all in (including setting up and cleaning up). And I think kids should get a choice in what they do for P.E, maybe give them a choice of different kinds like hockey, gym work, running etc because different people like different sports, so if they got the chance to enjoy it then they'll get more out of it. But it is difficult to cram in everything that kids are expected to learn now without extending the school day.
It's not ok to say you like skinny women because otherwise you're glorifying eating disorders, because all women who are smaller than an 8 have EDs, of course. Real Men Love Curves (because what an individual man such as Mika likes is all that matters - he has no way to gain from this at all
It's a good point what you say about school. I don't think it would be a bad idea to have a revamped home ec where you learn things like money management, paying bills, working out a budget, healthy eating, critically looking at marketing, and debates around issues that affect the young, and the transition into adulthood.
Perhaps you should watch this instead.
What we're told isn't what men like, it's what the media/fashion/other women like. So i don't see how 'oh but men like curves' is a consolation. Plus most of the women in that video are wearing corsets, bit of a contradiction? And smaller women have curves, but it seems now that 'curves' is becoming a kind word for 'fat' (I hate to sound harsh!).
Trouble with the school thing though, if life skills were taught in schools then you'd have the argument that we're making kids grow up too fast. Maybe start cooking in year 7 then in year 9 start bringing in life skills? It's a tough one.
That was my point. When I dropped 2 dress sizes, a couple of people commented in my family, "But I'm sure ***** [my boyfriend] prefers you with a curvier figure." The whole point is, my body size and shape shouldn't be based on what my partner likes. Sure, I wouldn't want him to find me unattractive, but he has dated women of all different shapes and sizes, so it's a non-issue, but the fact that a lot of sources say stuff like, "Real men like curves," and that people like Mika and Chico can say stuff like, "It's ok bigger girls, we love you (and we can make a lot of money from jumping on the skinny-bashing bandwagon)!" is very patronising.
It's ok, at least you're honest. 10 years ago the term for it was 'bubbly'. I never knew a thin girl who was described as bubbly.
I don't think it's that tough tbh. These are important life skills that people need to have, there's nothing wrong with introducing it gradually at a pace that's appropriate for that age group. As an example, there's a woman who posts on another forum. She's in her 30s. Her and her partner earn between them over 90k. She's in severe debt. But she will put money towards her holidays and a pair of Jimmy Choos before her debt, then complains she has nothing to live on when the credit card bills come in. She also gets very defensive and refuses to acknowledge a lot of the problem comes down to her own decision making.
If education can at least help young people digest all the stuff about taking out loans, credit cards, what goes into their food, cooking with limited time etc, then it can help them to filter out all the crap that they're fed in later life.
We have a society where we all sit down and drive to our work, and then we sit down all day at our desk, and quite often eat lunch at our desk too. Of course people are going to put on weight.
People eat less, and more healthily, than they did in the 1950s, don't forget.
That said, I don't think schools can be trusted to teach the correct things. PE is an absolute joke- rather than encourage people, like me, who aren't blessed with prodigious skill with a football, to do things for fun, PE is all about putting everyone bar David Beckham off physical exercise for life. And home ec, where taught, is not about how to cook meat and three veg and get it all ready at the same time, it's all about how to make a bacon sandwich for a glucose-intolerant vegan.
Incidentally, cricket is way too complicated for schools (not quick cricket mind). And unless everyone is half decent, everyone spends the entire lesson hanging around. You get six balls at you, which you don't hit because no-one can bowl properly, then everyone moves round one place. You're lucky to get two goes in each role, and only three of the positions ever actually do anything.
And orienteering should be banned.
We had to make a sandwich in food tech. I'll say no more.
Do you have a link to a source? I'd quite like to read about that.
people are going to kill themselves anyway
I do agree with you that people want something for nothing, and unfortunately, if you have lived a sedentary lifestyle while eating crap all your life, it'll take a long time to start noticing changes in body shape.
That's not to say you don't notice any benefits sooner. Within a few workouts, people start to feel that they have more energy, and the endorphin rush comes quickly too - but those changes aren't visual, and I guess a lot of people want to see the results more than anything else.
when im at my job i lose weight, when im on holiday from it i put on weight despite fact my eating hardly changes
What really is the point of orienteering? We used to do it all the time in school and I never really bothered with it because I saw no point in it and found it really boring.
We never did that. The closest we got to making healthy food was making a smoothie. Other than that, we were taught how to make pizza, cake and other unhealthy food.
We supposedly have this in Year 11, but it wa either this or that; not you can pick from this, this adn this. I also noticed that they tried to force people who were injured (and therefore didn't bring their kit) to do PE.:rolleyes: Well, they tried to, but no-one actually bothered bringing their kit and nothing was said or done.
erm it's called using a map, it's a very handy skill
I suspect its not a one or the other for people's eating habits improving. I suspect less people eat butter or drink full strength milk (and eat margarine, drink red top instead). At the same time I suspect that chocalate and crisps are less of a treat that they used to be in the 50's and more an everyday part of people's diet.
That said there's no doubt that we work in less physical demanding jobs and use cars and transport much more than we used to.
even if calorie intake has gone, would you not think that daily exercise from a lack of manual labour has caused it more?
simple exercises may not do much in toning but in the long run they massively increase your calorie usage
average distance walked by a child per year in this country since the 80s http://www.statistics.gov.uk/STATBASE/ssdataset.asp?vlnk=3670
I don't doubt it at all, I was just internally thinking about something else.
I was shit at netball. I remember one day the head sadist of PE teachers wanted 3 people to demonstrate a move. So she picked me (she and I didn't really get on), and 2 overweight girls in my yeargroup. When it went tits up as predicted, she then picked the captain of the netball team, and 2 other girls who were on the first team. They of course carried out the move flawlessly, and that afternoon I wished I could have pushed that teacher out into moving traffic.