April 14, 2024 - 9:00am
Last week’s US inflation report scrambled both the markets and the country’s presidential election. Despite multiplying signs that inflationary pressures had been building once more in the economy, the Federal Reserve had continued to sing a happy tune regarding the future course of inflation, insisting it was on track to bring price increases back to its 2% range and with that, to cut interest rates later this year.
So when the consumer price index came in hotter than expected, traders ran for the hills. Stocks fell and bonds plunged, driving up interest rates. Meanwhile, investors seized on any hard asset they could find, driving up the price of commodities, with gold now a must-have item.
Even though the next day’s producer price index came in softer than the consumer reading, these things have a way of creating their own momentum. Rising commodity prices will re-enter the production pipeline, heralding further pressures later this year. Already, Americans are feeling the heat at gas stations, whenever they re-fuel their cars.
All this amounts to a vote of no confidence in the Fed. The American central bank already fell behind the curve once on inflation after it previously misdiagnosed the leap in prices during the pandemic as transitory. Falling behind a second time so soon would make Jerome Powell’s Fed look outright inept. So he now faces a dilemma. Either he sticks to his rate-cut schedule and runs the risk of inflation spinning out of control, or he changes tack, postpones rate cuts and runs the risk of stock markets taking a beating. Neither will leave him popular.
But the man with bigger popularity concerns is Joe Biden. With the election campaign heating up, the President had been hoping to sell the story that inflation is coming back down while the economy remains strong. The economy is still strong, but with inflation going the wrong way, he’ll have to re-work his pitch.
For now, though weakened, his position doesn’t look fatal. The inflation surge of the last two years has left Americans feeling poorer, but Democrats haven’t abandoned him just yet. Meanwhile, assuming the Fed postpones interest rate rises and continues reducing the money supply, price increases will likely still taper off later in the year.
In the meantime, jobs still abound and wages are rising faster than prices, the result being that the pain of inflation is gradually, if very slowly, waning. Reflecting that easing of pressure, recent polls suggest American attitudes to the economy are holding steady. Moreover, they don’t just blame the administration for their inflation woes, they also blame corporations. Biden has been using that to his advantage in targeting corporate greed in his messaging.
Still, his path hasn’t become easier. What would make life very difficult for the President is if inflation continues rising and the Fed is forced to actually increase interest rates. Although not likely, that scenario cannot now be ruled out, not least because the Fed is developing a credibility problem. Because Americans tend to have long-dated mortgages, they aren’t feeling the pain of higher rates in their home payments. However, credit card backlogs signal growing strain in some segments of the electorate, and further increases in their monthly bills would hit Americans just as they’re going to the polls.
Biden thus has to hope that Powell doesn’t botch his task, because his own job prospects could depend on it.
John Rapley is an author and academic who divides his time between London, Johannesburg and Ottawa. His books include Why Empires Fall: Rome, America and the Future of the West (with Peter Heather, Penguin, 2023) and Twilight of the Money Gods: Economics as a religion (Simon & Schuster, 2017).
jarapley
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SubscribeWhen I was a kid the only take away was the chippy. Very few fatties in the 50/60/70’s just take a look at the old pictures. Kebabs/burgers/sugary shakes/ etc’ etc’ etc’ ‘Go figure’ as the Yanks might say
Before I started reading, because the article is written by Dr. Jones, I knew that the “answer” at the end would be a shrill “THE GOVERNMENT HAS TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS!!”. Quelle surprise.
Personal responsibility? Nah. Co-payment for medical care (which melds into “consequences for bad health decisions”)? No. Apparently the solution is to have more government power, control, and spending.
Why look to individual responsibility when we can have our deep belief in the Nanny State absolve us of guilt by externalizing our locus of control. Much easier that way.
Anyway, back to my box of cookies…
Maybe things balance out, since the obese won’t be around to use NHS nearly as long.
I fully agree. When I moved to the uk in the late 90s from Canada there was nothing like the American giant burger Frappuccino culture we have now. Going for coffee meant a small latte or even a Nescafé.
Now however we have almost the full americano, diet drastically different from continental Europe with our UPFs and overselling of junk. Street eating and constant snacking is the norm. Uber eats bikes stalk the streets 24/7 delivering overdraft over sugary over salty grub as a daily diet.
Where to begin to unpick it?
Who has the courage?
Who will ban corner shops filling their shelves and checkout areas with junk? Who will actually enforce the sugary drink tax- because I’m not seeing it.
Nobody I’m afraid.
My first ever comment because I feel compelled to point out that the author has got herself misled by sensation and not checked her facts, nor sources.
I’m a managing partner in an advertising and media agency. Much of what she said about advertising’s contribution isn’t quite true. Tempting as it is to blame Britain’s favourite villain, advertising; no UK grocery company is spending £55 million on online advertising…If only!
And companies like Mondelez who own Cadbury, or Nestlé, or PepsiCo actually have extremely strict self-regulation about when they advertise, what their message is and to whom they are buying their advertising space against. Nobody likes advertising, we get it. Yet it’s a cheap shot and quite amateur to blame the advertisers and not the grocery companies themselves for Britain’s obesity crisis.
There has been plenty of research to show that advertising doesn’t kickstart or increase demand; it can only extremely slightly increase the likelihood that you might think of that brand once you’re shopping. It’s a weaker force than we like to admit.
Britain undoubtedly has an addiction to ultra processed food. Nobody can disagree with that. But the regulation needs to come from the grocery companies themselves and the retailers.
This is the enemy that the author should have pointed her sword towards. The big four supermarkets hold a lot of sway, including with advertising agencies and their clients.
Walk in to any Coop tonight and you will see straightaway aisle ends loaded with Pringles, Doritos and highly brightly coloured packaged foods that contain zero nutrition. Every supermarket chief know exactly what growth they’re chasing.
The chemical engineering teams designed these foods to make us eat more and more: so blame the food conglomerates. And the shops have engineered by design their placement, price promotion and bundle deals: so blame the retailers.
Perhaps the author hasn’t watched much television but she will not find many television ads at all that feature children, nor will she find ads where media has been purchased against them. Stroll to YouTube, however, other other cesspit of British life which is short-form social media, and she’ll see hundreds of thousands of ‘influencers’ who actually encourage the trial of highly addictive, gimmick synthetic items. She might also want to know that Britain is moving away from television viewership and becoming much more hooked on YouTube (which is the biggest channel by far.) Kids are indeed absorbing terrible influences about eating. Yet they’re watching it from what they deem as real, aspirational content creators. The so-called influencers truly are influencing….
“No-one wants to see a “fat tax” that punishes people for the odd slice of cake or a cheeseburger.” No-one? Really? I completely disagree. A – very – hefty tax on junk food (i.e. “food” that is calorie-laden, full of sugar, refined carbohydrates and/or fat, i.e., with low nutritional value) would surely have a perceptible effect on the consumption of such products.
A disappointing article to read. The author is a medical doctor who doesn’t say anything about the science behind obesity. Junk food is part of the problem, certainly, but not a big part. Focusing on junk food is going to cause all kinds of problems and not solve the problem of people getting fat.
The author’s proof that junk food is the cause of obesity is this: “I can’t count the number of times they admit their weight problems stem from an addiction to junk food.” That’s no evidence we should pay any attention to. What we need are more hypotheses, more studies, more trial and error. And most of all, less ignorance like that we read here.
The problem with this article is that, as is usual, it ignores the reality of the relationship between lifestyle choices and health care demand/costs.
We have known for decades that people who live ‘healthy lives’ actually need more health care across their lifetimes because they live for longer and develop age-related conditions, such as dementia, that last longer and require more care. If the NHS starts prescribing the new dementia treatments, costs will escalate further.
If you want to make moral arguments against smoking, eating junk food, alcohol etc., fine. But you have a responsibility to engage with the counter-arguments about individual liberty.
And you have an even greater responsibility to avoid the delusional wishful thinking that this will save money and make the NHS sustainable.
The NHS was supposed to wind down once the diseases and ailments afflicting the poor – rickets, polio, accident treatment, etc – were dealt with. What happened was that with growing affluence, and lessening personal responsibility engendered by the welfare state, the malign effects of lifestyle choices – smoking, alcohol abuse and drug use, obesity, lack of exercise – massively inflated demand for treatment. Those choices are mainly made by the poor and poorly educated, so the Left has persistently opposed any attempts to encourage them to exercise personal responsibility. After all, if victims ceased to be victims they wouldn’t need ‘champions’. So campaigns against obesity are labelled ‘fat shaming’, anti-smoking campaigns are ‘government propaganda to deprive the poor of their only comfort in hardship’, increasing the cost of alcohol means ‘only the rich can drink’, ‘the poor can’t afford gym membership’, and so on. Only when the remedy can be framed as ‘anti-capitalism’, as here, is it promoted. But until personal, parental, and corporate responsibilities are elevated over ‘feelings’ and supposed ‘rights’, the problems will persist.
Charge more for outsize clothes, spilling over a seat (airline, theatre, etc), weighing more on any public transport. Charge obese folk for NHS treatments. Tax mobility aids if the underlying medical reason is for obesity. Tax sugar at source. Pay obese workers less in all public services and allow the same in private sector. Tell people they are irresponsible, self-indulgent and unattractive. Not all diversity is good; obesity is harmful to self and society.
Stopping advertising on TV before the watershed.
Which self-respecting child or teenager watches TV?
Has anyone ever considered that the NHS IS the problem? Try getting prescribed medication that does not contain sugar? I’ll admit I weigh too much for to my height and that only 2 conditions have ever helped me loose weight:-
Chemotherapy when I had cancer ( I carry a gene which caused this not because I was overweight)Colitus flareups which cause alarming symptons.
Incidentally, I don’t eat junk food. I eat chips less than once a week. Don’t eat sweets, chocolate, biscuits or cakes unless it is a celebration or festival. Eat mainly fish, fruit & vegetables because I prefer them. Watch my carb intake as they don’t make me feel very well. Unfortunately, I do have a number of conditions which involve taking medications. Every single one of them contains sugars of one sort or another. As I have a spinal problem, which the NHS haven’t been able to deal with I am unable to more than short bouts of moderate walking BUT even when I was young and able to play hockey & badminton as well as ballroom & other forms of dancing as well as swimming at least twice a week and walking miles delivering political leaflets & canvassing, I was still overweight. My sister, who’s main exercise involved walking to her car, was always slim despite eating far more than I did. So what’s your answer? Force me to take more tablets á la Wes Streeting who is looking a bit porkier himself these days & perhaps could try his own remedy to prove it is safe first?
Your ‘one size fits all’ attack doesn’t fit all people. Such things never have & never will.
Like smoking the cost to the NHS of obesity is overblown. The Treasury and the NHS both agree that old age is the real cost. 55% of the NHS budget is spent on the over 85s. I know how that comes about as I saw that with my own mother who lived to 90. In her last years not a month went by that she wasn’t in hospital often taken by ambulance, fixed up with oxygen and IV and then sent home again a few days later. Plus plus plus all the other visits, appointments, assessments, medications. Far from fat she was always a wiry active person.
Class 3 obesity shortens life by an average of 14 years and up to 20 in some cases. This implies that obesity sees many people dying in their mid to late 60s. Like smoking then it’s counterintuitive. Healthy people end up costing the NHS huge amounts, let alone social services.
Age is not a preventable condition (unless you’re contemplating killing everyone at the age of 75)..
Not my point. It is that the cost of obesity (like smoking) to the NHS is overblown. The overstatement is a failure to compare like with like. By comparing an obese people say age 40 with a healthy weight people aged 40 you are able to say that obesity costs the NHS. However if you compare overall lifetime costs ie both those cohorts over the course of their whole lives, and given that generally smokers and fatties die earlier, and that there is significant increase in NHS spending (and social care spending) as people get older, then the difference in overall spending between the two looks rather different.
and to answer your point more frivolously: Old age is a preventable condition. It is prevented by early death.
Ever been in an NHS hospital. Average nurse BMI is off the scale-as they waddle slowly about.
Dear author,
Go back and read this line that you wrote: “almost always preventable and almost always because the patients are obese.” What might we conclude from those words? Let’s start with the results being self-inflicted. A tax on fast food is no more of a solution than an added tax on guns in the vague hope of reducing violence.
In either case, the problem is one of people and their behavior. It does not help that societal views has gone on this weird tangent that refuses to see obesity for the health disaster that it is, choosing instead to attack anyone who dares notice an overweight person as being guilty of “fat shaming.”
Well, maybe when one is a hundred pounds overweight, a little shame would be a good thing. In a different era, shame was a remarkable self-correcting tool that helped many of us avoid doing really stupid things, not just because of how we would be affected, but also because how our actions would reflect on our families and communities. It does not help when so-called health magazines feature obese models on their covers.
I am all for an overweight person doing something about their condition and have always been supportive of such folks in the gym. They recognize a problem and want to address it. I should be supportive of the effort, not critical of what came before. But those people are not demanding ‘fat acceptance’ and giving rise to a new and deadly form of activism. In the end, however, this is not an issue that will be resolved by govt engaging in social engineering.
So, you work hard to ban smoking, which worked as an appetite suppressant, and, lo and behold, people get fat. If you want them all thin again, make everyone work on a farm or in a mine. No? If they work at a desk, they will live longer, with more time to pick up bad habits.
Really, no matter what you do people are going to die, whether it is early due to no health care, or late, due to health care.
Anything but reform for one of the worst health services in the world.
Typical NHS it’s the patients fault
This isn’t a producer problem. It’s a consumer one. It’s people who choose what they eat. The fact that other countries have far smaller problems with obesity tells you everything you need to know. The same junk food is available in Korea, Japan, France and Italy. They simply make different (and better) decisions.
There is no solution to this which doesn’t involve people taking responsibility for their own decisions and health.
And spreading the costs onto others does nothing to help people face up to this reality and change their behaviour.
This is about both individual behaviour and choice and the examples we set as a society. We should look at the behaviour and cultural norms of countries doing better than us and try to learn from them. Parents need to set better examples. And my local hospital has a Burger King branch in it. And plenty of BMI-challenged staff. Just saying.
Once we had a fairly uniform set of rules and ideas about food. Eat at the table together, don’t eat between meals, eating in the street is ‘common’, eat your vegetables or no pudding, smaller plates, little alcohol at home. You can tell I was born in the fifties.
The world is so different now, there is more disposable income even for the poorest, more food available and often relatively much cheaper. We discarded the ‘stuffy’ regimes of the past along with lots else that made life less fun. It’s only in retrospect that we have to admit that the rules had a purpose.
We have generations of children who grew up in homes with no dining table, everyone picks their own meal and their own meal time and eats where they want. A generation rarely cook anything from scratch. Witness the endless articles about cooking Christmas dinner, as though it was an Olympian feat. Kids are given enough money to pile into every fast food outlet and supermarket after school. Grazing constantly you never learn the discipline of waiting for a meal.
What’s the answer? I wish I knew. Government nagging is pointless and only benefits the huge healthy living industry. Personal responsibility is the only long term answer and you will never achieve that unless there is a cost for doing the wrong thing, financial, social and personal. Stop being ‘kind’, more fat shaming and if necessary make help like weight loss drugs available at a cost, not free. After all lousy drivers pay more car insurance anf nobody thinks that’s unfair.
there is more disposable income even for the poorest —–> that is a huge point and it applies to other things such as how families used to be okay on a single income. There was not just extra income but also fewer things competing for it.
I would agree with Jim that I don’t know what the answer to a complex question. What I do know from the evidence of working in the food industry for the last 35 years that by leaving any solutions to the market without incentives little or nothing will improve.
Perhaps the author ought to consider that ‘Free at the point of use’ healthcare means zero personal accountability for ones own health, because someone else will always have to pay to try and fix your problems. If when your BMI went from 25 to 27 and then to 30 your insurance premium went up in lockstep then perhaps, just perhaps, people might think ‘You know what, I should lose some weight and modify my eating habits, because I can’t afford this!’.
Jus’ sayin’………..
No. The USA has incredibly expensive healthcare and they are much worse than us.
Well, at least we have access to the latest technologies. I’m shocked the author doesn’t even mention GLP-1 receptor antagonists. At least 10% of Americans are now on them.
If you look across multiple countries, obesity has increased across the globe. The biggest reason is simply that food is more available. It’s far easier to find something to eat, anywhere, anytime.
If you think about the UK, 50 years ago finding food used to require planning. Shops were closed on Sundays. The only food in pubs was the odd pack of crisps. Vending machines were unheard of. Ready meals hadn’t been invented and a take away was fish and chips.
Is that something we want to go back to? Will you be able to stop people buying food while they travel about? Perhaps establishing a norm about not eating in public except in designated areas? The where is probably more important than the what.
There are so many takeaway places today selling kebabs and curries and gyros and pizza.
All this by eating biscuits?
The non-selective school I work for in a deprived seaside town has stopped offering Food Technology as an option for GCSE in the aim of becoming more academic. Perhaps this subject should be compulsory to 16?
I trained to teach Home Economics but the subject was sqeezed out of the curriculum when it was forced to become Food Tecnology which did not focus on teaching basic cooking skills. This happened in 1990 when the National Curriculum began. The next step was the removal of the specialist equipment from the classrooms needed to teach those skills. It would be virtually impossible to bring the subject back as there would be no space in school buildings for the rooms. All of which leads to generations of young people who cannot cook unless taught by their parent.
It’s not junk food – it’s you. People need to relearn how to be autonomous and live a good life and you are busy trying to manage them and as by-product causing helpless useless despair.
We have imported this problem along with much else of American culture along with American ownership of British food brands. I suspect that our politicians are wary of imposing a tax which would harm the profits of US food giants; but giving yet more profit to an American drug company via injectables is treating the symptoms, not the cause.
Another contributor suggests that old style family life and inculcated habits of self-discipline would be good, and so it would, but how do we get there?
Our politicians need the courage to take a stand against the Big Food Business, and to impose taxes on demonstrably unhealthy food. Banning its adverts would be a good beginning.
Why is the role of politicians to “stand against” something and not your own job to do? Banning things does not make those things go away. We tried that in the US with booze and succeeded mostly in giving organized crime a foothold. We keep trying it with drugs, again to no avail though the cartels love it. A society cannot tax its way out of a problem that is rooted in human behavior.
The junk food companies and their profits have given a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘fattening the heart in a day of slaughter’ (James v.5).
We would normally use these terms to describe a relatively small minority of people, who can’t help themselves, and for whom we feel pity. It seems odd to be using these to describe a significant proportion of the population – perhaps soon the majority!
Also there are plenty of overweight people who are not poor, don’t come across as weak, and are not vulnerable in any normal sense.
When I was young I was fat – but I was the only fat person in the area. If you are fat, you are only fat compared to the people around you. Today, children are fat but most are in the same condition. So they are invisible-fat.
I was born on a Council estate, but we were special because my mother insisted on going out to work – other mothers didn’t work. She had a little extra money and diverted some of that to me as a sign of love. In those times, being fat was considered to be healthy because many children were undernourished. I only escaped this by leaving home.
On leaving home, I saw that I was a freak and that was a good way to destroy my self-respect – which only came back when I lost weight and became normal. I would not have lost weight if everyone around me had been fat, because I would have been normal.
Governments have no power to control this problem, except for one thing. They can reduce the forces trying to stop fat-shaming. Those forces try to make fat equal to normal. Parents need to know that fat is not normal. Parents have to take responsibility and perhaps they need better advice, but that is all.
Just one aside. I read once that the main time for controlling children’s weight was at the time of weaning. Then (the article said) you have to introduce children to the five tastes – I forget what they are but sweet is one of them. You have to introduce the sweet taste last, after all of the others, because once a child tastes sweet, it only wants sweet.
> Governments have no power to control this problem, except for one thing. They can reduce the forces trying to stop fat-shaming.
If government has the power to do that, it surely has the power to influence other things as well.
> Those forces try to make fat equal to normal.
The forces trying to stop fat-shaming mainly do so because they believe that, on balance, shaming has worse outcomes. Shame can often lead to self-destructive behaviour.
If highlighting the negative consequences is counterproductive for most people, and normalizing obesity is counterproductive for most people, is there any attitude which would be helpful, or is every intervention and non-intervention harmful?
I hear what you’re saying regarding people’s vision of “normal” being influenced by those around them
I carry a little weight since passing 50, and it’s a combination of less exercise due to a dodgy knee and the fact that I eat a healthy balanced diet, then eat crisps and sweets and drink beer on top of it. I work in a hospital and I’m the slimmest in my team despite having a BMI about 28.
I was very ill a year or so ago, it turned out to be a vitamin deficiency exacerbating an auto immune digestive issue that meant my food wasn’t having time to get digested.
I lost 3 stone in 3 months and my family thought I was so gaunt I must have cancer… I was right in the middle of my healthy BMI range…
Weirdly I was fully onboard with this article.
Then I remembered my own experiences of the NHS and shock of how many of the staff were grossly overweight. And I don’t mean just a little heavy, I mean huge.
Reform of the NHS is needed. The staff know it. We know it. The question is now, who will take it on.
I am also astonished how fat how many of the nurses in the NHS are.
I’m not. Eating properly is more time consuming than eating Cadbury’s Roses when you’re startving during your 12hr shift.
I believe that we should return to 8 hour shifts.
So eat a banana and an apple instead.
You know, in my trips to the NHS, A&E, GP, whatever – I never actually found these mythical nurses or admin who are working all through 12 hour shifts.
Found plenty who were busy chatting, just sitting around, or pushing around pieces of paper.
They were often still too busy to be of much help when needed – my wife, after a serious operation, found it difficult to persuade any of them to do stuff like find a wheelchair or open doors.
I was astonished how impossible it was to find decent food at the hospital when I had a day of tests. A Costa, a canteen of sandwiches and crisps.
Rubbish.
Good observation. I too have noticed quite a few fat nurses. Their jobs are stressful, they might often skip meals or skimp on sleep, and a chocolate bar might seem to be the best way to keep them going.
The admin staff sat behind a desk in the Xray dept don’t look too stressed to me.
And let’s not kid ourselves, you do not get this big by eating the odd chocolate bar.
Why do you need adm. staf here. At my UNiversity hospital there is one, her main functions is to book transport. She is only half time.
I’m for much higher tax on junk foods and harder hitting labelling (like we did on tobacco). I’m also for use of Ozempic in specific circumstances to help some kick-start a new lifestyle. Not permanent prescriptions but for set periods to help them.
But I’m not quite as convinced as some on the economics here and whether obese patients are bankrupting the NHS to the degree sometimes suggested. Is not the greatest pressure on the NHS, and Social care, an aging population, one to which the obese if they die younger, contribution is debatable?
I suspect in the A&E in which the Author works far more cubicles taken up by elderly patients post fall, or similar, who may then need admission as much because to send them back home is deemed unsafe and social services cannot instantaneously put in place a care package. In the meantime the elderly person’s family live miles away and can contribute little to post discharge care. Hence NHS beds become blocked.
Yes we must grapple with obesity but there is a bigger pressure and it’s one caused by success.
Logan’s Run is your solution then?
Of course not. Extended life is one of the greatest modern gifts. But we do to recognise the challenges it gives us and how we better manage and plan for those.
Maybe, maybe not. But how is your comment in any way helpful? There will be many reasons why A&Es are over-stretched and you have to eliminate them one by one. Old people are an easy target and most people get old – when, surprisingly, their views on old age could change.
Of course, old people are the big resistance to left-wing politics so I could see why you have this opinion.
It’s not about blaming old folks CW. We’ll all be there one day we hope. It’s about recognising what then bungs up emergency and hospital services – point being they can’t get back home unless we better fix other components of the health and social care system, and ask ourselves more too – what is the role of the family too.
The Article needed some rebalance. One might otherwise assume the number one issue is fatty’s blocking A&Es. That’s not actually the case.
You’re in favour of taxes on everything except your own unearned wealth it would seem.
No happy with those too.
And besides in this instance – my support for tax on junk food etc – one has a choice, just like one had a choice whether to smoke or drink.
Weekends at A&E, every weekend, count the young people turning up there with a multitude of injuries or young mothers with sick children. I’d be interested to see a breakdown of what age group “bungs up the emergency and hospital services”. Is it really the aging population taking up more cubicles than others, because that’s never been my experience.
and the higher taxes will accomplish what exactly? You cannot tax away an issue that is rooted in human behavior. This absolves the individual of any responsibility in what is almost always a self-inflicted condition. Obesity as a thing may not be new but the scale at which it exists definitely is new. The change was not driven by tax policy. it was driven by bad choices and continues being driven by the refusal among many to understand and call out obesity for the issue that it is.
You’re saying that more people have become fat because they are making poor choices? And because they have not been shamed for being fat?
I’d be interested in any evidence you have that proves that. Because the evidence I have seen proves the opposite. We don’t know the cause of the drastic increase in obesity. All hypotheses to date, including yours, have been disproven.
Quite so, and obesity is a construct. The. education profession and government institutions move the arrow about as it suits. Moved one way it shows up as a sudden increase in obesity instead of just over-weight.
What’s the point of higher tax on junk foods when it’s subsidied?
It’s not marginalising the branding of tobacco that has has reduced its use, it’s the sheer cost, and perhaps to some extent the fact that smokers are sort of looked down upon by many and that’s deemed acceptable, and legal ( ‘Non-smokers only’ in ads for flat shares, dating apps etc.) .Financial cost, social shaming, and the unambiguous understanding that it’s bad for you somehow did reduce smoking rates.
Maybe the whole body-positivity thing needs to go the way of the Marlboro Man.
Flat share – non-smokers only. No fat people.
Whilst we’re at it, they should be charged more on transport such as planes and coaches – taking up more room and adding to the cost of fuel via their gross BMI.
And i’m not joking.
I wish you were joking. Charged more on transport because if what? They only get one seat. And adding to the cost of fuel, what nonsense. I’m pretty sure all planes have a maximum weight, but you’re suggesting they add more than allowed for which which pushes up fuel costs. Fuel tanks can only carry so much, but you’re suggesting that fat people might cause a plane to run out of fuel before it reaches its destination, or add additional fuel (where?) to cover that which is chewed up by fat people.
Fuel burn on an aeroplane is directly correlated to weight. An increase of 5 tonnes will increase your fuel required by 1 tonne on a typical New York flight on my type.
So yes, the fatties do cost us more in fuel burn. I’ve often thought it would be a good idea to charge people for “total weight carried”. Weigh everyone at check in. After all, why do you think your bags are weighed, and you’re charged for excess baggage?
They probably eat more of the catering too….
So you think the planes are flying with weights in excess of their safety/legal limit?
That’s an interesting question, because passengers are assigned a set weight, including their hand baggage depending on gender. I forget what it is, but it also varies with the nature of the flight – charters have different weights.
Essentially, we don’t really “know” exactly what the weight of all the passengers is, but just assume it all evens out. But I can assure you that a fatty will be causing more fuel burn.
I have no doubt that weight burns up fuel. But focusing on overweight people burning up fuel seems a little absurd. How many overweight people compared to excess baggage? What’s the definition over weight in a situation like this. Maybe just leave people alone and stop the finger pointing.
I would agree with you, on that. I sat on a long flight with someone next to me so fat they intruded so far into my space I was leaning away from them. I had to eat one-handed and forget about sleeping. I had a twanging pain in my side for about a week afterwards. I don’t know about the cost of fuel, but if one seat isn’t enough you should pay for two, or else airlines should have a range of seats that are wide, for those who cannot fit into the normal ones, and charge appropriately, otherwise whoever’s unfortunate enough to be stuck next to them is essentially in a stress position for the entire flight.
There is no answer. Bans on junk food ads won’t work. Those of us fortunate enough to grow up in households where meal times were set in stone, everyone sat down to an actual table together, and politely [or otherwise] ate the same meals, were forbidden to eat between meals, had to eat what was on the plate as there was no other, and weren’t allowed TV until everything was eaten, are having a much easier time with our waistlines than the present generation. And those times aren’t coming back.
Did you have two parents present, one of whom did not work or did not work full-time? More parents are also working evenings, leaving children to put processed food in the oven.
Although this comment is being down-voted, there are a couple of comments below (Caradog Williams) that bear out exactly what you’re saying.
But you don’t have proof that they’re the ones becoming fat. What do you mean by “processed”? Ready to make meals, if that’s what you mean, may be processed but that’s not necessarily fat producing. I do know people who were raised like that and they did not become fat.
Here’s a starter for ten:
https://world.openfoodfacts.org/nova
I was raised in an obsessively strict household with regard to mealtimes, no junk food, and nothing between meals and I ended up fat. Maybe I’m a black swan, but I doubt it. Food obsessions are unhealthy things, even if they involve “good habits”.
You all need to read Ultra Processed People for the arguments you each make here
I suggest that a free public health service is in fact not “free”. People pay for it, with their labor, their time, and their money. In Singapore, for example, health care is a combined effort from each citizen, who pays into a healthcare account that he then chooses where to apply it to, along with a certain amount of government funds (to my limited understanding, this is how it works). It makes the citizen feel invested in their own physical wellbeing, and they don’t feel like a beggar, waiting for the doctor to see them.
I don’t know what the answer, but govt intervention is not the solution.
Government intervention is the problem. Why have a healthy lifestyle if the government is going to pay to correct for all the damage it makes,
None of us want a healthcare system like the yanks. The NHS certainly has its issues and is in desperate need of reform, but you won’t find a single person from another developed nation who would copy Americas user pays model where getting ill (or pregnant) can lead to bankruptcy.
America is also fatter than almost any other country so perhaps government intervention isn’t actually the problem?
If you think there is no government intervention in healthcare in the USA you really are not paying any attention. There is massive financial intervention (Medicare and Medication, Veterans’, and more) plus heavy regulation of healthcare.
The USA needs far less government intervention. The overly-insured system is not a result of free markets. Despite that, I much prefer the system in the USA. I can get an appointment and treatment very quickly rather than waiting for months and the quality is far higher on average that in the UK. (I am a US citizen who lived in England for 23 years.)
Pretty funny. The fantasy stories about us medicine vs GB and Canada are the main indicator that you haven’t a clue.
If you are sick and you spend all of your money on healthcare, of course you are broke. Just like every other place in the world.
I wonder why Biden worked so hard to cancel university debt but didn’t do anything about medical debt? …, all you hear is crickets.
The fantasy stories around “universal healthcare” are so laughable that you can’t even discuss it. I call it the governmental medical complex.
Taxes on refined carbs and ban all man made trans fats.
As with smoking, make it very expensive to consume the cr@p!
It is the only way in fact. Sadly.
I wouldn’t be happy with laws forbidding certain foods – but have no problem with nudging people in the right direction by taxing them. At the very least this could offset the burden on the NHS.
Would you also tax people with skin cancer who use health services?
govt intervention is not the solution
The problem largely arose thanks to government intervention after government scientists decided that heart disease is caused by eating animal fats. It’s no coincidence probably that the obesity crisis in the US really got under way after McDonalds and KFC switched from frying with lard to frying with seed oils.
Does the NHS still advise a diet of 30% Carbohydrates?
There’s your problem: high blood sugars, and always feeling hungry. It’s protein and fat, good fats, that give that satisfactory feeling.
The government scientists rarely allow new evidence to change their minds. Just look at NET Zero, Lockdowns, the Medical Intervention, etc.
The pork barrel is evident in all such great government decisions.
Part of the problem (in the USA as well as the UK) is decades-long official food recommendations that turned people away from saturated fats and towards lots of carbohydrates and seed oils.