Demi
Sun, Nov-25-07, 01:26
The Sunday Times
London, UK
25 November, 2007
Oh please, he’s fit, not fat
Rachel Johnson
It is something we are all wearily getting used to. One week, sun exposure leads to skin cancer; the next week it supplies the body with vital shots of vitamin D. One week, a modest tipple consigns us to an early grave; the next, a daily glass of red wine protects your heart.
Frankly, I don’t know why we all don’t just turn the page and go straight to the real, serious news we can trust — you know, about Lynne Franks in I’m A Celebrity or which young royal has been snogging in Boujis. I feel like lunging at the off button every time I hear the Radio 4 newsreader enunciate in a bulletin: “An authoritative new medical study suggests that contrary to previous research . . .”
Most recently it has been fatties who’ve been on the research switchback. One week, the World Cancer Research Fund and the American Institute for Cancer Research reported that women who put on any weight at all were exposing themselves to a menu of deadly cancers. Then, sure as night follows day, the next we were treated to the news that being a little lardycake — as opposed to a wobbling blubber-mountain in elasticated slacks — was positively life-enhancing.
The Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta found that being overweight was “associated with significantly decreased all-cause mortality overall” and Katherine Flegal, the lead researcher, announced that the “take-home message” (I just love that — as if it’s just another million-calorie jumbo carton of popcorn chicken) was that being a bit tubby posed no heightened risk of cancer. If you live fat, you do not die young after all.
Mmm. Then, to top it all, The Investigation on Radio 4* last week debunked the whole underpinning of the entire obesity debate by questioning the value of the British body mass index (BMI) as a benchmark. According to Simon Cox, the reporter, the BMI is “built on sand” and is guaranteed to pin the label of “obese” or even “morbidly obese” on healthy, rugby-playing, husky males — just like him, as it happens — as well as a whole load of celebrities who look as if they need feeding up, like Brad Pitt.
He also said that if our BMI was closer to the international one, it would instantly cut the number of obese children in Britain by half (to the great relief of the mothers who, among other charges last week, were told it was their fault that their kids were fat, because they went out to work while their offspring turned to food in their irresponsible absence).
Don’t worry. I have no light to shed on the obesity and mortality debate, not being a doctor or a scientist.
I might just note, en passant, that it is no accident that once the medical establishment had eradicated smoking as public health threat number one, it had to find a substitute, just as Sir James Goldsmith once said that when a man marries his mistress, he creates a vacancy. So the void created by the end of smoking has been amply filled by obesity.
This is the perfect cause for members of the medical profession for, as they like to point out, it is as serious a time bomb as global warming. What this means is, of course, that treatment cannot be left to the individual but must be a matter for governments and paid public health policy experts. Its seriousness sanctions any amount of nannying and bullying about what we put in our mouths and our children’s mouths. The comparison of the obesity crisis to global warming, not to mention the endless supply of supposed medical “news”, also helps to justify the continued flow of money into research funds at a time when — far from dying young from preventable illnesses, we in the western world seem to go on and on, fat or thin, like Duracell bunnies, far longer than is necessary.
That’s why I’m fed up with hearing “hospital consultants are seeing fewer patients and working shorter hours for more money” (that was last week) or “a new medical report shows . . .” (every week). I’d like to hear this: “Doctors have decided to abandon the continuous production of contradictory and alarming medical research and to spend more time instead treating patients.”
I live (till at least 95, I expect, even though I am no skinny minnie, eat bacon butties and drink like a fish) in hope.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/rachel_johnson/article2935441.ece
* You can read about the programme here:
http://forum.lowcarber.org/showthread.php?t=355928
London, UK
25 November, 2007
Oh please, he’s fit, not fat
Rachel Johnson
It is something we are all wearily getting used to. One week, sun exposure leads to skin cancer; the next week it supplies the body with vital shots of vitamin D. One week, a modest tipple consigns us to an early grave; the next, a daily glass of red wine protects your heart.
Frankly, I don’t know why we all don’t just turn the page and go straight to the real, serious news we can trust — you know, about Lynne Franks in I’m A Celebrity or which young royal has been snogging in Boujis. I feel like lunging at the off button every time I hear the Radio 4 newsreader enunciate in a bulletin: “An authoritative new medical study suggests that contrary to previous research . . .”
Most recently it has been fatties who’ve been on the research switchback. One week, the World Cancer Research Fund and the American Institute for Cancer Research reported that women who put on any weight at all were exposing themselves to a menu of deadly cancers. Then, sure as night follows day, the next we were treated to the news that being a little lardycake — as opposed to a wobbling blubber-mountain in elasticated slacks — was positively life-enhancing.
The Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta found that being overweight was “associated with significantly decreased all-cause mortality overall” and Katherine Flegal, the lead researcher, announced that the “take-home message” (I just love that — as if it’s just another million-calorie jumbo carton of popcorn chicken) was that being a bit tubby posed no heightened risk of cancer. If you live fat, you do not die young after all.
Mmm. Then, to top it all, The Investigation on Radio 4* last week debunked the whole underpinning of the entire obesity debate by questioning the value of the British body mass index (BMI) as a benchmark. According to Simon Cox, the reporter, the BMI is “built on sand” and is guaranteed to pin the label of “obese” or even “morbidly obese” on healthy, rugby-playing, husky males — just like him, as it happens — as well as a whole load of celebrities who look as if they need feeding up, like Brad Pitt.
He also said that if our BMI was closer to the international one, it would instantly cut the number of obese children in Britain by half (to the great relief of the mothers who, among other charges last week, were told it was their fault that their kids were fat, because they went out to work while their offspring turned to food in their irresponsible absence).
Don’t worry. I have no light to shed on the obesity and mortality debate, not being a doctor or a scientist.
I might just note, en passant, that it is no accident that once the medical establishment had eradicated smoking as public health threat number one, it had to find a substitute, just as Sir James Goldsmith once said that when a man marries his mistress, he creates a vacancy. So the void created by the end of smoking has been amply filled by obesity.
This is the perfect cause for members of the medical profession for, as they like to point out, it is as serious a time bomb as global warming. What this means is, of course, that treatment cannot be left to the individual but must be a matter for governments and paid public health policy experts. Its seriousness sanctions any amount of nannying and bullying about what we put in our mouths and our children’s mouths. The comparison of the obesity crisis to global warming, not to mention the endless supply of supposed medical “news”, also helps to justify the continued flow of money into research funds at a time when — far from dying young from preventable illnesses, we in the western world seem to go on and on, fat or thin, like Duracell bunnies, far longer than is necessary.
That’s why I’m fed up with hearing “hospital consultants are seeing fewer patients and working shorter hours for more money” (that was last week) or “a new medical report shows . . .” (every week). I’d like to hear this: “Doctors have decided to abandon the continuous production of contradictory and alarming medical research and to spend more time instead treating patients.”
I live (till at least 95, I expect, even though I am no skinny minnie, eat bacon butties and drink like a fish) in hope.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/rachel_johnson/article2935441.ece
* You can read about the programme here:
http://forum.lowcarber.org/showthread.php?t=355928