One of the reasons that I always hated aerobics was because I could never work up a sweat that way. In other words, it never felt as though it was doing anything. Well, that and it being boring. Same reason I loved playing football as a child, but hated getting sent around to the girls' playground to play skipping or other such nonsense, so usually ended up in the small mixed-gender playground where I'd play marbles with the boys. Competitively. I had some corking dobbers.

When I was at college (well, polytechnic) I used to be in the gym regularly or be playing badminton or table tennis most nights.

Badminton I loved. What I lacked in grace on a court I made up for in sheer bloody-minded competitiveness. But then I'm almost absurdly competitive – even with myself.

I used to enjoy the gym – or at least, I used to enjoy the gym I went to regularly in Lancaster (after work, three or four nights a week when I wasn't in rehearsals). It was a real bodybuilding gym – absolutely none of that having-to-wear-the-right-gear stuff. People would spot for each other readily, swap tips and just generally behave with some respect for what they were doing.

Never did find a gym like that down here; always found them slightly intimidatory and posy, plus it's actually irritating being patronised by some child who looks at me and thus assumes that I haven't a clue how to to handle any weights machines.

When I first moved down, in 1988, I was living with my parents in Reading and commuting into London every day for work. Which is exactly the sort of thing that you've mentioned here. I actually invested in some weights (proper ones – not those pink rubber-coated jobs) and tried my damnedest to keep it up, but I had no more energy for that than I did for my (at the time) non-existant social life.

From an entirely personal perspective, I think that what didn't help me was the realisation of just how much work and drastic dieting it took just to stay a pound or so above the level the doctor insisted I should be below (if that makes any sense). And that goes back to bad advice and my own lack of understanding of what I was doing to myself, based on the extremely simplistic, and very much mainstream, diet advice of the era.

And later, working in a stressful situation, where I'd finish work at 8pm or later, sometimes at a point of nearly tearing my hair out (if the entire computer system had crashed just minutes before deadline, for instance), also mitigated against the gym etc. I still used to swim in the mornings at that stage, but that wasn't helped when they closed the baths.

And thanks for your comment about the use of "fatties" too. I'm not 'offended' by it, but it does reek of 'look at me and how perfect I am'. Which sort of goes back to what I was saying about patronising people in gyms.

As we've touched on, I think ingredients lists are abysmal – and Big Graeme also asked why manufacturers seem so reluctant to make packaging clear.

As I mentioned earlier, I was looking at just one ingredients list for a single product the other day – a 'breakfast biscuit' that is clearly being marketed as healthy.

They're full of "creamy live yogurt" according to the packets, which suggests both luxury and something completely natural and healthy, on the basis that yogurt is viewed as a generally healthy product, while "creamy" suggests luxury.

A pack contains two biscuits. Each biscuit contains 119 kcals, which is "6% GDA" (guideline daily amounts) the packet proclaims. So if you're watching the old cals, that sounds pretty darned good.

The biscuits are "made with 5 wholegrains" – now we all know that "wholegrains" are nutritional nirvana, so what could be better?

And according to the packet, they are "rich in cereals" with "no colours or preservatives:; they're "made with a blend of 5 wholegrains", they'e a "source of fibre", a "source of calcium and vitamin E", and you can "enjoy as part of a balanced breakfast" ( the "balanced breakfast" incidentally, is a latte and a banana. Not any old coffee, note, but a latte. So very much one you'll buy from a chain).

The list of ingredients is a follows (the commas in the percentage figures are those of Nabisco/Kraft).

"Ingredients: wheat flour 31,4%, wholegrain cereals 23,9% (wholegrain wheat flour, oat flakes, wholegrain barley flour, wholegrain rye flour, wholegrain spelt flour), sugar, vegetable oil, wheat starch, dextrose, yogurt powder 3,0%, whey powder, raising agents (sodium hydrogen carbonate, disodium diphosphate, ammonium hydrogen carbonate), vitamins and minerals mixture (vitamin B1, vitamin E, vitamin B3, iron, magnesium, calcium), flavouring, skimmed milk powder, emulsifier (soya lecithin), salt, acidity regulator (citric acid)."

This is sneaky. By listing all the grains individually, it could be read as that being five ingredients before sugar. But sugar is the third largest ingredient. And then, in sixth, is dextrose. Or bloody corn syrup, a favourite of food processors and something that is increasingly believed to be one of the biggest single problems.

And there's loads of other stuff in there that most of us will never have heard of. Someone told me that sodium hydrogen carbonate is baking soda – well why not list it in a form that more people will readily understand it? And if that's there as a raising agent, why are two others, with equally chemical names, needed too?

Thankyou, on some things (quite a few as we know) we agree.




Indeed, when I was working 9-5 roughly next door to the gym I was in there most nights, but when it became a 45 minute journey to get there (or even longer once I worked in Birmingham and lived in Mansfield) it became more of a chore than a pleasure, a chore I was paying over £30 a month to use very infrequently.



That's why I packed in teaching (fitness classes), as soon as the big chains got hold of the industry it became a fashion parade rather than an actual fitness industry, now Nuffied, Virgin and DW employ drones, they aren't fitness instructors (many aren't even qualified). I recetly looked at what it takes to become a "Personal Trainer", I did more in my 'A' level Sport Sceince and Exercise To Music study, and that was to teach aerobics in the late 90's.




In fairness to the cal train, I'd may have used the same language at his time in life, now I know many "fatties" who are actually medically overweight (I hate the phrase "clinically obese", if you've got an eating disorder they don't call you "clinically thin"icon_wink.gif, as far as I am concerned the most important health anyone can have is mental, and if having a few chunks of chocolate and a glass of wine helps with that after a difficult day then "crack on" I say, everything in moderation.

Weight/Health/Fitness and Diet are all very personal things, myself I have a very difficult relationship woth food, I have been spoilt, which means I rarely find anyone else cooks to my "standard", it's not that it isn't good, it isn't "how I would have done it", drives my o/h crazy.

[iback on topic[/i
Wouldn't, without being rude, a sugar tax effectively be a "tax on the poorest"?

The supposed benefits of live yoghurt are that it adds to the gut flora ... how a creamy live yoghurt remains alive after being powdered, mixed and baked is beyond me.

Also, if that list is unedited cut-and-paste (which I trust it is), the percentages are only given for the perceived "healthy" ingredients, no mention of percentage for sugar.

That supposedly healthy breakfast biscuit's ingredients includes flour and cereals amounting to 55.3%.
I have just googled another product (not advertised as a heathy breakfast biscuit) and it contains 70% flour and cereals ...

[iWheat Flour (54%), Vegetable Oil, Wholemeal (16%), Sugar, Cultured Skimmed Milk, Partially Inverted Sugar Syrup, Raising Agents (Sodium Bicarbonate, Tartaric Acid, Malic Acid), Salt.[/i

It's the list for McVities Digestives.

Hang on, you are getting into the figures and percentages and missing the big picture, when did biscuits for breakfast become OK?

Biscuits? What's wrong with biscuits, like, ever? A glass of cold milk with milk choccy digestives from out the fridge, or malted milks as an alternative, you could live on that

Tea is what you have with a biscuit, you subversive.
Mid-morning or mid-afternoon.

I wouldn't be surprised if you subscribe to that other American perversion, Oreos, as well.

Nothing at all, I (over)indulge in them myself, but they are not and should never be breakfast.

Surprised no-one has mentioned Nestlé's latest marketing gimmick, hot on the heels of the recent breakfast cereal sugar publicity:

[url=http://www.battleofthebreakfasts.co.uk/Home/CompareBattle of the Breakfasts[/url

As I suspected when I first saw the crap TV advert, the fat/saturated fat, salt and calorific content of most non-Nestlé offerings such as poached eggs on toast appear to be heftily inflated and look pretty off-putting to the uneducated when placed alongside their cereals, which of course are shown as low in fat/sat fat, salt and calories, although being much higher in sugar. But the key point is that at a glance there are far more lower numbers alongside the Nestlé cereals.

Clever stuff, clearly banking on the public's obsession with 'low-fat' food, a lack of intense scrutiny and perhaps even lack of food education.

As cookies are biscuits they should only be consumed with milk. They tend to crumble too easily when dipped in tea. HTH.

Cookies? COOKIES? Another Americanism, I despair.

Dunking a biscuit in tea does require a certain degree of skill, which I guess is why children and the unskilled dunk in milk.

Personally, I don't see the point in baking a biscuit to a perfect degree of crunchiness only to dip it in a liquid, however briefly and in whatever liquid.
It improves neither the biscuit nor the liquid.

I enjoyed a couple of outstanding Cadbury Chocolate Chunk Cookies with a nice brew only minutes ago. No crumbling was experienced and they stood up to the brew far better than many biscuits.

And I'd challenge you to find a Millie's Cookie that crumbles. They tend to stick together in with a strange gooey, sugary, waxy consistency.

I'm actually not really a cookie eater, a good biscuit is much nicer, not that there's often any difference though 'cookies' tend to be bigger. In fact I don't have either all that often.

Lots of excuses are made about gyms - cost, distance travelled, lycra-fascists, poorly trained staff etc etc.

It strikes me as odd that we've become so obsessed with 'the gym' as a destination; is there anything else that we pay to do, that immediately becomes so opressive and burdensome? There's a massive, free gym right outside all our doors that requires nothing more than a pair of cheap trainers and a modest amount of willpower to use - it has no joining fee, no minimum term and can be used in a way that exactly suits our individual requirements. And yet hoardes of people drive home from work, get changed into clothing they don't feel comfortable in, then drive to a gym to partake in activities they find difficult, dull and costly.

I'm afraid that for all this fancy talk of food labelling, psychological hang-ups and perceived barriers, a large contributory factor towards the dreadful state of the nation's health is laziness and a desire for quick fixes; it's acually very easy to eat a balanced diet, to prepare your own food and to take a reasonable amount of exercise every week - lots of people choose not to however, then complain about the inevitable consequences. I do agree that the food, diet and exercise industries have marketed us into a state of compliance, but it is possible to choose a different way - it just takes a bit of effort to get started.

The fact that we need a sugar tax at all is, like so many of the country's current ills, down to plitical correctness. It is frowned upon to laugh and people and call them "fatso" or similar. If we had more of that we'd have less need for a sugar tax.

Yeah you're right.
Now feck off thicko.

Yeah, if we weren't polite to other people, we'd all be much better off in every way possible.

Indeed. And it's one of the sad things about the internet that while that is absolutely the case, somehow the online world (or at least this bit of it) seems to emphasise the differences. Which is most certainly not the whole story. And I'm every bit as guilty as anyone else.



A number of fair/good points here. I'd never thought about the "clinically thin", but absolutely.



I did for so many years. And breaking past that negativity has been one of the best things that's happened to me. That may sound to people like a massively OTT comment, but tb remembers me breaking down in tears when he was cooking a stew and I hadn't had chance to weight all the ingredients so as to work out the nutritional information for my diet diary. And weighing yourself twice a day – that's a tyranny. And it's easy to say that it's self-inflicted, but the pressures on people to be some idealised size, shape etc is enormous. And not least because, if you're not, you get easily characterised as lazy, greedy, slovenly ... all that sort of stuff.

I would go as far as to say it's mentally and intellectually crippling in large way. And I know it's just me. I've seen someone in a very, very similar situation since I got over it. It was actually very difficult to see – perhaps not least because it was a sort of mirror. But it is life limiting, and perhaps many people don't realise just how many forms it can take – as with what you've described here, for instance.



I think it would, yes. As I mentioned earlier, I'm not in favour of such a tax – or a fat tax either. I don't think that's remotely the way forward.

The trouble is it's a much more complex issue than I think many people realise – or even want to consider. And equally, I don't think there's a sort of magic bullet.

A lot of people [ithink[/i they are eating a good diet and can be taking exercise only to find they aren't as healthy as they thought. I am a good example.

I have gone to the gym for years (three times a week and I don't mess about either), we eat fresh veg with meals and have been concious of the five-a-day idea every since it came out.

When I was a the gym one day there was a sign up saying free NHS "Well Man" health check. So I signed up fully expecting a pat on the back! Was quite shocked when I was told my BMI was too high so I was technically overweight (I think it was 26.4, can't remember) and that while my waist measurement and cholesterol were Ok my blood pressure was a tad high. The chap doing the check up asked about what sort of food I ate trying to find out where the excess weight may have come from. I mentioned crisps and cheese - he gave me a good idea of just how much fat was in a bag of crisps.

I was hauled in by the GP over the blood pressure and had a blood test only to find the more sophisticated cholesterol test they gave me which measured two types (as opposed to averaging them out) showed I was way too high in one of them.

No I didn't look fat and I didn't eat junk food for my meals but I was partial to my crisps, cheese and the odd bar of chocolate at weekends along with quite a bit of coffee being drunk and I liked my red wine as well but you see as far as I was concerned by diet was healthy because of the good food had at main meal times.

I cut the crisps and cheese out completely (to reduce fat intake and salt which is not good for the blood pressure), reduced the caffine intake (also puts the old BP up) and reduced the alcohol intake (much less sugar and also better for the BP) and I rarely eat chocolate these days. Net result was a BMI under 25, a drastic drop in cholesterol levels and BP back to normal. And it didn't take that long either but the thing is beforehand [uI thought I was absolutely fine![/u

Now I am sure if I can be like that there are plenty of people out there who are blissfully unaware that despite the morning jog, the fruit salad for breakfast and what not that they are actually ruining it all because of the odd bad habit they think is pretty innocent. It really doesn't take much to throw you off balance and that is I am sure where the marketing plays a part. M&S Dine in for Two? Loads of calories in these yet it's M&S so its got to be "good" food eh?! That sort of thing.

So as to it being possible to chose a different way, you can but first you need to be informed enough to do it so I really don't see any excuse for not having a really simple food labelling scheme. Next if they just put less of the rubbish in the food in the first place those who are just not bright enough to work it all out won't get hooked on the over-salted, too sugary rubbish.

And finally some people really do struggle to have a healthy lifestyle for all sorts of reasons ranging from physical problems that make exercise difficult or other concerns such as having to do two jobs to make ends meet so they have little time, or looking after disabled children and so on. So I think its an over simplification to say "it is possible to choose a different way - it just takes a bit of effort to get started".

Maybe it's time for Gove to do something useful for once and reintroduce Domestic Science to the curriculum?

It's interesting that 'domestic science' was considered to be such a lowly subject – at least in the traditional sense. I do wonder how many mothers were like mine, in withdrawing their children from classes. My mother was convinced it was a waste of time and money. An in terms of cooking skills, I think she somehow assumed that one would develop them when one needed them. You didn't have to be taught anything.

Reading [iBad Food Britain[/i by Joanna Blythman, she highlights how domestic science was changed from actually cookery lessons to 'food tech', whereby pupils learnt, for instance, how big food manufacturers design and develop new products. Which, of course, is the antithesis of what is needed. I gather things are improving and going back to the actual cookery classes.

But I do think my mother's attitude also reflects the wider problem of a society where food is not really valued as much beyond fuel.

But then other doctors would point out that the entire cholesterol issue has been vastly over done and that saturated fat in diet is not related to heart disease – and even that low cholesterol, certainly after 50, is actually unhealthy.

:1muho26g

Now you've really given me a soap box to stand on!

Too many people, in fact, almost everyone I meet, views a meal as just "something you do", I often find people saying to me at 12, my travelling companions seemed to enjoy quantity over quality.

Food is something we really need to reconnect with, on the few occasions I have looked after my niece the one thing she wants to do is cook, nothing complex, but she is interested, once she gets to "big school" that interest will not be nurtured or supported.

She will, however, be taught that "if John has a ladder that is 2m tall and he places it against a wall at an angle of x degrees from the ground, the angle at the top will be y", based on some ancient latin/greek (excuse my ignorance, but I discarded this irrelevant knowledge some time go) theory. Which will serve her 4/5th of f'k all in adult life.

Being overweight is, in the overwhelming majority of cases, a self-inflicted condition. There are those people who have a medical/glandular problem, but there are infinitely more who do not.

I personally know now, and have worked with in the past, a pretty fair number of overweight people. I have yet to meet one who was not overweight because of over eating and drinking, and/or taking too little physical activity (which doesn't necessarily include formal exercise).

I agree that food packaging is misleading and that organisations like weight watchers are just awful, but they're far from the primary source of the so-called 'obesity epidemic'.

By the way, if anyone would like a humorous (and not entirely inaccurate) view on this subject, put 'Tim Minchin Fat Kids' into youtube.

Explain....(please)?