Friday 26 August 2011

The new obesity pandemic, the same as the old obesity pandemic

And today's bollocks is...

Half of UK men could be obese by 2030

Health experts blame passive overeating for global pandemic, warning in the Lancet that governments must tackle obesity now

Ooh, it's like I Love the Noughties. It takes me back to those days when property prices were rising, the Kaiser Chiefs were in the charts, Tony Blair was still Prime Minister and everyone was worried about the obesity 'epidemic'.

Governments around the world need to make immediate and dramatic policy changes to reverse a pandemic of obesity which could affect an extra 11 million people in the UK over the next 20 years, public health scientists have warned.

Would they be the same public health scientists who predicted this in 2006?

England to have 13m obese by 2010

More than 12m adults and one million children will be obese by 2010 if no action is taken, a report by the Department of Health is predicting.

The report warns that, based on current trends, 33% of men and 28% of women will be obese by 2010.

At the time, male obesity rates were running at 23.1% and the female obesity rate was 24.8%.

So, what happened next?

Despite the government ignoring the anti-obesity lobby's urgent suggestions for traffic light labelling on food and suchlike, the latest figures show that obesity amongst men has fallen to 22% and the female obesity rate has fallen to 24%.

Given that the previous prediction could not have been more wrong—despite the modest task of forecasting just 4 years ahead—how likely do you think it is that the anti-obesity 'experts' can predict what will happen in 19 years?

As George W. Bush once tried to say, fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.




Exclusive video footage of the Lancet obesity team in session



9 comments:

Trooper Thompson said...

"Passive over-eating"?

Does this mean if I sit near someone eating a cream cake, I get fat?

No doubt there's overwhelming evidence to support such a notion.

Anonymous said...

They will make it come true, they will simply reduce the BMI ranges AGAIN:
It is so easy. If you want millions on antidiabetic, antihypertensive or cholesterol lowering drugs just reduce the normal ranges. Voila, overnight millions become ill and in desperate need of medication.
After a while you don't even have to do it officially, normal range deflation takes over all by itself, after all if low is good, lower must be better.

Twenty_Rothmans said...

These scientific frauds should at least specify what they mean by obese.

I think that Peter Walker is an ugly fucking idiot. Do I set the bar high or low? I'm not telling.

"Governments around the world need to make immediate and dramatic policy changes to reverse a pandemic of obesity which could affect an extra 11 million people in the UK over the next 20 years, public health scientists have warned."

Read that again:
Governments around the world
and again:
Governments around the world

Ivory Coast, Sudan (both), Iran, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Vietnam, Japan, Mexico, Belize...

These bungling twerps boil my piss - shamelessly lifting money which could be used to help sick people, and just writing a pile of wank that's no more than a toddler smearing the wall with its diarrhoea.

Thes people should be stripped of their qualifications and forced to work in Aldi.

Dick Puddlecote said...

Did I really just hear Nicky Campbell on 5 live say that giving a kid a McDonald's shake is poisoning them? Yep, the debate really has become that absurd.

Unknown said...

The talk this morning was of a fat tax. They will keep on with these predictive studies until they get their fat tax.

Health minister said "smoking is different from obesity, we want to stop people smoking but people need to eat and we want to make them eat sensibly."

No room for conjecture there then, is there.

George Speller said...

Gosh I hope I'm obese by 2030. It will mean I'm still alive . . . .

Angry Exile said...

Soon everyone will be too fat to get away from the cigarette smoke. Oh, the humanity...

Mark Wadsworth said...

Anon at 5.23 above make a good point.

We observed exactly that happening in India.

Dick Puddlecote said...

Just seen that September's NCD summit gets another mention in the Graun piece. It's going to be a righteous feeding frenzy!