The obesity problem isn't getting worse...or so says the Joseph Rowntree Foundation

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I keep saying this - mostly because it's true. But the nannying fussbuckets are wrong - most recently Anna Soubry, "Public Health" Minister - who also pointed out that poor people* were more likely to be "obese".

Surprisingly, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation in a desire to nobble Ms Soubry, revealed the truth:

Over time, there is little sign of the inexorable rise in obesity that underlies some of the concern about the issue. Rates for children did rise and peak in 2004 but have since fallen and are now no different to what they were in the late 1990s.

Got that folks. The obesity epidemic is a complete myth - we don't need to ban advertising, impose "fat" taxes or stop McDonald's opening within 50 miles of a child.

*We should note that most fat people aren't poor - what Ms Soubry is saying. However, poor people are more likely to be fat than rich people. We should remember that there are lots more people in the category "not poor" than in the category "poor" (despite what The Guardian would like you to believe).

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Jamie Oliver is killing us...

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...or maybe it's Nigella?

In the latest piece of New Puritan dribble (published - where else - in that bible of fussbucketry, the British Medical Journal) we're told that those famous TV chefs are pushing an unhealthy diet:

The paper, 'Nutritional content of supermarket ready meals and recipes by television chefs in the United Kingdom: a cross sectional study', by Simon Howard, Jean Adams and Martin White, compared nutrient contents of supermarkets' own-brand ready meals with recipes from four TV chefs.

The celebrity chefs' recipes were found to be more unhealthy in terms of energy, fat and fibre content. Their recipes all have higher fat, saturated fat and calorie contents per serving than the supermarket ready meals. They also tend to have less fibre per serving than the microwaveable offerings of Tesco, Asda and Sainsbury's.

Not surprisingly the wonderful Lorraine Pascale (who in case the authors hadn't noticed makes cakes) scores worst. But overall it's a reminder of how the health fascists want us to eat carefully measured diets - doubtless under expensive medical direction and planning - that provide no pleasure, no joy. Just a soul-less pap sufficient to keep us alive to do that purposeful work that the New Puritans demand of us.

Sadly, Jamie's response is to display piles of guilt - rather than telling the writers of this ghastly drivel to go take a running jump, our favourite cheeky chef says:

‘We welcome any research which raises debate on these issues and in fact Jamie’s most recent book, 15 Minute Meals, does contain calorie content and nutritional information per serving for every dish.

‘We will soon also be re-launching the Jamie Oliver website with nutritional information on the recipes. However, we would regard the key issue to be food education so that people are aware of which foods are for every day and which are treats to be enjoyed occasionally.’

Jamie just reinforces the New Puritan message with their low salt, low fat, low pleasure diet. Rather than stick up for exciting, innovative and varied food - for eating as a pleasure - Jamie opts for the safe, approved, mea culpa approach.

I do not want to live in a world where we're only allowed to eat things approved by doctors, where our diets are picked at and criticised and where the New Puritans tell me that eating a glorious, fat-laden sausage sandwich is a sin. It is sad that Jamie Oliver - who started out telling us that ordinary food could be extraordinary - has morphed into some sort of New Puritan poodle unable to tell the fussbuckets to go away and leave us to live our lives as we want to live them.

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In which George Monbiot lets his dislike of fat poor people - and their food choices - get the better of his grasp of facts

OK let’s start with George Monbiot’s assertion that Alzheimer’s Disease is just another form of diabetes (although what seems to be said is that having diabetes – including diabetes linked to brain sugars – significantly raises the risk of getting Alzheimers Disease which isn’t quite the same thing).

There’s a problem with George’s assertion that this is entirely down to diet – and crucially the evils of junk food:

A scarcely regulated food industry can engineer its products – loading them with fat, salt, sugar and high-fructose corn syrup – to bypass the neurological signals that would otherwise prompt people to stop eating. It can bombard both adults and children with advertising. It can (as we discovered yesterday) use the freedom granted to academy schools to sell the chocolate, sweets and fizzy drinks now banned from sale in maintained schools. It can kill off the only effective system (the traffic-light label) for informing people how much fat, sugar and salt their food contains. Then it can turn to the government and blame consumers for eating the products it sells. This is class war, a war against the poor fought by the executive class in government and industry.

Let’s take this diatribe piece by piece and see whether it stacks up.

“A scarcely regulated food industry”.

This is a statement of mind-blowing ignorance. Or maybe just deliberate misinformation from George.  I’m not going to list all the controls and regulations governing food production, food processing, distribution and retailing of food. You can experience the joy of knowing these regulations here at the Food Standards Agency. And that’s before we look at the control and regulations governing the sale of food for consumption on and off a given premises.

“...loading them with fat, salt, sugar and high-fructose corn syrup.”

Here George picks up every food scare going – the lies and myths about too much salt, the largely disproven attacks on saturated fats and the nonsense about sugar:

This week a meta-analysis of seven studies involving a total of 6,250 subjects in the American Journal of Hypertension found no strong evidence that cutting salt intake reduces the risk for heart attacks, strokes or death in people with normal or high blood pressure.

In 2000, a respected international group of scientists called the Cochrane Collaboration conducted a "meta-analysis" of the scientific literature on cholesterol-lowering diets. After applying rigorous selection criteria (219 trials were excluded), the group examined 27 studies involving more than 18,000 participants. Although the authors concluded that cutting back on dietary fat may help reduce heart disease, their published data actually shows that diets low in saturated fats have no significant effect on mortality, or even on deaths due to heart attacks.

A new study says that childhood obesity is not caused by soft drinks and sweetened beverages. The study, undertaken by researchers at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada and published in the journal Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism, reports that most children who consume such drinks are at no greater risk of obesity than those of their peers who do not.

 As you can see, most of these scares are nonsense.

“..to bypass the neurological signals...”

Nope. This doesn’t happen either. Or not at least outside the pages of junk science and public health campaigns. And even if it did (the argument is essentially that eating is pleasant and that this is why we eat passed being full), it applies to a whole host of other foods than burgers, chips and cake. Try some of that wonderful sourdough bread with butter and a selection of good English cheese – tell me you’re not going to eat passed being full!

“It can bombard both adults and children with advertising”

How many times can people like George get away with parading their ignorance of advertising? It is a fact – not a question of debate or discourse but a fact – that in mature markets (and food markets are all mature) advertising is about brand equity, protecting market share and occasionally switching. After all we didn’t start eating because a food company advertised did we? And before you all start correcting me, I really am much more of an expert on advertising and marketing than George.

“This is class war...”

And George does a triple back somersault over the shark. Because poor people are more likely to be obese (and only yesterday George’s friends were telling us the poor didn’t have any food), it is the food industry waging a class war!  I’m sorry George but you are completely wrong. Indeed, the opposite is true. It is you and your middle-class fussbucket friends who are waging the class war. It is you who is trying to take away little pleasures from people who aren’t fat, don’t have diabetes and won’t get Alzheimers. It is you who wants to ban McDonalds but haven’t even taken a peep at the fat, salt and sugar laden wonders in the Michelin starred restaurants your Guardian-reading pals like to frequent.

To be fair to George he tells the truth right near the end of his snobby bigoted rant:

We cannot yet state unequivocally that poor diet is a leading cause of Alzheimer's disease..

Absolutely. The truth is that Alzheimer’s, like type 2 diabetes, like many cancers, like coronary heart disease is overwhelmingly a condition associated with old age. And the main reason why there are more of these conditions is because we are living longer.

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The myth of the food desert...

Pie!

Today, as is my wont when I've a time to spend in Bradford without meetings, I wandered round John Street Market. It is a little sad to see some of the gaps appearing in the market - partly because some of the rag trade and fancy goods stalls have decanted to the emerging Asian bazaars and partly because it's a pretty tough time right now for retailers. However, there's still the food to marvel at - the row of butchers (now joined by a halal butcher to meet that demand), the fishmonger, the greengrocers, the spice stall and the stalls selling produce for the East European, African and Caribbean customers.

Yet we - by which I mean the well-off, middle classes - tell ourselves that there is something called a 'food desert'. A place peopled with the poor where there is inadequate access to fresh food and especially fruit and vegetables. It would appear that, in the nation where this idea was first invented, the USA, it is revealed to be a myth - especially the myth that this lack of 'good' food leads to obesity:

Such neighborhoods not only have more fast food restaurants and convenience stores than more affluent ones, but more grocery stores, supermarkets and full-service restaurants, too. And there is no relationship between the type of food being sold in a neighborhood and obesity among its children and adolescents.

Indeed this research tells us that:

Within a couple of miles of almost any urban neighborhood, “you can get basically any type of food"

Perhaps it's different here in Bradford? Somehow I doubt it - most of the City's poorest districts are within a short walk of the city centre where the wonderful John Street Market sits. And there are any number of corner shops, mini-markets and such - almost all selling fresh fruit and vegetables in abundance.

If people aren't eating fresh fruit and vegetables it isn't for lack of availability! And it certainly looks like there's not much of a link with obesity (although it defeats any logic for there to be such a link). Truth be told, the obesity problem is overstated by the assorted nannying fussbuckets who campaign on these things but such as it is, obesity is caused by choices people make rather than dysfunction within the market or the unfairness of society.

Rather than blaming society or seeking for a convenient business scapegoat, we should perhaps ask why it is that some people get so very fat. And try to help them with their problem rather than making up myths about obesity and its causes. To be pretty blunt, this study shows once again that obesity is not a public health problem but something that relates to the health (or ill-health) of individuals and the choices they make in their lives.

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Entering an Age of Disapproval

Over the weekend my reaction to the news that David Cameron was insisting on introducing a minimum price for alcohol fluctuated between resignation, anger and cynicism. Resignation at the seeming inevitability of the nannying fussbucket’s victory. Anger that a Conservative prime minister thinks it OK to muck about with prices for the purpose of social engineering. And cynicism in that Cameron appears to be chucking some red meat to the health lobby ahead of the final stages of the Health Bill’s progress through parliament.

With the new week came the dawning realisation that Cameron is merely a mirror of a depressing age – his championing of nannying fussbucketry reflects his penchant for government by dinner party and a resulting tendency for Mumsnet-style kneejerk reactions to perceived problems in “society”.

It’s not just minimum pricing for alcohol, the PM has moaned about chocolate oranges in W H Smiths, the “premature sexualisation” of girls (but for some reason not boys) and has proposed ‘fat taxes’ on the ‘most unhealthy foods’.  Whenever Cameron wants a positive headline he turns to the judgement of other people’s lifestyles and other people’s choices. And in doing this he is simply reflecting the age in which we now live.

We have entered an “Age of Disapproval” – after several decades of growing openness, personal freedom and choice, society has looked at itself and decided it doesn’t approve. Where once liberalisation was applauded, it is now seen as license, as an encouragement to decadent hedonism. We have created a new set of sins – things of which we disapprove.

A few years ago a good night out was something good – a chance to blow away some cobwebs, let our hair down and enjoy ourselves. Now it’s binge-drinking and it's unhealthy - a terrible burden on society and especially on that most sacred of sacred cows, the National Health Service.

There was a time in all our lives when the thing that hit the spot was a full English breakfast – bacon, sausage, fried eggs, hash browns or fried bread, maybe a bit of black pudding and perhaps some beans. After that big night out this great meal set us right again. Now these meals are cancer-giving, artery-clogging and sinful – we disapprove of such indulgence with talk of rising obesity and, you’ve guessed it, the great cost to the NHS of such a terrible diet.

Not so far back in time, we saw smoking as a bad habit but tolerated the smoker – it was their choice after all. We liked the fact that places made provision for smokers while allowing non-smokers space as well. Today, smoking sits as the thing we disapprove of the most. And we don’t stop at condemning the sin – we ostracise and exclude the sinner as well, casting them out into the cold and rain, making them second-class citizens, like pariahs.

Everywhere we look, we see disapproval – complaints about the covers of so-called ‘lads mags’, frowning criticism of models for being too thin and condemnation of mothers for putting a cream egg in their child’s lunchbox. Politicians, doctors, scientists, journalists and pundits fall over each other to express disapproval of the choices other people make. And this disapproval is followed by calls for action to prevent such evil from spreading – whether we’re talking about school dinners, the ‘sexualisation’ of children or me having a very large whisky at the end of a long day.

Right now the pendulum is swinging away from personal choice and private freedom towards a controlling state and society. The “Age of Disapproval” chalks up a new victory with each passing day – with every one of these little wins making society a little less free and life for so many a little less pleasant.

But this is fine for the New Puritans, prohibitionists and healthy living fanatics – it means that people are directed towards an approved, purposeful and sober life and away from indulgent, hedonism and pleasure for the sheer joy of its experience.

It isn’t a better world. It is a dreary, depressing, controlling culture where we may live a little longer but that extra will be free from pleasure, without the chance of indulgence.

It truly is an “Age of Disapproval”.

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It's all Peppa Pig's fault isn't it?

Fruit & Veg shop in Radda in Chianti - featuring porcini, of course!

It seem that, in the European "eat up your greens now dear" league, us Brits are languishing near the bottom (or so the European Commission - green scoffers all - tell us):

Britons are not eating enough fruit and vegetables despite nutritional advice being widely available, a study suggests. A review of eating habits in 19 EU countries put the UK in 14th place*.

And, we're told that this is a problem - not eating up our greens puts us at risk:

The EUFIC said that high intakes of fruit and vegetables were associated with a lower risk of chronic diseases, particularly cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes and certain cancers.

Apparently the Poles are top (not surprising as the Polish diet does seem to consist largely of cabbage and potato). Which means that they're living longer of course? It would seem not - the average Briton (even with all those Glaswegians keeling over at 55) lives just over 79 years whereas the average Pole only makes it to his or her 76th year.

What about heart attacks then - eating up our greens means we don't get these doesn't it?

According to the latest WHO data published in April 2011 Coronary Heart Disease Deaths in Poland reached 79,036 or 26.93% of total deaths. The age adjusted Death Rate is 122.40 per 100,000 of population ranks Poland #78 in the world

..and the UK? The same source gives our age adjusted death rate as 68.8 per 100,000. More to the point, that is better that three of the four top green scoffers in Europe (Germany and Austria being the other two).

Maybe eating greens is good for us (certainly a diet without fruit and veg would be unbearably dull) but blandly reporting data - it seems pretty dodgy data - on eating greens seems to miss the point. Our life expectancy is rising, our rates of coronary heart disease are falling and yet we don't eat as much green stuff as places with a cultural predilection for cabbage.

Any way it's all Peppa Pig's fault isn't it?


*Most football supporters would prefer to characterise this position in the league as "mid-table" unless, of course, it is the team they hate, in which case it is "risking relegation".

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Sorry Tim but every day's a feast day in our house!

For lots of trendy foodie types – the locavores and such – Tim Lang is the man. This Professor churns out media friendly material that is seized on by the advocates of “meat free” and vegetarian lives. Now this man wants us only to eat meat on feast days - for the good of our health!  Professor Lang is wrong – massively and monumentally wrong:

Prof Lang, who advises the World Health Organisation, as well as the Department for Environment, on food policy, said eating too much meat can lead to serious health issues such as obesity, heart disease and type 2 diabetes.

Taking these things in order:

Eating “too much meat” isn’t the cause of obesity. Even the dear old NHS doesn’t list meat as a cause of obesity. In pretty general terms obesity results from ingesting more calories that you can use. And the main source of those calories isn’t meat, it’s processed carbohydrates – bread, pasta, pastry, cake, chocolate bars.

Eating “too much meat” isn’t a major risk factor in heart disease. Here from Scientific American:

Now a spate of new research, including a meta-analysis of nearly two dozen studies, suggests a reason why: investigators may have picked the wrong culprit. Processed carbohydrates, which many Americans eat today in place of fat, may increase the risk of obesity, diabetes and heart disease more than fat does.

OK that focuses on how saturated fats aren’t the culprit. But nowhere, not one jot, of evidence exists that shows meat to be a serious risk factor in heart disease.

And neither is meat the main risk factor in Diabetes 2. As Diabetes UK point out the risk factors for the condition include:

1. A close member of your family has Type 2 diabetes (parent or brother or sister).
2. You're overweight or if your waist is 31.5 inches or over for women; 35 inches or over for Asian men and 37 inches or over for white and black men.
3. You have high blood pressure or you've had a heart attack or a stroke.
4. You're a woman with polycystic ovary syndrome and you are overweight.
5. You've been told you have impaired glucose tolerance or impaired fasting glycaemia.
6. If you're a woman and you've had gestational diabetes.
7. You have severe mental health problems.

Nowhere there does the word “meat” appear.

The problem isn’t just that Professor Lamb is wrong but that his nonsense (and I’ve focused on the idiocy of his health claims – the same could be said of his economic and environmental arguments) is regurgitated by the media without challenge or criticism. The Professor is an “expert” and not to be questioned.

It really is time journalists began to do their job. Like asking people like Professor Lang to provide some real evidence for their claims rather than just giving them a great headline and a thousand uncritical words.

And here every day is a feast day!

 

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Even Cancer Research UK admit alcohol consumption is falling?

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Among all the media excitement about how fags, booze and burgers are giving us cancer it appears that the rather nuanced nature (other than on smoking - actually smoking not passive smoking) of the Cancer Research UK work is somewhat overlooked. However, I was struck by this bit (see I've read it - rather than just the CRUK press release):

In fact, data from the national General Lifestyle Survey (Robinson and Bugler, 2010) show that the average number of units of alcohol consumed in a week rose in the 1990s to a peak in the period 2000–2002 of around 17 units for men, and 7.5 units for women, but has fallen since that time in both sexes. The proportion of men and women drinking more than the recommended maximum (21 units a week in men and 14 units in women) has also been falling. The fall in consumption occurred among men and women in all age groups, but was most evident among those aged 16–24. It is quite possible, therefore, that the burden of alcohol-related cancers is around its maximum at present, and will fall in future.

Got that folks.

And get this - two-thirds of cancers are NOT the result of smoking, drinking or bad diet. That's a thought, eh?

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...more misleading obesity claims and some outright nonsense from British Heart Foundation

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Now I don't want to be boring but you can't make the assumption that the typical diet of a teenager will either remain typical throughout their subsequent life or lead to obesity. Yet that is precisely the scare story that the British Heart Foundation are peddling:

Obesity treatment in the UK could become more widespread in the future due to the unhealthy diet of this generation of children.

This is the main conclusion from new research by the British Heart Foundation (BHF), which conducted a survey on the eating habits of 2,000 secondary school pupils.

According to the results, the average youngster is consuming one fizzy drink, one chocolate bar, one packet of crisps and one bag of chewy sweets every day.

And of course more and more of these children are now "obese":

Data collected as part of the Health Survey for England shows that in 2008 the rate of child obesity in children aged two to ten was 13.9 per cent -the lowest reported figure since 2001 - compared with 15.5 per cent in 2006 and 2007 and 17.3 per cent in 2005.

Presumably, the kids are stocking up on the fatty stuff only once they pass 10?

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%.

So we have slightly thinner children and slightly thinner parents - it's just the teenagers who are fat!

Yet the senior dietitian from BHF thinks all these children will die younger than their parents - perhaps the most misleading, disingenuous piece of scaremongering going:

"This generation of children may not live longer than their parents due to the implications of their lifestyle on levels of obesity, type 2 diabetes and heart disease,"

People like this should be held to account for this sort of statement - they have no evidence at all to support the contention as average lifespans continue to rise year on year.

 

So there has to be a complete reverse in this trend - as well as a reverse in similar declines in childhood deaths, deaths in young adulthood and deaths in middle age. Or else this "dietitian" is simply trying to scare us (and the government) into handing over lots of cash so she and her fellow new Puritans can have a whole career nannying us about what we eat. 

I think that's about the sum of it really!

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This might be good news...

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...but I'm not holding my breath:

The government has disbanded its expert advisory group on obesity. The group advised on policy as well as its implementation and evaluation. The Department of Health said new advisory arrangements were being brought in for obesity.

It seems there will be:

...a new National Ambition Review Group on obesity, which will bring together key partners and experts from the academic and scientific field.

Sounds like Lansley is good to his word about involving the food industry - probably a good thing.

But then again, we don't actually have an "obesity crisis"!

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Just as salt doesn't cause heart disease, sugar doesn't make children hyper...

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Or so it seems...

Let’s cut to the chase: sugar doesn’t make kids hyper. There have been at least twelve trials of various diets investigating different levels of sugar in children’s diets. That’s more studies than are often done on drugs. None of them detected any differences in behavior between children who had eaten sugar and those who hadn’t. These studies included sugar from candy, chocolate, and natural sources. Some of them were short-term, and some of them were long term. Some of them focused on children with ADHD. Some of them even included only children who were considered “sensitive” to sugar. In all of them, children did not behave differently after eating something full of sugar or something sugar-free….

Pretty simple and conclusive.

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Why does no-one in the media ever question what these people say?

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The "salt is evil' lobby have found a new target - bread:

A third of breads contain more salt than recommended under guidelines being introduced next year, a survey found.

Most breads were within the current guidelines of 1.1g of salt per 100g - but this is being cut to 1g per 100g.
Campaign for Action on Salt and Health (Cash), which looked at 300 breads, said it was "outrageous" that bread contained even the current level.

This is more junk science - there's very little evidence that fingers salt as a cause of high blood pressure yet the  media and worshippers at the Church of Public Health persist in the 'salt is bad for you line.

People who ate lots of salt were not more likely to get high blood pressure, and were less likely to die of heart disease than those with a low salt intake, in a new European study.

The findings "certainly do not support the current recommendation to lower salt intake in the general population," study author Dr. Jan Staessen, of the University of Leuven in Belgium, told Reuters Health.

Perhaps one day we'll start looking at the science?

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Let your kids eat red meat, fats and milk - it's good for them

The prohibitionists, vegetarians, vegans and food faddists are, as always, wrong.

It seems that under pressure from these stupid faddists we're half staving out children. let them eat cake if they want to!

"And parents really shouldn't feel too anxious about puddings - sponge and custard is a good dessert to offer, surprising as that may sound," says Jessica Williams, a paediatric dietitian.