www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-21228122 Is it a good idea? Would it work? Is it "nanny state gone mad"? I must confess to suppressed despair recently, seeing many hugely obese people twenty years my junior struggling to waddle around the hospital. I told myself that I didn't know the background to their cases and shouldn't judge without that knowledge but I still couldn't shake off the thought of how many there were.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-21228122 Is it a good idea? Would it work? Is it "nanny state gone mad"? I must confess to suppressed despair recently, seeing many hugely obese people twenty years my junior struggling to waddle around the hospital. I told myself that I didn't know the background to their cases and shouldn't judge without that knowledge but I still couldn't shake off the thought of how many there were.

On the one hand, I'm not enamoured of the state attempting to micro-manage every aspect of daily life.

On the other, the rise of the fatty can't be denied and I'm inclined to believe the apocalyptic predictions of the strain it will put on the NHS if it continues unchecked. Given that, perhaps it's time for those people who seem unable to help themselves to be taken in hand?

I was struck by the hatchet job that Jane Moore did on Weight Watchers on TV last night - the basis of her objection to the company appeared to be that people lose weight whilst on the diet, then put it back on when they stop; I'm not comfortable with the abrogation of personal responsibility that view represents and we do seem to be drifting towards a situation where being fat is attributable to pretty much anything other than laziness, lack of self-respect or greed, which I'm sure is the case in many instances.

It's a quandary.

Why is placing a tax on sugar any more 'micro management' than taxing income.

Discouraging people from eating sugar and rotting their teeth is probably better than discouraging them from work.

[url=http://thevoluptuousmanifesto.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/marketing-at-its-brightest-breakfast.htmlI did a short piece last night on marketing and, in effect, why people can try to eat well, but still get hoodwinked by massive companies' marketing[/url.

Low-fat yogurts is another one: people see'low fat' and think those are healthy, but many such things are crammed full of sugar.

The recent discussion by the Fabians/Labour over placing a cap on the amount of sugar that could be included in breakfast cereals: I mean, I know that the majority of cereals, no matter how much they are portrayed as healthy, contain sugar (and salt). But it was still a shock to discover that some cereals – particularly those marketed specifically at children – contain [imore than[/i 30% sugar.

Loathe though I am to invoke any idea of 'morality', there is not a single, solitary shred of moral justification for that. And for all that we talk about personal responsibility, why not corporate responsibility too? If responsibility is good, then it should be good per se, large companies shouldn't be exempted from it.

And it is worth repeating that the sort of companies we're talking about employ people with Phds etc to do their marketing; to work out how to sell to people without Phds.

Someone with serious qualifications in psychology planning the layout of a supermarket in order to maximise the spend of anyone who walks through the doors. What about the responsibility there?

Ooh no, it's immoral not to provide "choice" and it's the consumer's fault if they choose to buy those products.

As I discovered last night, analysing the ingredients and marketing of a new product, you can dedicatedly read the list of ingredients – and still not immediately realise the complete picture.

In that case, it was a 'breakfast biscuit' that is very much marketed as healthy – everything shrieks that, from the packaging to the ingredients. Oh yes, one type of wheat, followed by five more grains – all listed individually – so that by the time you get to 'sugar', you think it's far lower down the ingredients list than actually third spot. And then, in sixth, there's dextrose as well. And that's without mentioning three different raising agents.

I'm sure it's all quite deliberate.

It's like breaking a code.

"No artificial sweeteners" usually means it's full of sugar.
"No added sugar" usually means it's artificially sweetened.

Talk about "accentuate the positive" ... it's all smoke and mirrors.

Absolutely.

As I mentioned, 'low fat' often also means, 'full of sugar to compensate for the loss of flavour caused by the loss of fat, but we all know that natural fats are the worst thing on planet Earth'.

Yesterday, I saw a Warburton's Wholemeal loaf (I am deliberately avoiding calling it bread) labelled "Low Fat".

What wholemeal bread would be other than Low Fat?

It's that deskilling, isn't it? People look at 'low fat' and have been trained to think that that's the apotheosis of healthy eating. That they don't realise that most proper, traditional UK breads would hardly ever have much (if any) fat in them It's indicative of what Raymond Blanc says about how we (and the US) have become divorced from our culinary heritage.

I saw a TV program some months ago about marketing cereals to people and in particular into the UK. There simply wasn't such a market for sweet cereals untiil just after WWII.

What the program pointed out was that the companies started adding sugar and removing fibre. That is the cereals were [iprocessed [/ias opposed top pre-war cereals which were mostly not. The addition of sugar was a deliberate attempt to appeal to children and Sugar Smacks introduced in the 1950's were actually 56% sugar.

It also mentioned that for a company, selling processed cereals is a real money spinning exercise because they basically turn what is virtually a useless commodity (the type of grain used) into a highly profitable end product.

There is a very good an d in depth article here that describes the history very well:

[urlhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/nov/23/food-book-extract-felicity-lawrence[/url

As it points out it is just amazing we eat the stuff given the manufacturing process takes all the goodness out (in order to make the product stable with good shelf life) and then they put "goodness" back in chemically.

Made me laugh when the man from Kellogs said if they took too much salt and sugar out of cornflakes the packet would taste better.



This is also true and is along the same lines as marketing such as "Have a break, have a Kit, Kat" or "Milky Way, the bar you can eat between meals". As a country we never used to eat between meals and so marketing was set the task of creating such a market. Cereals have gone down a similar path and the addition of sugar and how that came about as described in the article above is a fascinating insight into marketing.



I also saw another program very recently that was debating the obese issue and the right wing libertarian nut case on the show was saying "If poor people want to get fact that is their right". He had put forward the notion that the richer you are the thinner you are. That is not strictly true as obesity is at a level it can't just be confined to the less well off but that was his argument.

Anyway the point he was missing was that marketing [idoes work[/i. It isn't the simple choice thing as he wanted us to believe. If it was there would be no point paying anyone to market anything in the way they do. The opposing view was we need to stop people getting obese via legislation as it's going to cost us a fortune on the NHS. This cut no ice with our libertarian but then he probably thinks we should all pay for our own health care directly so if we "choose" to get fat we can pay for the treatment if there are consequences.

I am not sure a sugar tax is the right way to legislate because we simply need less sugar (and salt and other rubbish) in food. The traffic light system that got kicked out would IMO change the nations diet in a very short time but as you can see if you read the article I linked above cereal companies deliberately adopt a more confusing and misleading approach. Corporate responsibility? Yeah right. Cereal companies are the last place to look for that.

I'm not suggesting for a minute that the corporations producing and marketing this muck don't have some responsibility, but is there genuinely anyone left in the UK who doesn't know in general terms what foods are 'good' and what are 'bad?' The 'low fat' yoghurt scam for example, is hardly breaking news, nor is the sugary breakfast cereal. Equally, the message about taking a reasonable amount of exercise couldn't have been made clearer; you can't turn the telly on these days without seeing a programme about fat people, detailing either their faddy diets, their embarassing bodies or their attempts to lose weight - they've even been turned into reality TV shows, to target the lowest common denominator.

For all the power of advertising that apparently forces people to buy high fat, high sugar products, there is a similar weight of information out there to advocate eating those things in moderation and taking exercise; I'm not convinced that people have become so deskilled in the areas of health and nutrition that the power of advertising has mesmerised them into stuffing their faces so full of junk that they have become clinically obese and are unsure how it happened or what to do about it.

So why are manufacturers and supermarkets so anti clear concise labelling of products?

There is far more dubious marketing going on beyond "The 'low fat' yoghurt scam". In any case when you go to a supermarket you are presented with a range of food and unless you scrutinize every product in detail you can't tell if its good or bad for you (not talking about the obvious stuff here but things marketed as low fat, low salt etc that end up being high in sugar and so on). Even if you do this as the article I linked to pointed out, the fact cereal companies quote content as what % of your daily limit of sugar or whatever does not equate to giving you clear information as to how healthy a product is.



That is another triumph or marketing isn't it. It doesn't mean the marketing of unhealthy cereal (for example) is any less effective. Fat people in the gym or on diet plans equals good marketing from both ends of the spectrum.



It is not so clear cut. As I said even those aware of the issues find it hard to get the information to follow a healthy diet and like it or not there are a lot of thick people out there and marketing is also aimed at kids.

I suggest the number of deliberately obese people is actually a very small percentage of the overall total. Most people do not live a "Man v Food" lifestyle when they actually know better. It's quite difficult even if you are conscious of the issues to purchase low sugar, salt and fat products unless you go back to making everything yourself from base ingredients.

I would agree about the "deliberately" obese comment, most people I come across that are even just overweight are there because of habit and laziness. As I believe I have mentioned before on other threads (in the past) people are always telling me "you need to eat more", I don't, my weight is in the right range, my blood pressure etc. is as it should be, when I am working I largely "fly a desk", why is my RDA the same as someone who mixes mortar by hand and carries bricks/pushes wheel barrows?

It's time people took personal responsibility and stopped just listening to "expert advice".

I think I may have read this at the time, but thank you for linking to it here – I've ordered the book too.



More than once I've described Special K as being sugared cardboard.



It's been staggeringly successful. By 2005, the UK was consuming 51% of all the snacks/crisps sold in the whole of Europe (Blythman, [iBad Food Britain[/i).



Someone needs to tell Eric Pickles, Nicholas Soames, Anne Widdicombe, Ken Clarke ...

Anyway, gout was always a rich man's problem, just as it was the wealthy/rich who got fat – most certainly not the poor.



Same here on the tax – I'd say the same of a 'fat tax'. Although it's worth noting that we do need salt – we don't need sugar. Ever.





The new traffic light system is utterly dreadful. As just one example, it gives four green lights to a diet fizzy drink, but two amber to a fresh mackerel, FFS! It was almost as though they sat down and thought: 'What can we do to help Big Food?' Unbelievable!

You raise a number of question, and I'll try to give my opinions in something like a coherent fashion (no promises though).

IMO, diet/nutrition advice is still massively conflicted and massively contradictory.

It's interesting having this discussion here because I suspect that, because of the sports connection, a higher percentage of posters actually have some knowledge about nutrition (although even then there are disagreements, and it's also mostly sports-related nutrition).

From what I see and hear around me, there are still plenty of people who think that the 'cut fat, fill up with complex carbs' mantra is the one that works. That message was, in its way, incredibly, incredibly successful. That some of us now have a comprehension of how counterproductive it was (and why) is besides the point.

And there remains a widespread and close to abject terror of natural fats, while people happily spend more buying poison like marg and spray-on oil, because much (not all) mainstream medical advice has, in effect, been supported by Big Food. And they do that because they believe that they're being healthy. As only a very slight aside, I'm appalled to see the British Heart Foundation currently in bed with Unilever, the manufacturers of Flora. Indeed, if you look at their website, they have loads of 'corporate partners'. How can they claim to be independent, in that case? And indeed, the same issue has cropped up with ADD in the US – it has vast numbers of corporate, Big Food sponsors.

Anyway ... many people also eat tons of fruit, thinking it healthy, when because of sugars, you actually need to be very careful of just how much fruit you eat.

My second sort of general point would be that, the more stories people read about or see or hear about, say, how many minutes of X level of exercise they need to do every single day – I think people shut off.

As someone who has struggled with my weight since before the age of 12, it makes me ed off.

Most of the dialogue may not intend to, but it demonises people. It degrades them. It treats fat people (yeah, let's use the word) as stupid, lumpen, lazy, greedy – etc etc etc. The dialogue is simplistic in the extreme and is, in oh so many ways, a damned fine charter for bullies.

And indeed, I wonder how much people really wonder how on earth our grandparents etc ate bread and dripping and we didn't have an obesity crisis . But then – see the French Paradox (which isn't really a paradox

And I also see people who are far, far from chavvy (for want of a better phrase), who struggle with their weight, and dear Christ ... I've lost track of the number of women I have known and encountered, who pretty much put off life, waiting for the one diet that will solve it all.

I'm damned lucky – and relatively rare – in that I broke that cycle myself, with the help of friends. But seeing it in other women since is really quite heart rending. And that the simplistic rhetoric doesn't – in effect – allow for them (or for me, a decade ago) makes me both angry, but sometimes makes me weep.

The simplified rhetoric of 'oh, you're just lazy, lacking in discipline, greedy' etc – all that simplistic bunk; I doubt any who come out with it have a clue about the damage it does. And I'm talking about deep, deep emotional and mental damage. Really, really life-limiting. And the sheer suggestion that one person can look at another and know, with certainty, their life – and judge accordingly.

It's effing obscene.

But then again. every generation needs a new scapegoat, eh?

I think I've at least touched on a lot of what you said earlier in that post in my response to Bren.

On this, however, I'd say that, on a very personal level, I was brought up to listen to what certain authority figures in society told me. Unquestioningly.

And one of those figures was doctors.

So when a doctor told me that, because I could never get below 9st (although close to athletically fit at the time) I should diet to 800kcals per day, I did so.

I really wish I'd known what I knew now. But I doubt that the information that I am now reading was actually around then. And to be fair, doctors themselves have been misled by a range of sources – including Big Pharm.

It can take a very long time to get over that.

And it's not just on weight issues. I read Ben Goldacre's [iBad Pharma[/i last year and, to be honest, I'd recommend it to everyone as a form of vital self-education. But if you go to a doctor, it doesn't seem radical to expect them to deal with your situation on the basis of science/medicine – and not big business. But that is not the reality.

But surely it's not wrong to suggest that, in a good society, we should be able to do that? We shouldn't have to spend swathes of our lives becoming conversant with every subject where we might have to be involved in a decision, on the basis that we can trust nobody?

That seems, to me, to be a pretty ty situation, where nobody can be trusted to be independent, informed and not simply interested in their own bank balance.

Completely OT but I couldn't resist: Ben Goldacre's mum



In case anyone is wondering, she's Noosha Fox (real name Susan Traynor) from 70s band Fox

Still wearing the same hat too by the look of it.

I think the thing that needs to be addressed more is the issue with carbs, most people know about controlling their calories, but not many seem to know about where they're getting those calories from. Plenty of people will go for a pasta salad from Tesco/Sainsbury's/wherever if they're getting lunch on the go, not realising they're full of carbs, and salt too.

Another issue with fatties is the exercise they're doing. I go to gym 3 or 4 times a week, 5 or 6 when I'm off college, and see plenty of people walking on treadmills, slowly, or on a bike on resistance level 1. Yeah it's better than nothing but you have to think how do they not see that they could be doing a lot more? Most of them barely work up a sweat.

I think on the marketing side of things, it's all just balls really, and most people see that. People just still go for foods that are cheap, easy, and/or what they're used to.

an important word there, college, maybe some of the "fatties" (as you so generously call them) actually work for a living and have families at home and can only manage 1 or 2 times a week. Why not come back in 30 years and tell us how your work/life balance is going?



Yes, because if you're overweight the best thing to do is pound on a treadmill and stress your already overworked joints a bit more, [imaybe[/i you have the advantage of not being a "fatty", and since when did everyone sweat the same amount, I used to teach an hour of body pump/attack and not sweat much at all, I have a friend who sweats profuseley when he eats a hot curry, is that process making him fit?

Now, I am not saying you are wrong that [isome[/i people think that just going to the gym (as in even just attending) is going to make a difference, but it's not as simple as you appear to suggest. It's a bit like friends I have who "play golf" and whenever I go with them (which is rare) they will spend more time in the club house/bar than they do on the course, they're crap at golf, but great at socialising.

We need to be careful here.
Food labelling shows the fat and carb content [uby weight[/u, even though fat contains approximately double the calories of carbs.
It is very easy to read an ingredients list and forget that, although the product contains 10g of carbs and only 6g of fat, the fat is actually providing more calories than the carbs.

WHO recommendations about carb and fat intake are couched in terms of percentage of calories NOT by percentage of weight, so why are our ingredients lists not listed in the same way?

I agree with your earlier comment about traffic light labelling, it is actually worse than useless as it doesn't give you any idea of your total intake of anything ... or of your total balance in your diet.

People could always take responsibility and read the "calories per x" on the packaging?

Of course they could (If they can understand the labelling) but it doesn't seem to be working does it?