How should the NHS deal with the obesity epidemic? Lost battle?

Hatter The Mad said:
Except for a tiny, tiny minority of people, metabolic rate has almost nothing to do with it.

Calories in > Calories out = Get fat

easy.
Click to expand...
Quite a number of other factors effect weight loss - job for one.

Socio-economic class is the main indicator to predict obesity, so having money/not having money seems to be a pretty key factor.

I didn't imply it was true for many cases, just you can generalise that everybody who is fat is greedy.

Tiny tiny minority ≠ none.

Hatter The Mad said:
Whether it is junk or a load of fruit, if calories > calories out, you'll get fat.
Click to expand...
I know,

But to eat enough to be satiated with healthy food & vegetables it's much easier to do than with cheap oven food (Which is easy to over-eat with due to the higher calorific content per gram).
 
Hamish said:
What a load of rubbish. How do you propose to implement this denial of care that these people have paid for? if you weigh more than x then you can't visit a hospital? if you smoked a cigarette within the last month and you get cancer then you can **** off?
rode a bike and fell off? shouldn't have been so careless - self inflicted

Utterly idiotic proposal.
Click to expand...

smokers are usually put to the back of the queue anyway
 
OldCoals said:
We need a revolution in this country when it comes to food. Sadly cheap processed food is stacked almost floor to ceiling in the supermarkets.
Click to expand...

The problem is that its stacked in peoples fridges. If it was all stacked in supermarkets that would be fine as no one is buying it, afterall the shelf life helps that image.
 
elmarko1234 said:
I don't think children are old enough to understand the long term impact of over-eating anyway - schools shouldn't really be selling food products which no absolutely no nutritional value (or items which individually are far more than a child would need to consume in one sitting) - massive king sized Mars bars I'm sure schools could do without.

It's a combination of things, poor education, poor choices, bad parents, poor quality food is cheaper, disingenuous food labelling, the lie that low-fat = good etc - none of these things in isolation if solved would achieve that much - but with a combined effort it may.

Sugar is a highly addictive substance, one which a scarily large portion of the developed world are addicted to - we wouldn't accept companies lacing food with cocaine to sell more products, so why do we accept the deliberate lacing of foods with salt & sugar to increase it's addictive qualities?.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_addiction

"Researchers say that sugar and the taste of sweet is said to stimulate the brain by activating beta endorphin receptor sites, the same chemicals activated in the brain by the ingestion of heroin and morphine."

"Finally, a 2008 study noted that sugar affects opioids and dopamine in the brain, and thus might be expected to have addictive potential. It referenced bingeing, withdrawal, craving and cross-sensitization, and gave each of them operational definitions in order to demonstrate behaviorally that sugar bingeing is a reinforcer. These behaviors were said to be related to neurochemical changes in the brain that also occur during addiction to drugs. Neural adaptations included changes in dopamine and opioid receptor binding, enkephalin mRNA expression and dopamine and acetylcholine release in the nucleus accumbens."
Click to expand...

I agree with this.

I can drink massive amounts of cola a day, some days i refuse to let myself eat sugar or drink cola but at the end of those days i feel tired, shakey and sometimes i can have moments where im close to passing out.

My Blood sugar levels are around 5.8 and 7.5 after meals, So im defo hurting my body, But i just cant stop! I have tried :(
 
The other point is,

Do fat people really cost the NHS more?, after taking into account they live 10/15 years less (therefore less likely to need cancer treatment, often turned down for surgery because of the risks & less likely to spend time in a tax-payer funded/subsidies care-care or develop dementia or other mental illnesses).

A healthy person is still likely to develop a myriad of alignment by the time they live to 102 & have costed the tax-payer a significant amount.
 
elmarko1234 said:
The other point is,

Do fat people really cost the NHS more?, after taking into account they live 10/15 years less (therefore less likely to need cancer treatment, often turned down for surgery because of the risks & less likely to spend time in a tax-payer funded/subsidies care-care or develop dementia or other mental illnesses).

A healthy person is still likely to develop a myriad of alignment by the time they live to 102 & have costed the tax-payer a significant amount.
Click to expand...
Yes, they do - because a lot of their inflictions are manageable and not immediately fatal; diabetes, mobility issues, orthopaedic issues.
 
Hatter The Mad said:
Except for a tiny, tiny minority of people, metabolic rate has almost nothing to do with it.

Calories in > Calories out = Get fat

easy.
Click to expand...

Not really, although I find that Rickey Gervais stand-up routine funny as well (which is where you've got that from).

I'm skinny, eat loads and rarely exercise. I'm just naturally skinny, likewise I know a girl who is huge and she eats less than me and exercises more (well just shifting her weight out of bed in the morning is probably exercise than I do all day)
 
estebanrey said:
Not really, although I find that Rickey Gervais stand-up routine funny as well (which is where you've got that from).

I'm skinny, eat loads and rarely exercise. I'm just naturally skinny, likewise I know a girl who is huge and she eats less than me and exercises more (well just shifting her weight out of bed in the morning is probably exercise than I do all day)
Click to expand...

your mom doesn't count dude.
 
Hatter The Mad said:
Yes, they do - because a lot of their inflictions are manageable and not immediately fatal; diabetes, mobility issues, orthopaedic issues.
Click to expand...
I'll have to do some research, if only I could get hold of loads of data I'll build a model for it & find out for myself. :D.
 
Diagro said:
I agree with this.

I can drink massive amounts of cola a day, some days i refuse to let myself eat sugar or drink cola but at the end of those days i feel tired, shakey and sometimes i can have moments where im close to passing out.

My Blood sugar levels are around 5.8 and 7.5 after meals, So im defo hurting my body, But i just cant stop! I have tried :(
Click to expand...

Yes you can stop. Whatever your addiction to sugar, I can assure you sir, mine is worse. Was worse. I used to eat to large chocolates most days for years on end, drunk Irn Bru by gallons every week and ate every bad food known to man. I'm just lucky I never got fat since I was very active with sports.

So I simply stopped. The cravings are ... out of this world. Nobody will every understand how tough it is. What helped is that I ate three healthy meals a day which kept my blood sugar levels high, which in return helped somewhat with the cravings. It's much better now than it used to be and these days I allow myself the odd chocolate or can of Coke.

So please, don't tell me you cannot stop. You don't want to stop.
 
regulus said:
Yes you can stop. Whatever your addiction to sugar, I can assure you sir, mine is worse. Was worse. I used to eat to large chocolates most days for years on end, drunk Irn Bru by gallons every week and ate every bad food known to man. I'm just lucky I never got fat since I was very active with sports.

So I simply stopped. The cravings are ... out of this world. Nobody will every understand how tough it is. What helped is that I ate three healthy meals a day which kept my blood sugar levels high, which in return helped somewhat with the cravings. It's much better now than it used to be and these days I allow myself the odd chocolate or can of Coke.

So please, don't tell me you cannot stop. You don't want to stop.
Click to expand...
Because addiction has the same effect on everybody... oh wa... :rolleyes:

Genetics plays a strong factor in all addictions.
 
Last edited:
It seems to me that this is one of those issues that cannot be reasonably discussed on this forum. I suspect that is because the average age of it's members is quite young.

It is an incredibly complicated issue. However, I do not believe that the vast majority of obese people sit at home thinking, "you know, I don't think that I am quite fat enough yet. I must go and get some chocolate".

I have said to my GP recently that there are 4 major self inflicted conditions that the NHS has to deal with, alcoholism, smoking, drugs and obesity. A patient can get a range of treatments and help with the first 3. The last is met with disdain.
 
How about adding a small fee like £5 a month to council tax and then using that money to give each house hold a fruit/veg box. Just an idea I know there is flaws but it could also help stimulate the british farming industry and also teach people a bit more about seasonal veg.
 
I think we have to head more towards the american health care system unfortunatly, bad food is cheap and easy and people are lazy.

How about a scales at the checkout where if you are in weight band X you pay tax on your unhealthy food , if you are in the next band tax goes up? Like car emmisions.

Would be good in theory

Also im guessing obesity is rising quick and smoking is falling
 
Scrap the NHS and everyone pay private medical insurance.

Thus instantly saving the budget a few 100 billion

Killing all the poor

Starving the fat to death.

Only the super rich and fit elite would live

invade Germany and France.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom