Wednesday 19 June 2013

Getting heavier? It's not the calories it's the sitting around....

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As I listened to some professor of public health this morning, I was grateful that the radio is firmly attached to the car. Had it been loose, it would have been out the window - as ever we got fictitious 'deaths saved' that would come from a tax on sugar, a ban on trans fats and the compulsory reduction of salt (to dangerously low levels). And, as we've come to expect, the BBC interviewer simply allowed these lies to be told.

However, there was a little redemption in the news - unreported next to the latest collection of ban this or tax that campaigns from the public health mafia. It said this:

The full study is to be published later this summer, but details disclosed on Monday show that the average adult has cut calorie intake by around 600 a day. 

Yes that's true - we're eating less, indeed considerably less than we were in the 1980s. The problem is that we're getting fatter. Now we don't know the full details of the study but the suggestion is that the extra weight is a consequence of a more sedentary lifestyle, an older population and (I'm guessing) an increase in average height.

These findigns remind us that the mounting - and poorly evidenced - attack on sugar, fat and salt is misplaced. Our extra weight is much more to do with sitting a desks, on sofas and in car seats all day than it is to do with scoffing too much nosh.

Which probably explains why the BBC didn't give it a big splash.

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2 comments:

asquith said...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iE9HMudybyc

They are apparently opening a new Indian sweet shop here in Stoke, something the city has long been needing urgently. I am pleased to say that I won't be showing any restraint whatsoever.

Anonymous said...

Look on the bright side - it gives us yet another excuse to enjoy that frisson of excitement that comes from knowingly ignoring - or even actively flouting - authority.

Radical Rodent