Obesity is just poor decision-making!

I agree with Liz Truss. People are now fully aware of the dangers of poor diet and should be able to decide for themselves what to eat.
My local corner shop sells more unhealthy snacks and fizzy drinks than anything else. I presume this reflects the local diet. The discarded litter wrappers indicates the same thing!. The shops sell what people want to buy. They do have a choice as there is also a greengrocer and a butcher on the same street. They are not restricted to spending their money on sugary snacks....they choose to.

But people make decisions based on unseen influencers.

The power of commercial companies is both immense and secret, to influence people's decisions.

Good luck with this thread, CvD66. I hope the first response doesn't set a trend for subsequent responses.

For " decisions" read also "choices". Even bossy people like Mrs Truss have been influenced by others.

It's 50p for a packet of custard cream or 60p for a whole cucumber, which is going to fill you up more if that is all you have in your pocket for the rest of the day?

If it were only that simple. Sometimes bad choices and lack of education, sure. Other times poverty can be a factor. Healthy food is a lot more expensive. Sometimes medical issues, medications, hormones, genetics all play a role. I put on weight after a major life trauma (not obese, but still..). The doctor even told me I wouldn't be able to lose it until the trauma responses settled down. The problem is multifaceted and complex.

People with poor long term prospects are likely to go for quick fixes that make them feel better straight away. Whether that be junk food, drink or drugs.
It's easy to stick to healthy eating when money isnt a problem and you have things to look forward to in life, when you have a fancy holiday and maybe a couple of mini breaks lined up and you live in a big house with a beautiful garden and can afford to socialise.
I don't think educating peoplle on healthy eating is the answer. Don't know what the answer is though

It’s a huge problem and getting worse. We are almost getting to the point where being overweight is the norm. We only have to look around us to see just how things have changed over the years.
It’s shameful that billions of NHS money is taken up treating entirely preventable obesity related diseases.

How have we got to the situation that people have so little self control that they submit themselves to surgery to physically reduce the size of their stomach and thereby limit the amount of food they can consume ?

It’s an insane situation but apparently it’s cost effective for the NHS to do these operations, rather than having to treat all these diseases which crop up as people get fatter and fatter.

I don’t apologise for my harsh words.
There has been too much pussyfooting around this problem for years.

Any dietician and scientist would tell you that our relationship to food is far more complicated.

They do not yet understand it.

And the trend amongst tubby young ones banging on about ‘body positivity’ doesn’t help.

There are plenty of overweight/obese wealthy people, I think it is down to self control rather than money.

Healthy eating/lifestyle has been taught in schools for decades, I left in the 70’s and it was definitely on part of what is now called PSE. The percentage of people in the U.K. who do not know about healthy eating and portion control must be minimal. (I am not including those with health issues or SEND)

People reach for food for numerous reasons, it is not as simple as big brother monitoring our shopping and therefore eating habits.

Yes, it's because poor people are idle, uneducated, and greedy/selfish.

I expect those same reasons can be applied to the porky well off people, too.

Truss government is now overturning. Their argument: people don’t need nannying, they can make decisions for themselves.

Government have been telling us what's good to eat, what's bad to eat, not to eat too much of this and that, but eat more of this and that for as long as I can remember.

It hasn't helped at all. So maybe Truss govt has a point: government interference on this issue is a waste of taxpayers' money.

Medical research is also finding genetic reasons why some people gain more weight than others.

It is such a cliche for the smug so and sos whose genetic inheritance contributes to their enviably slim figures to blame everyone elses overweight on selfish ill disciplined life styles.

No, I am not overweight, but there are members of my family, who are in their 50s, active (swimming 10 plus miles a week) plus wild swimming, whose blood pressure, and sugar levels are at levels that make doctors smile, yet despite a sensible diet are still overweight and have been since birth.

Whitewavemark2

Any dietician and scientist would tell you that our relationship to food is far more complicated.

They do not yet understand it.

This is sensible. Until very recently in human history, most people only ever got just enough to eat. Fatness was a sign of wealth – having access to more food than you needed.

Now that there is a super-abundance of food available our natural eat-now-starve-later approach to food, which served pretty well in the past when most people could eat as much as they could get hold of and not grow fat, doesn't work any more

Yes, absolutely and our systems are still geared to a high degree to Stone Age diet.

So a diet of largely vegetables, seeds and nuts with the odd bit of fatty meat thrown in is our “natural” diet.

JenniferEccles asks:

How have we got to the situation that people have so little self control that they submit themselves to surgery to physically reduce the size of their stomach and thereby limit the amount of food they can consume ?

I would guess that they "submit themselves to surgery" as a last resort when they know it's a case of do this or die!
Many of them have tried to diet and been repeatedly unsuccessful. There are biological, environmental and cultural drivers in action here... not just ^self control*.

You may be interested to read this for example:
www.cdc.gov/genomics/resources/diseases/obesity/index.htm

In my childhood fatness was a sign of poverty. The women in poor families living on bread and margerine and sugar so that all the food of high nutritional value went to the men in the family, then the children.

When I was 5 I moved form a comfortable area of London, to close to the dividing line between a comfortable and poorer area of housing in Carlisle. The first thing I noticed were all the fat women. I had not seen many fat women in London. Some years later when I asked about this, this is what I was told. Since then I have seen no evidence to contradict this. The poorer an area the larger the proportion of overweight women and children.

There is also lots of evidence linking obesity to socio-economic factors so you aren't quite right GrannyGravy13 when you say there are plenty of obese wealthy people. The statistics here in the UK show that the obesity "gap" between wealth and poverty is obvious for men and very wide for women.
We have the largest obesity gap in Europe and it's wider even than America.

Exactly so, M0nica.

Lifestyle doesn't help. Many people working full time sitting at computers all day, parents too busy to cook from scratch, cars, children not playing in streets, expensive gyms etc mean we don't exercise enough.

Our Dutch friends were horrified at the number of overweight people that they saw on a recent visit. Of course as a nation,they cycle a lot, so maybe that's how they mostly manage to keep their weight down.

I do a weekly shop for ourselves, lots of fresh fruit, veg,fish etc.
I make all my own bread even my own butter and we don’t eat processed foods.
I spend around £80 a week for two people.
We have wealth, education and time on our side.

I do a food bank shop weekly, I follow a well researched list, we are asked not to deviate.
Here’s some of the the list; Tinned meat, tinned, fish, pasta, pasta sauce,tinned veg, jam, tinned puddings,biscuits,UHT milk,cereals.
It costs between £12 and £15.
Not very appealing is it?
The list is based on people only being able to afford to cook in a microwave and possibly not being able to afford to run a fridge.
If I was living off that diet I’m sure I would be overweight, unhealthy and miserable.

I’d want to pop a bottle of wine in with that list Sago. Life is miserable enough for some who are struggling. Bring on the treats! Mind you ‘rules are rules’ I suppose.