There is a very good article in the October edition of the McKinsey Quarterly entitled
Everyone should read this article as it contains a lot of shocking information. They show quite clearly, for example, the correlation between age, obesity and health care costs: the older and fatter you are the more you will pay for your health care. And before anyone from the UK or Canada or France says, I don’t pay for my health care, let me tell you that you do. It’s called opportunity cost and includes loss of earnings, loss of opportunities, loss of life. These costs also include the costs of suffering from a poorer quality of life: those obese people who struggle to climb stairs, the obese people who need to be wheeled round because they can no longer walk. In values, the articles reveals that in the UK we spent £4 billion in 2007 on obesity related medical costs and that all obesity related costs in the US amounted to $450 billion a year.
The article includes this:
The obesity pandemic also appears to have made it psychologically easier for people to accept their own increasing weight. Studies have shown that a person’s chances of becoming obese increase by 57% if he or she has a friend who has recently become obese.
I am sure you have seen those balloons walking down the street and realised that there are more and more of them. Clothing shops now sell clothes for the larger body because it is more acceptable for them to exist. It’s not that long ago that obesity was rare so ordinary clothes shops didn’t stock anything for them.
I was unaware of the connection between fat friends; but now that I’ve read it, I can see the truth in that. Look around and see not just one but two, three many obese people socialising.
In some countries, Japan is cited in the article, obesity is very rare. I am currently living and working in Central Asia and now that I have thought about it I cannot remember seeing very many local obese peoples. Whilst 46% of Americans over 16 years of age have a body mass index of 30 or more, only 2% of Japanese people are so afflicted.
The article allows readers to leave a comment on it and here is what I just submitted:
I disagree that government has anything other than a supportive role to play here. We are fat because we eat far too much and we are eating more and more of the wrong foods. That very young children are obese is a crime and everyone who says parenting skills are vital in this debate has my support.
However, let me address something that has only indirectly been addressed. As we have become wealthier over the last 3 or 4 decades, the desire to eat out has increased. We have been allowed to convince ourselves that we are too busy to cook good food.
Since the advent of television "celebrity" chefs, restaurant food, aka fine dining, has become a death trap. Just watch any television chef, with the exception of Oriental chefs; and you will see mountains of butter, gallons of high fat cream and kilogrammes of salt used as main or significant ingredients.
As we watch these chefs we learn to emulate them and start to prepare their dreadful food and feel proud when the salt and fat generate praise for the tasty food we have now created.
It is patently obvious to anyone who sees an obese person sweating and breathing heavily as a result of even the simplest activity that something is wrong with them. Obese people die younger and have more health problems: this article shows that age and obesity line the pockets of those working in the health sector rather than anyone else.
Where did it all go wrong, then? Remember the book Fat is a Feminist Issue? Remember Germaine Greer? There you have two good reasons why obesity has increased, particularly among women. The 70s saw the fight by women who did not look like models to say, "I don't need to look like a model: I am who I am." They justified their obesity on feminist grounds. They were and they are wrong to think like that.
Finally, allowing a child to eat so much that it is 10 kg or 20 kg or even 30 kg or more overweight is condemning that child to a life of ridicule and ill health. The pension crisis is bad enough without adding the burdens of obesity.
Stay thin people!
Duncan
