[NB_ide]

(Original post by Dfurness)
Hey all,

This is a question I'm thinking about as part of a new project, PRISM. We're trying to come up with practical solutions to social issues, so I thought I'd post here to get some opinions.

Given that 26% of the adult population is obese, and in 2015 obesity and its related diseases will cost the NHS £49 Billion, how can we tackle obesity rates, either through governmental or non-governmental means?

Personally, I think it has to be through legislation and education. We should make it a legal requirement for all food to carry the 'traffic-light' system, to make nutritional information easier to understand. But I'm interested in what you think?

http://prism-debate.blogspot.co.uk/


So far we've got:
- Stop fast food companies from sponsoring sporting events
- Ending fast food monopolies
- Forcing exercise
- Turning fat people into flotation devices on the Thames
- Education for both young people and adults
- The State shouldn't intervene, and should allow people to get fat

We need to look to the past, not the future. This is a modern disease, a disease of modern lifestyles and of modern industrial/commercial origins. Once again, we're trying to dig ourselves out of a hole by developing ever-more complex ways of eating, ever-more complex processed foods and education about food that was never needed previously, and so on.

So long as food is plentiful, aggressively marketed, varied and wide-ranging, cheap and instantly available, and so long as people don't have to (and therefore will not) move or lift a finger to travel and do their job, people will remain unhealthy and over-weight. Classical "junk food" isn't the culprit, imo - nearly all food today is basically junk food. 99% of what's on sale in the supermarket didn't even exist in the recent past, even supposedly healthy foods. We're all ****ed, being sedentary and eating nice food is just far too tempting to resist, no matter what.

[Revilo1]

I'm slightly alarmed by the number of people posting here with the opinion "**** 'em". Do you really think we should just give up so easily, before the government has actually bothered to do anything?

As for what to do, I think forcing restaurants/shops to sell a certain percentage of healthy food would certainly help, as well as offering subsides to keep the price of fruit and veg down. And as many others have said - education. If you can get children to realise the problems with obesity early, and the ways to avoid it, then chances are fewer of them will become obese.

[cl_steele]

would it be bad to suggest investing in giant hamster wheels and forcing people to run in them? we solve the obesity crisis and the energy crisis ... its win win!

[ufo2012]

The Junk Food Jab is the answer

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/ar...ight-gain.html

then we can just eat all the crap that we like and not worry about it

[ufo2012]

(Original post by tashazzz)
I've just come back from Spain and the difference between their way of life and the way people live in the UK is unreal. Only a very small minority of the people are overweight and I don't think I seen an obese Spanish person the entire time I was there. I don't think there is a lot that can be done on a nationwide basis to stop the problem from getting worse that wouldn't seriously affect the economy or outrage the people. Simply banning adverts won't do a lot to stop people who are already aware of what's available to them, especially those who have become addicted to junk food - which seems to be quite a large percentage of the population. Either VERY harsh regulations are introduced which is very unrealistic and won't happen or it's just going to get worse. People who don't want to change aren't going to unless they're forced.

Different structure of populace though.

In Britain the trend over the years seems to have been send the majority of the jobs to the big cities, meanwhile we prefer our lodgings (most of us) outside of the city so we have to travel to get there. This is obviously recognised by the government too as it was recently reported that the further radius outside a city you go, the higher the council tax rate will be. Many of the jobs in our towns are being or have been eroded. This means a mixture of wasting time commuting or stuck in traffic. By the time people get home they can't be bothered to work out or sometimes even take time to cook properly as they've just had a long commute. Hence the rise of gyms and reduced price fitness centre offers from workplaces.

In Spain, they hold their jobs down in both towns and cities (or at least they did for a number of years before such high unemployment) which means in some cases they could walk to work in their local town, or if not, at least they could beat most of the heavy traffic as they are not wasting their entire time on commuting. Also, Spanish working hours can really vary, so depending on their jobs they can have a lot more free time for their leisure. Lucky sods.

So in looking at food, Britain would do well to look at other factors as well, like for a start, bring us out of the Victorian Era and reduce the hours in a working week and/or make them more flexible.

And people who don't want to change, aren't going to change quietly even if they are forced to... but... why should they be? That is just enforcing the idea of the 'nanny state' in control telling us what to do.

[ESPORTIVA]

I say let them eat what they want, let them get fat, its their body their choice and they should be free to put what they want in their bodies.

They are the ones who run the risk of health problems not me, so its none of my business.

(Im referring to adults here not children)

[Cattty]

cigarette packets have to have pictures on them of diseased lungs etc, so how about on something extremely unhealthy (a kebab for example) the box needs to have a picture on it of a monsterously obese person.

also companies cheat with the traffic light system, a grab bag of doritos says the calories on it, then in small print it says per 30 gramms- your not gona buy a bag of crisps, weigh it out so you know how many calories you are eating, you think the amount it says on it is for the whole packet.

maybe they should make take-aways doors and cake isles at the supermarket narrower so fat people cant get in.
or like pubs cant serve you if your too drunk, take-aways shouldnt serve you if your too fat