So you're fat? It's not your fault you know.

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Or so says the Government's obesity 'tzar', Susan Jebb, professor of diet and population health at the University of Oxford:

"Obesity has increased so greatly over the last few decades. That's not a national collapse in willpower. It's something about our environment that has changed," she said.

"You need in some cases a superhuman effort to reduce your food intake. Is that their fault? I don't think it is."

Let's get one thing out of the way. This isn't complete bollocks but the environmental change that Professor Jebb thinks is the problem, isn't the cause. No-one is disputing that there are genetic differences in propensity for weight gain, we've known that for decades. Nor is anyone disputing that some people have less (or more) willpower than others, that socialisation - typically parental attitudes and diet - is important and that there is a mountain of misinformation about health and diet.

The problem is that our increased rates of obesity didn't take place in an environment of rising calorie consumption. And whatever fad or fancy you subscribe to in this debate, it is indisputable that the reason for weight gain is consuming more calories than you use. Any sort of calorie, your body doesn't make any distinction between sources. There isn't such a thing as an unhealthy food, just unhealthy diets.

Two things have changed. Firstly (and we'll get this one out of the the way) we are, on average, older and older people are, again on average, fatter than younger people. This isn't a problem (unless you see sub-optimal birth rates as a problem).

The other change is that we live a vastly more sedentary life than we did three or more decades ago. Coca-cola even ran an ad featuring these differences (and, as ever, ad men were spot on). And the environmental change is striking:

In 1970, 2 in 10 working Americans were in jobs requiring only light activity (predominantly sitting at a desk), whereas 3 in 10 were in jobs requiring high-energy output (eg, construction, manufacturing, farming). By 2000, more than 4 in 10 adults were in light-activity jobs, whereas 2 in 10 were in high-activity jobs. Moreover, during the past 20 years, total screen time (ie, using computers, watching television, playing video games) has increased dramatically. In 2003, nearly 6 in 10 working adults used a computer on the job and more than 9 in 10 children used computers in school (kindergarten through grade 12). Between 1989 and 2009, the number of households with a computer and Internet access increased from 15% to 69%. Other significant contributors to daily sitting time—watching television and driving personal vehicles—are at all-time highs, with estimates of nearly 4 hours and 1 hour, respectively

This isn't about whether we do that half hour of 'physical activity' we're encouraged to partake of - that's a red herring. This is about the totality of our lives, about the elimination of activity from more and more tasks. Think about putting a screw in - we've now replaced the screwdriver requiring a vigorous physical act with a power tool. Multiply that across everything from beating eggs through to buying a weeks groceries and we've a striking picture of decreased activity.

We can't deal with this problem (although it isn't really a problem, is it) by taking up jogging. Nor can we wind back from the efficiency and productivity gain - in every aspect of life - that technology brings. And we can't force people to take up a sport, go for bracing country walks or sign up to a gym - not when there's a great Netflix box set just out. We can begin to design environments that promote movement - not just at work bearing in mind that this takes up less than a fifth of a typical week. Plus we can (since we're talking about weight here) reduce our total calorie intake.

Indeed we have reduced how much we eat:



So, if we want to do something about the 'obesogenic' environment, we don't do it by banning fast food shops, taxing sugar or forcing children to eat almost completely nutrition-free salads for dinner. No, we do it by designing in physical movement - stairs instead of escalators, public transport instead of cars, proper going-out-of-the-office lunchtimes. A thousand and one little bits of change that mean people move a bit more.

It might just work. What I know for sure is that Professor Jubb's anti-food, anti-pleasure agenda won't make a jot of difference (except to raise the ire - and blood pressure - a people who want a little pleasure in their lives). And, remember, you all have agency - you can choose. You don't have to be fat. If you are, it really is mostly down to your choice.


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Fat girls, thin girls - our confusing message to young women about weight needs to stop.

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For a decade and more we've been told that the fashion industry, with its too-thin models and obsession with superficial image, has presented an unattainable body-image ideal to young people and especially to girls.

Here's an article from The Guardian in 2000:

British doctors yesterday called on the media to use female models with more realistically proportioned bodies instead of "abnormally thin" women who contributed to the rise in the numbers of people suffering from eating disorders.

A report by the British Medical Association claimed that the promotion of rake-thin models such as Kate Moss and Jodie Kidd was creating a distorted body image which young women tried to imitate. It suggested that the media can trigger and perpetuate the disease.

We have, since that time, been regaled with seemingly endless elaborations on this viewpoint - from the use of retouching in photography to cosmetic surgery - all repeating the accusation that the fashion industry presents an 'unhealthy' body image. Not only is there the direct link to eating disorders like anorexia or bulimia but we have suggested links to depression, suicide, underperformance at school and even sexual dysfunction.

Throughout this time a parallel world can be seen - one where girls are ever more overweight. Here, again from The Guardian:

The increase in obesity accelerated sharply in 2004, especially among girls, the survey said. Figures for the 11-15 age group showed the proportion of obese girls grew from 15.4% in 1995 to 22.1% in 2003. But in 2004 it shot up to 26.7%.

Over the same period, the proportion of girls who were overweight, but not enough to qualify as obese, increased from 12.6% to 14.8%. In 2004 a total of 46% of girls and 30.5% of boys were either overweight or obese.

So while we were ever more angst-ridden about Kate Moss being too skinny, the vulnerable cohort of teenaged girls was chowing down and piling on the pounds. If you asked these girls whether they want to look like Kate Moss they give the honest answer - yes - and then order another milkshake. The evidence suggests that skinny models have - at the aggregate level - had no impact at all on the weight of girls.

All this brings us right up to date with the latest piece of ridiculous nannying fussbucketry from Dame Sally Davies, the government's "Chief Medical Officer":

Dame Sally Davies wants the obesity crisis in women to be classed alongside flooding and major outbreaks of disease – as well as the threat from violent extremism.

So - despite the malign impact of Jodie Kidd - the female population are a bunch of unhealthy lard-buckets. So much so that the Chief Medical Officer wants to define it as a national crisis. So much for anything being the fashion industry's fault. But wait:

The use of plus-sized models in advertising campaigns may be fuelling the obesity epidemic, experts have warned.

A new study, by business and marketing researchers, suggested that using images of larger body types 'encourages the idea that being overweight is acceptable'.

Using fewer images of models who are underweight and aesthetically flawless can have a detrimental effect on the public's lifestyle and eating behaviour, researchers said.

Ha - gotcha! We can all relax - the use of fat models makes being fat seem OK meaning that all the girls are obese. Or at least the ones who aren't anorexic or bulimic because they want to look like a contestant on Britain's Next Top Model.

Perhaps what's needed here is a bit of balance. Instead of giving young women an message that they're too fat one day and too thin the next we should maybe try being honest about all this weight and health stuff. Such as that people who, on our standard measure, are overweight are likely to live longer than those at so-called 'normal' weight. And that so long as such folk are fit and active there really aren't any negatives to being what the nannying fussbuckets call "overweight".

What we need to stop is this implication that there's some sort of perfect weight - somewhere between Cara Delavigne and Adele. Instead we should focus on how active (not sporty but active) people are and whether their diet is balanced. We don't need sugar taxes, advertising bans or lectures from Dame Sally Davies. What we need is some common sense and a sensible, affirmative message to young women (and young men for that matter) about how to get healthy and stay healthy.

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Nannying fussbucketry makes people fat!

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Is the obesity "epidemic" the fussbuckets love talking about made worse by their stigmatising being overweight? Just might be:

Exposure to weight-stigmatizing news articles caused self-perceived overweight women, but not women who did not perceive themselves as overweight, to consume more calories and feel less capable of controlling their eating than exposure to non-stigmatizing articles. Weight-stigmatizing articles also increased concerns about being a target of stigma among both self-perceived overweight and non-overweight women. Findings suggest that social messages targeted at combating obesity may have paradoxical and undesired effects.

A period of silence from those nannying nutritionists and sugar fascists is in order!

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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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More on the obesity crisis...

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...that isn't:

“The latest figures suggest that overweight and obesity rates across the district have fallen a little since last year for Year Six pupils, and the number of healthy weight children at Year 6 age has also improved slightly.

“There has also been an improvement in the number of underweight children, with fewer in both reception and Year Six. Overall, no area is getting significantly worse..."

Which of course doesn't stop the fussbuckets saying this:

...childhood obesity remains a significant issue and we continue to take this problem extremely seriously.

Well you would, I guess, since that's what you're paid to do. Truth is that without fat taxes, snarky anti-sugar campaigns and health fascist controls on the contents of lunch boxes, we're seeing at worst a stable situation and mor elikely a decline.

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