Reality TV, that neanderthal peek into freak lives, is going to explore the morbidly obese on Wednesday night. Have dinner early, you won’t feel like eating later.
I am fascinated by some of the statistics that have emerged from the press release.
Once you reach the magic weight of 47 stone, as some of the participants have done, it requires 5,000 calories a day to maintain that weight. They don’t explain the tipping point, but I imagine that in order to reach that weight, you must be consuming in excess of 5,000 calories a day. You can’t walk, you can’t wash yourself, and you require special furniture in order to exist. Before anybody suggests it, the consultant in charge of the ward where this is being filmed has dismissed any question of ‘medical reasons’ for his patient’s obesity.
If you can’t walk, and you can’t wash, I think it is fair to assume that you are not going out to work either – so my question is, who is paying for those 5,000 calories a day?
We are told that the reason there is so much obesity is that ‘the poor and deprived’ cannot afford decent food and exist on a diet of Big Macs. Fair enough, let’s look at the cost of Big Mac’s.
A Big Mac costs £2.49. It provides 540 calories – so you need at least ten every day to increase your weight. £24.90 a day. Or £174 a week. Yet even the long term incapacity benefit is only £99 a week. Presumably you also need to pay someone to deliver them to you. How can this be achieved on benefits that we are told cannot be cut without causing extreme hardship? Can anybody explain how the obese are managing to afford 5,000 calories a day? There’s many a pensioner who would love to know.
Pensioners are having a particularly hard time at the moment; those who saved diligently throughout their working life in order not to be a burden on society or their family have found that interest on their savings is negligible. You would have to save a pension fund of around £300,000 in order to produce £174 a week for those Big Macs.
This is because for years, those who had no interest in saving £300,000 found their credit cards a useful source of the wherewithal for yet another pair of Manolo Blahniks or a personalised number plate for their Range Rover, and now interest rates have to be kept low so that those tottering around on the Manolo Blahniks don’t go bankrupt through the accumulated interest on their credit cards.
Pensioners, those who haven’t been arrested as paedophiles, are going without in order to save the financial skins of the Blahnik shoe wearers, who in turn are going without in order to finance the Big Macs of those wallowing at home – yet there is no riot.
The Greeks riot, the Spanish burn effigies of their leaders, the French paralyse the country at a moment’s notice – yet the British will sit down on Wednesday night and watch in awe as 47 stone waddles round their screen without so much as a murmur of discontent – nor will many question why it is that they are paying for this when they themselves are only able to afford a TV dinner for one…
Ms Raccoon lives in the Monbazillac area of South West France, renowned for its fine wines and gourmet food, so she frequently finds better things to do than sit in front of a computer all morning. She is liable to take off traveling at a moment's notice. Consequently this blog only gets updated these days when it is raining - and it doesn't rain very often round here...
{ 105 comments }
“Before anybody suggests it, the consultant in charge of the ward where this is being filmed has dismissed any question of ‘medical reasons’ for his patient’s obesity.”
Doesn’t need to be in a hospital then. Turf ‘im out!
Well spotted Julia!
Would the fork-lift truck fit through the ward doorway?
Or the consultant is ignorant, which is more likely. The NHS dietary advice is stuck in the ’60s. The last 50 years of scientific knowledge is blatantly ignored.
Read “Why we are fat” by Gary Taubes. It is a meta-analysis of all scientific dietary research since the ’50s.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6vpFV6Wkl4
Why waste time readingh a tome. Jasper Carrott explained it quite succinctly when he told us that the reason we get fat is because ourt mouths are bogger than our a&$£holes. What more information could anyone need?
I think he means that there is no physical medical problem that causes most people to gain weight it is simply overeating and not enough exersise but for people to allow themselves to become this over weight there must be something wrong with them, most probably mentally. There is, for the most part, not a physical medical problem that causes the weight gain in most people but once someone has allowed themselves to become morbidly obese they are at risk for a whole host of serious medical problems and that’s why it has to be treated. I agree that either the 47 stone man or who ever is feeding him must either be in debt upto their eyeballs, have a reasonable income or money saved away (or at least did before they blew it all on food). But I think this is, for the most part, the result of a serious mental illness.
“I agree that either the 47 stone man or who ever is feeding him must either be in debt upto their eyeballs, have a reasonable income or money saved away (or at least did before they blew it all on food). “
Oh, I think you’re ignoring the obvious fourth possibility there…
Having acted as a patient advocate some time ago I can confirm that if people get fat enough to persuade a doctor to sign them off as disabled they get special gluttony allowances as well as disabled living allowance and mobility allowance.
Nobody would get to 47 stone on basic income support.
Well it’s obvious he must be on income support or disability living allowance now, that would probably get him about the same as you’d get on a full time job at mimimum wage at most. I don’t know if he has a family or lives alone but I don’t think you could afford the amount of food it takes to become and stay THAT big on a fairly average income like that without gettin money or food from else where also. Remember you get people in America like this and I don’t think they have a benefit system the way we have – they obviously can’t work either, whose feeding/looking after them? Someone must be…
I’d imagine drug addicts and alcholics spend vast amounts of money they don’t or shouldn’t have or certainly shouldn’t be spending on there bad habits too (though it’s not like this guy can go out and steal) i’m sure someone must be helping him though, I doubt he could have ‘achieved’ this alone…
Why should pensioners pay for HIV/Aids treatment on the NH when, for most sufferers, it is acquired because of a lifestyle choice.
We could say the same about smoking related diseases, and as an adjunct to my reply to Julia – the obesity may not have a medical cause, but the obesity certainly results in a medical condition which is rightly treated by the NHS.
As a non-smoker, but one who readily acknowledges the right of those who do, to light up the demon weed, I am somewhat confused about the publicity of the cost to the NHS of smoking related diseases. The tax this Government receives from the sale of tobacco products is many time the whole budget of the NHS, not just the budget for dealing with smokers. So, it appears that smokers are paying for Brian’s Aids related treatment, cancers, obesity problems and mental health issues, yet are still seen as pariahs. There is the talk of ‘second-hand’ smoke causing illnesses, yet there is little evidence of this. Some years ago, my wife (who does smoke) and I were in transit in Zurich airport, waiting two and half hours to catch a plane to somewhere or other. We discovered that, apart from restaurants and cafes, the only place in the airport where you can sit down, is in the smoking lounge. Dreading the thought of sitting in a nicotine flavoured, fog-filled room (try Bangkok for that edifying experience), I was pleasantly surprised to see that due to the excellent ventilation, heating, and air-conditioning system, it was probably healthier sitting in the smoking lounge than outside. One Swiss lady, presumably accompanying a smoker, muttered about the dangers of the second-hand smoke, yet appeared unaware that she was sitting in a room, in a building, which was surrounded by hundreds of aeroplanes farting out shed-loads of aviation fuel fumes – perhaps the Swiss don’t do irony? This has shown that the technology is there and can be done in every airport in the world if the relevant authorities pulled their socks up, but instead, they whinge about smokers and the problems they are causing. Slightly off-topic, but on the same subject, a friend of mine in Australia has mentioned that a local ordinance banned people from smoking whilst driving within that community. The result was that several hundred people, many of whom don’t smoke, deliberately drove. attended council meetings, went to the pub or sat in cafes with cigarettes (unlit) in their mouths. The ordinance was cancelled and two of the ‘great and good’ stood down from office. The Australians certainly do do irony (and humour in their protests).
Penseivat
Before the Nanny-Nazis took over, I once did a consultancy job at a large tobacco company in whose offices smoking was almost compulsory and an ashtray was standard desk-top furniture – the only place smoking was banned was in the lifts.
They too had a ventilation system which worked – you wouldn’t have known you were in a smoking zone, the air was fresher and clearer than in most non-smoking offices. It can be done, but Nanny doesn’t want to do it.
I know this is veering off topic, but:
When smoking was permitted on aeroplanes, the air quality was good, as it was nearly 100% fresh air, discharged (with any smoke) at the tail end. This cost lots of money for the fuel to heat & pump it. The smoking ban was welcomed by airlines – they save perhaps 5% of their fuel costs now, because 90% of cabin air is recirculated (complete with airborne viruses). Also, CO2 levels are higher and may cause headaches or worse (DVT?).
See that person coughing their guts out? It doesn’t matter where you are sitting, you’ll be breathing in their (TB?) bugs soon.
I think I’ve just proved that smoking may be good for you!
“The tax this Government receives from the sale of tobacco products is many time the whole budget of the NHS, not just the budget for dealing with smokers”
As a smoker I would love to agree with you but this simply isn’t the case, as a ballpark the figures are closer to this
NHS costs – £100 billion
Smoking makes the government £10 billion
Smoking related diseases cost – £2 billion
‘The tax this Government receives from the sale of tobacco products is many time the whole budget of the NHS, not just the budget for dealing with smokers.’ I think tobacco taxes are about 10% of the NHS. But smokers do pay far more than even the overestimated costs of treating so called smoking related illnesses and therefore subsidise non smokers (and not only re medical treatment).
There are a lot of contradictions – e.g. assuming smokers die younger, there’d be fewer within the older generation needing NHS care or claiming longer term pensions. Taking it to an extreme conclusion, if everyone did the decent thing by dying shortly after retirement the savings would be immense. But the NHS prolongs life and consequently has to bear the cost of treating age related illness. Most of the cost will be from treating the c.75% of the population who aren’t smokers. Indeed, if no one smoked, the net cost would be far higher. What equivalent to tobacco duty do most of the non smokers those contribute, other than perhaps (a lot less) in the form of alcohol duty? And it’s not as though many smokers don’t pay the latter as well. It’s all become very, very tiresome.
@Penseivat
Just to clarify, I’m not receiving any of the treatments you ascribe to me and I feel very well thank you. May take this opportunity to wish a speedy and full recovery to anyone with those illnesses.
I have to disagree Anna, we could not say the same thing about smokers. Smokers by and large pay tax on their habit. Those who engage in practices which may give one HIV (unprotected homosexual sex, needle sharing etc) do not.
Obesity is often acquired because of a reckless lifestyle choice, like HIV.
As there is no negative financial consequence, the concept of the negative financial consequence (i.e, the so-called sin tax) is either invalidated or selectively applied and thus Brian’s point is valid, I think anyway. That said, I am a bit tired and it’s been a long old day so if my logic is ‘uncertain’ tonight, please forgive me.
But we oldies get lots of free pills from our friendly GP who insists that we need them. My blood pressure is slightly high, it has been about the same for the past five years or so, but the government has reduced the recommended figure, so I get a pill! Now my cholesterol is a wee bit above the recommended figure, so I get another pill. I get some acid reflux, so yet another pill, plus a further one to counteract the side-effects of the last one. I mentioned that I hadn’t been sleeping too well, so yet another pill in case I need it. Actually a glass of red wine before I go to bed is better than the last 3 pills, but I can’t get that on prescription! Sometime soon I will need a cataract operation, which I expect the NHS to provide.
I don’t worry too much about the costs of treatment of people with lifestyle diseases, one has only to look at their life expectancy figures to realise the state won’t be paying much in the way of a pension to many of these, whereas my wife and I with a reasonably healthy lifestyle can statistically expect a good many years ahead consuming NHS pills, drawing our pensions, using our bus passes and watching free TV. Not a bad deal really.
What I object to is the free treatment of all the asylum seekers, illegal immigrants and all the rest who have never contributed towards the NHS.
I think English Pensioner has a very valid point. However he had best be careful in expressing the views in his last sentence too freely, because he might offend someone!!!
It also leaves out all the members of the born inbred British working class, who’ve never done a stroke either…….
What I find interesting is that my local Health Centre has a dedicated asthma nurse to look after asthmatics like me and a dedicated obesity nurse to deal with the “obese”. I use quotes because not all her patients are going to be anything like the freaks featured in the programme; I was diagnosed as borderline obese on the basis of my weight to height ratio, and have since lost weight by taking to the Atkins diet.
So there must be a lot of it about to justify the taxpayers’ money being spent on this appointment. Mustn’t there?
Very good points raised. I’ve sometimes wondered the same. I watched a programme some time ago about a mother who brought her son McDonalds’ food whenever he demanded it. She was asked by the interviewer if she bore any responsibility for her son’s precarious situation and she said she knew what she was doing was wrong but she couldn’t say no to her son. The child (he was something like 15 or 16) was taken into hospital and the nurses managed to lose a few stone but after a while they noticed his weight had stopped falling – he had persuaded his mother to bring food in for him.
Behind every person this large there must be an abuser (“carer” in modern parlance), otherwise the lifestyle would not be sustainable.
I always wonder how these people get to this point in the first place. I notice myself getting a bit porky so I try to diet or exercise because I hate feeling fat or having to buy larger clothes. Do these people have no feedback mechanism?
Is “feedback” a pun in these circumstances?
They have played an ingenious trick on those obsessed with their weight, terrify the poor souls over sugar and offer the replacement….Aspartame.
Not only does it serve for huge weight gain, it is addictive, and it attacks the brain. Included in the trio of chemicals making up aspartame is wood alcohol, a teaspoon of which will kill a adult Labrador.
Everything diet-sugar free = apartame and or a derivative.
Those in most need of all things diet are then scuppered by eating the very opposite of what makes for good diet.
When diet coke was released sales went through the roof and counting…that’s addiction for you.
“Included in the trio of chemicals making up aspartame is wood alcohol”
Good grief man (?), learn some chemistry, or talk to someone who already has, before making ridiculous assertions like that.
If I had put on weight to the point where I couldn’t move myself, I’d starve. Certainly my wife wouldn’t bring me food of drink. So who panders to these people?
they actually have a name, i have seen it on the TV but cannot remember it, perhaps feeders comes to mind!
They are called,”aahem”, carers and they are very well paid themselves by the taxman (you).
It would appear to be all about chemistry, they learned well in those concentration camps as they killed Catholics, non-theosophical masons, gays, Jehovah witnesses and of course the politically literate not signed up to national socialism. There were of course those of the Jewish faith found within the camps but from my research it would appear many entered indentured servitude as per genetic program.
Take smoking, the real pain comes as the body finds a new regulator for the blood sugar levels, nicotine apparently the greatest means to this requirement, ergo, nicotine has a good role to play for the human chemistry. Having said that, I am not trusting of those new fangled electronic gizmo’s which offer medical nicotine (whatever that is), as moving to the forefront comes the opportunity to mass kill via chemical attack on the lungs when they have enough souls dependant on the said medical nicotine, is an opportunity to say the least, far to good for them to miss.
I believe it is about working out what foods activate fat storage, or more to the point the pattern one takes up for feeding yourself. They say that to eat regular in small quantities cancels the need for fat storage, or just get the shorts on and get some outdoor exercise.
Lucky is I having never had to concern over my weight, but I have noted a lump appearing around the belly area occasionally since hitting 40 (some time ago I confess), but nothing a good brisk walk in the country, often, will not sort out.
Keep off the processed foods and out of the supermarkets and you are two thirds there, even those cans of peas are laced with aspartame, everything else canned is laced with fluoridated water.
All letters send to IG Farben today known as every chemical and pharmaceutical company alive under the title General Electric.
Are you quite well?
“Are you quite well?”
answer: No.
Interesting take on the holocaust;
there may have been a few of the Jewish faith in the concentration camps too?
Give me strength.
Water retention can be a short-term issue too it seems: http://newyorkpost.com/p/news/local/airlines_left_my_wife_to_die_nF3WDbQiw0EZLnvYr9XQmM
Funnily enough, Cyril Smith’s obesity prevented even more embarrassment in Rochdale recently:
“Rochdale councillor Dale Mulgrew, who was also Sir Cyril’s godson, came up with the idea of naming the town’s new leisure centre in his honour.”
http://menmedia.co.uk/manchestereveningnews/news/s/1461077_row-over-daft-bid-to-name-rochdale-sports-centre-after-29-stone-heavyweight-politician-sir-cyril-smith
“Simon Danczuk, Labour MP for Rochdale, said: “It just goes to show how out of touch Rochdale Lib Dems have become.”
It’s scary to think there is a public out there that would want to watch a reality show on the morbidly obese for starters. We live in very strange times mon dieu!
The rations of one adult per week in Britain in WWII should be an eye-opener for the morbidly obese – aside from a lot of bad teeth, the British people were said to be pretty healthy surviving on the following:
BACON and HAM ……… 4ozs ( 100g )
MEAT …………………… to the value of 1s.2d. Sausages were not rationed but difficult to obtain : offal was originally unrationed but sometimes formed part of the meat ration.
BUTTER ………………… 2ozs ( 50g )
CHEESE ………………… 2ozs ( 50g ) sometimes it rose to 4ozs ( 100g ) and even up to 8ozs ( 225g )
MARGARINE ……………… 4ozs ( 100g )
COOKING FAT …………… 4ozs ( 100g ) often dropping to 2ozs ( 50g )
MILK …………………… 3 pints ( 1800ml ) sometimes dropping to 2 pints ( 1200ml ). Household ( skimmed, dried ) milk was available. This was one packet every 4 weeks.
SUGAR …………………… 8ozs ( 225g )
PRESERVES ……………… 1lb ( 450g ) every 2 months
TEA ……………………… 2ozs ( 50g )
EGGS …………………… 1 shell egg a week if available but at times dropping to 1 every two weeks. Dried eggs —– 1 packet each 4 weeks.
SWEETS …………………… 12 ozs ( 350g ) each 4 weeks.
Women were in great physical shape as they toiled long hours on the land for the Digging and Eating for Victory campaigns to provide the population with freshly-grown fare. Not to suggest that similar measures should be implemented today although, they might be beneficial in these times of financial crisis, if merely as a wake-up call and would no doubt cause a grand exodus of many now-British ethnicities to warmer climes!
It wasn’t just during the war years, either. Rationing didn’t finally cease until about 1956, so some children (including my parents) virtually grew up on rationing. It’s been suggested that they were the healthiest generation ever brought up in Britain – my father didn’t see a doctor for nearly 40 years between the ages of 32 and 72.
Processed food didn’t really exist before about 1960, either. Ironically, cuisine both home-made, take-away and resaurant seems to have diversified greatly. The Victorian uniform stodge of the pre-war years has gone, and it has never been easier to eat a balanced, interesting and varied diet. The best of British cuisine must be amongst the best in the world, now; the variety and quality of ingredients easily available make that so. Ironically, it has never been easier to eat an excessive, unhealthy diet, either; packet dinners laden with E-numbers, hydrogenated fats, salt and sugars; fast food, confectionary and sugar-laden fizzy drinks. I suppose that’s freedom of choice; the basic knowledge is easy enough to obtain, but too many people either can’t be bothered or don’t care.
I think the answer to Anna’s question is basically quite simple. We’ve forgotten the simple Beveridge principles of welfare, and slowly replaced them with a twisted parody of ‘caring’ and ‘support’; a good intention subverted by several decades of vested interests, quick-fix solutions and pork-barrel politics. At the risk of sounding like John Major, it’s time we got back to basics.
As a war baby I still tend to the view that those of us born before the nhs are long term survivors, i.e. the weak died. Adding the rigours of rationing and scant heating in our childhood have prepared us for the long haul. Liquorice wood was a sweet? Plus walking to school, eating offal, doing household chores, etc.
I’m also driven by an obsession to take a particular sum in total from my company pension fund before I go.
XX Liquorice wood was a sweet? XX
Aye. Stckylice (Not sure of spelling, but that is how it is pronounced.)
You can still buy it if you know where to go. Here any Chinese supermarket has them.
DAMN Stickylice.
I fear you’re being a little too censorious Anna.
This obesity problem is the manifestation of a host of things that one should deplore, but making the poor fat sod who is, in my view largely a victim, take all the blame is most unfair.
First, there is the misinformation peddled by ‘dieticians’. One ‘calorie’ is not the same as another, and it is wickedly misleading to say it is. Atkins and Montignac and many other people who know what they are talking about have proved (and I can attest to it in my own diet and that of many other people I know) that ‘calories’ of refined carbohydrate make you fat but calories in the form of protein and simple carbohydrates don’t have the same effect.
Second, eating fat per se does not make you fat. The wickedest lie ever sold to a population was that eating butter will give you heart disease and you should eat highly refined margarine instead – sold by the huge corporation that commissioned the so-called study in the 1970s. Millions of people still believe it across the western world – ‘Naughty but Nice’ was an effort to counter it that had the effect of entrenching the lie in people’s minds.
Third, that ‘low-fat’ things do not make you fat. Either they are laced with sugar, or worse, are sugar free, which means laced with horrible chemicals. These are addictive poisons that alter the body’s metabolism (particularly with regard to insulin) leading to fatness and cravings for more and further fatness
Fourth, fattening foods are relatively cheap, easy to prepare (in many cases none is needed) and attractively packaged and advertised, and are very profitable for the huge businesses making and selling them because they use almost worthless ingredients (cheap potato mush, and refined denatured white flour) and sell for many times their original cost.
Fifth, the efforts at getting children to ‘eat healthily’ has resulted in trying to force them to eat stuff they don’t like, that isn’t attractive or satisfying, and leaves them craving for food between meals. Salads, low fat yoghurts, etc etc are just not attractive to anybody in excess and are not a balanced diet. Proper well-balanced meals seem to have been forgotten – people are just too lazy or ignorant to prepare them – and children would enjoy them if they were prepared properly. (France is a good example of proper eating at school that isn’t infected with this fat-free nonsense).
Just look at photographs of Americans 80 years ago – before their diet was destroyed – and how thin they all are. They weren’t all starving themselves.
Sixth, there is a terrible pervasive culture in Britain (following the US obviously ) that undermines parental authority, by making parents doubt themselves and their judgment, even if they were inclined to exercise it. And tends to make the state the arbiter of how you bring up your children.
Seventh, it has become almost heresy to deny your children anything that their peers are having. Just listen to the drivel talked by the state’s agents, social workers, psychologists, etc etc about child-rearing. And the state tacitly encourages the indulgence of children, at the same time as demonising anybody who oversteps the arbitrary lines drawn by the state.
Eighth, the west has been overtaken by a terrible culture of self-indulgence and idleness, that makes it hard for people of ordinary or less than ordinary firmness of resolve to stand against. There is also a terrifying culture of self-pity that affects nearly everybody, to a greater or lesser extent, whether they are aware of it or not.
Ninth, these people of less than adequate resolve and greater than average suggestibility are hung out to dry by a culture that teaches them nothing but self-indulgence, and that whatever they want is ‘true for them’. And an ‘education’ system that tells them what to think but not how to think makes them perfect fodder (so to speak) for all the exploitation the world subjects them to.
And finally, these poor fat sods are just the all too visible result of all these things coming together and acting on them.They are the scapegoats for all these sins of the modern world. For most of us it is hard enough to do the right thing. We all need help and encouragement – I’m most definitely not talking here about the state doing it, which is largely the cause of this – but from right attitudes and habits being encouraged and maintained by a properly organised society.
One that values truth.
I’m sure there are plenty of other reasons I’ve forgotten why these people deserve our pity (not of the hand-wringing sort, but tough uncompromising love) and not the all to easy condemnation that their horrible physical state engenders, and which leaves them no better than they were before.
“making the poor fat sod who is, in my view largely a victim, take all the blame is most unfair”.
I sense a knee jerk reaction here, Belsay.
My post was querying who was paying for this food since it patently wasn’t coming from basic incapacity payments – and who was delivering it, since by their own admission the recipients can not walk……
I’m not aware of any phrase I have used which would imply that I was making the ‘victim’ take all the blame.
I am in total agreement with your eighth and ninth points, unfortunate truths – too much woe is me these days, too little substance and resolve!
XX Fourth, fattening foods are relatively cheap, …… and attractively packaged and advertised, XX
Does any one else see the next step by the Westminster/Brussels dicatorship hear?
here… bloody typewriter!
Oh, FT, they are well on that road already! Plain packaging for ‘junk food’, anyone?
Minimum pricing?
“the poor fat sod who is, in my view largely a victim, ”
Well you’re entitled to your view, but a victim of what – his own stupidity and weak will? Or the Welfare State’s ridiculous open-handed approach to this sort of “problem”?
It’s hard to see what else you could blame in this situation.
My goodness, Anna, the fast food and processed food industries are huge money earners for themselves and the tax man, which is probably why research on the role of carbohydrate has been so unenthusiastic. An interesting initiative, using independent funding from neither big pharma nor big food, is starting (see http://www.nusi.org) to settle what is a healthy diet, doing gold standard prospective studies. In the meantime there are lots of little fatties, behind these big fatties, whose habits of consumption are funding the profligate state.
When you can’t see your dick it’s time to sack it, really. The cost thing – i.e. poor people munching crap has always confused me as it’s shed loads cheaper to cook your own stuff with a pasta based angle. Anywho, my best chum’s half German and a reet perv who’d probably be watching the freak show with a box of Kleenex at the ready – yowzers – it’s a specialist market, to be sure.
Anna,
Not sure what you mean by knee-jerk reaction.
Who’s paying for it all is hardly the question. I’m more interested in why it happens.
It’s a very complicated question, and as DtP mentions (above) there are many angles to it – one I forgot (at least) is the feeder/fed relationship, and there is also a sexual element to it in some cases – weird as it seems. And there’s also an unhealthy manipulative aspect of un-freedom, slavery almost, of the fatty enslaving the feeder and locking them both into a mutually dependent life destroying relationship.
As I say, I think it goes to the heart of the modern western world.
The knee jerk reaction was in response to your opening line which began “I fear you’re being a little too censorious Anna” and then went on to claim that I was “blaming the victim” – when that is not at all what I said.
I am interested in who is paying for it, and who is enabling it, simply because it cannot be all the victims fault. Since these people are not working, if they didn’t have enough money to pay for 5,000 calories a day, they would be losing weight – ipso, someone, either social services or family is colluding in this situation.
I think Anna is correct.
Take a peak at this: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/britains-fattest-teenager-rescue-workers-846862
This is a case I remembered from the summer Georgia Davis – a 63 stone 19 year old, trapped in her house by her own gluttony. Note that she was physically trapped and part of the house had to be demolished for the medical services to get her to hospital.
IF she was physically trapped in the house, someone else was responsible for purchasing/collecting the food that she was scoffing by the truckload. I quote from the above article: ‘…Georgia, from Aberdare, near Merthyr Tydfil, blames the death of her musician dad Geoff on her inability to control her weight. She was five (!) when he succumbed to a lung condition. She said: “I have never got over losing dad. He was my world. I think part of me died too. I started eating more”. “I was eating for comfort, though I’ve only lately realised that”.’
Having nearly reached the size of the state she was named after, Georgia, or her family made a plea for help.
As usual, it is someone else’s fault, rather than the person who took a concious decision to abandon common sense and embrace gluttony with both hands. No one forced the food between her lips but, more importantly, no one told her that it was wrong/foolish to do so.
Perhaps that is a bit harsh, but I don’t think so. My other main point is surely, somebody somewhere was paying for all this food…
I don’t think this girl came from a family of millionaires, or had won the Lottery, so someone (as it would appear that Georgia had never had a job to speak of) was paying for all this food and, most probably that ‘someone’ was us, the taxpayer, in the form of benefits.
When one considers that in 2012 people are still starving to death around the world, cases like this are obscene for an entirely different reason.
We, the taxpayer are the mugs. We will have paid to have this girl fed till she nearly burst, then we have paid to have her house demolished and taken to hospital, where we will pay for her treatment and the accompanying counselling.
Utterly mad! The person(s) who aided and abetted her in this gormandising folly of follies should be picking up some of the bill.
Case Study:
“At her worst, jobless Sacha spent £4,000 a year on takeaways. The cash came from incapacity benefit and income support. She used internet chatrooms for ten hours a day as she wouldn’t go out. Lewis [her 10 year-old son] was registered as her carer because she couldn’t do housework”
Read more: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/woman/real_life/1003067/Sacha-Whitehead-Obese-Her-son-10-was-her-carer.html#ixzz2EmRnOLzO
Not sure if this might equate as child abuse too. MWT needs to look into this angle perhaps.
Ah Yes! MWT!! I wonder under which particular stone this self-proclaimed ‘leading Criminologist and Child Protection Expert’ has crawled recently…
Someone should give the guy a call. I can almost see the opening titles of the documentary now…
No doubt he’s getting the inside info for Ep3, as we scribble….
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20686219
“the number of alleged victims believed to be well over 500, the BBC understands.”
“Yewtree has three strands – offences committed by Savile, those by him and others and those just by others.”
“Seven people have been questioned.”
Looks like MWT learned the art of evidence collecting at the knee of the masters.
It is child abuse she had a terrible diet, and such bad eating habits that she was unable to set her son a good example and he got fat too. Also, if she refuses to leave the house then she’s not really doing much with him or able to show him much, do activities with him or take him places that are fun or interesting and he probably either had to do a hell of a lot of house work for a 10 year old or else they might have had to live in squalor (all because of her bad eating habits), the poor kid must have had such a dull life it’s hardly surprising he put weight on himself…
How can her mother support her and her daughter on benefits and keep a roof over their head, clothes on their backs and pay the bills when shes feeding her a diet like that though? You can only legally get so much on benefits, they must be getting money from some other source. Fraud? Crime? Mother working on the fly? (I know the daughter can’t).
I found that story disturbing. Wonder where she is now, if she managed to loose any weight…
A couple of points.
Firstly these people will be provided, at tax payers expense, with multiple carers around the clock. These carers will be provided from a point where the person ‘claims’ they cannot look after their own basic needs. From that point on their very whim is catered for, food, entertainment and even specially built housing. The consequence, they never lose weight and in fact usually gain substantially. In rare cases the carer is a family member but in the majority it is social service carers. The ‘benefits’ you quote will be in addition (unlike an pensioner or even a young fit unemployed person) and as such ‘pocket money’.
Secondly, the budget for these peoples additional assistance (carers, housing, food, etc. ) is paid separately from the NHS budget, through the Social Services budget (it’s the same reason why early discharge has flourished since the burden for providing the massively increased care needed isn’t in the NHS budget anymore). Examine the numbers of ‘community carers’ to see the exponential growth of the Social Service budget – and the subsequent power for those who have only one real aim – increasing their own power, income and influence (all at our expense).
So the cost is hidden and is, as you well know, borne by the tax payer. For my own opinion, I view those who effectively promote and support such behaviour for their own gain (social services) as abusers and they should face criminal consequences.
(Oh and if someone question certain points – I have dealt with a few people in these circumstances professionally over the years, and the information, on those at least is correct)
Nail on head, Able
I accept what you say Anna, I think I did leap onto a hobby-horse. But behind each one of these extreme examples is a few million not-quite-as-fatties, who are still on the spectrum, and I think that’s what i was on about.
Able, I agree as well with your practical approach and that the ‘caring professions’ are aiding and abetting this.
“Hey Feeder, go add up the calories of all that crap you got from –> ALDI <– for £40. When you've done that go get some Mars bars from the Co-Op, they're four for a £1 at the moment."
“… Mars bars … four for a £1…”
Which may explain things somewhat. 250 (ish) kcal per bar. So only 20 bars or £5 needed to hit the 5000 Calorie target.
I shudder to think at what kind of a mind would consider 20 chocolate bars a day a good idea, but even eating a couple pushes your daily intake up rather rapidly.
Similarly a 500ml bottle of coke is 226 kcal (given as 2x250ml servings) – not quite as much energy per pound, but still allows 500 Calories for a pound (probably more buying bulk 2l bottles).
One word in need of banning from the English language would to my mind be ‘victim’.
The English never used to be victims what a crap change indeed and the very core reason the nanny state is so big.
Programming the victim mentality will be the death of this country, stop it immediately…
Got it…victim the new pathetic
@Anna -”Once you reach the magic weight of 47 stone…” Apparently,this is ‘magic’ as it is 658pounds ( 5.88 Cwt) or 300kg – can therefore be stated in the media as ‘Almost a THIRD of Ton(ne)’
BTW- can we take that ALL persons whose ‘health & fitness’ have been compromised by poor life-style choices, or work place or leisure activities – will in future be assessed as “Having nothing medically wrong “?
an acquaintance of mine is vastly obese, almost as bad as the poor chap in the photograph. i’m convinced this is because of the medication she is on, which beggars belief, there are so many pills she takes. she lined up the boxes and tubs of pills up for me the other day along the kitchen counter in her flat and i almost fell off my trolley. i couldn’t believe how much she is on. needless to say she is on full sickness benefits and DLA.
she is diabetic which makes it worse. she eats one loaf of bread a day, which can’t be healthy and it is the refined white stuff rather than wholemeal. she is on prozac which made another friend of mine overeat. he said they sort of switched off the i’m full message to his brain and he kept thinking he was hungry and stuffed himself silly. when he was five stone overweight, he persuaded his doctor to switch his medication to something else. he promptly managed to shed five stone with the help of exercise.
my obese friend has now been pushed into having a gastric band fitted and has shed four stone, but she now has to have another operation to remove the huge apron of excess flesh from her stomach because she had shed weight so quickly (in a matter of weeks). meanwhile, she is very depressed because all she can eat is milk shakes and soup. so her gp has upped her prozac…
if it weren’t so serious, it would make you laugh.
It did make me laugh. Sorry.
To the naughty step with you!
No no, not The Naughty Step. Anything but The Naughty Step. Well, nearly anything. I certainly don’t wanna be groped by Jimmy Saville. He’s much too old for me. And I like mine young and fresh.
Darwin smiles on these unfortunates
Medication is laced with apartame also, but the main culprit which they hand out like candy, even to our pets, is steroids, the ultimate in weight gain
I used to be a fat bastard but thank to the economics of Gordon Brown, I had to stop eating because I couldn’t afford it!
Where is it documented he eats MacD? Fast food is expensive.
A more typical example would be 2 large bottles coke, 1 frozen pizza, 1/2 loaf of bread/butter & large portion of chips; which is approx 5000 calories and only costs £5 per day.
Also, I suspect he consumes closer to 10,000 calories per day bringing the daily cost to £10.
Which is £70 per week, not £170.
MacD is the poster child for obesity, but the bigger problem is the calories from cheap, processed, hyper-palatable food from supermarkets.
Most supermarkets do home deliveries, in theory he could be feeding himself. Although 7 days of 4lt coke = 28kg which he might not be able to do.
Hang around outside a Whether-spuunoons for sight of the diet
So far as I know, MaccyDees don’t do Home Delivery.
A TYPICAL daily intake for 32st 11lb Sacha was:
BREAKFAST: Toast, two eggs, can of beans, four pieces of bacon, several mugs of tea or coffee
SNACK: Two packets of crisps, glass of Diet Coke
LUNCH: Large sausage roll, Cornish pasty, two glasses of Diet Coke
SNACK: Packet of crisps, English breakfast packet sandwich, bar of chocolate, glass of Diet Coke
DINNER: Chinese takeaway of prawn crackers, spare ribs, chicken balls, fried rice, sweet and sour chicken, several glasses of Diet Coke
SUPPER:Cheese toastie
Sounds like he’s over doing the Diet Coke…
One point I admit to though: I fancy ‘treating myself’ to a snickers or mars bar. I go into the shop & they’re about 50-60p each, I think sod that & don’t bother. A couples of days later & (as has been mentioned earlier) they’re 4 for a quid. Bargain – 25p each!!! Trouble is, I’ll end up eating all 4 within the same day. So from a financial (& weight) point of view, I should have bought just the one, err sorry nanny state, I mean I should have bought a stick of celery.
Good point you can get 3 frozen pizzas for £3 in Tesco and there about 800 calories each in a whole one as well as things like pot noodles for £1, tubs of ice cream are full of calories and you can get lots of frozen stuff e.g chips, oven chips, sausage rolls for £1 a bag. Cheap biscuits and crisps too, full calorie fizzy drinks and sweets and chocolate from poundland, it all adds up…
He’s possibly a gourmont rather than a gourmet, breads very high in calories too, often 90 – 100 calories a slice (as you pointed out)…
It has always puzzled me how anyone can get that large. They always remind me of Queen ants whose every need is catered for as long as they keep laying.
One other thought, as what goes in has to come out, who does the clean up every day?
Dynarod.
They eat those Pringle things – I think they come with some disgusting gunge to ‘dip’? All day, watching Jeremy Kyle, and posting on DS. I believe some do it in order to drop out; to not have to suffer the slings and arrows of work, errands, socialising, and so on. As stated above, its a lifestyle choice that brings benefits and carers galore. And as its pretty much against the law for anyone to be non-pc, none of the carers, health professionals or anyone else dare utter a word of criticism at them.
I confess I’ve given consideration to it myself once or twice lately on cold mornings.
*looks out of window at freezing fog*
I can see the attraction, too!
A quick google has lard at 9 thousand calories a kilo ( and since the wild birds eat it just now I am watching the price of that – about 50 pence for your 5 k Cals ). Chocolate is about 500 Cals per 100 grams – the Lindt I ate earlier cost £1 for a 100 gram bar. Obesity is a big problem in western countries, but it may have an element of poverty too. Cheap foods are often energy dense. Soft drinks ( cheap brands available there ) have high sugar content. Many foods are bulked out with fat – cream of everything – and the presence of two modern favourites, Palm Oil and Corn Syrup.
I recall hearing that the epidemic started with the arrival of PO and CS in processed foods.
Now add a couch potato lifestyle which is getting worse in the age of the Playstation, with multichannel TV, sedentary jobs, a climate pretty hostile to outdoorsy exercise, guerrilla eating habits ( on a good day I get to sit down some time for lunch ) and is it any wonder the public are plumping up?
Its not physically very attractive, although apparently it is in Polynesia and amongst Inuits. But who decides what is attractive? Rubens may not have found Victoria Beckham nor Catherine Middleton that attractive in his day. So we have a health problem. Why are we blaming the patients? Theres maybe no excuse if you have the funds to eat healthy, go out every night, work in an active job, afford gym fees. Theres a lot more to this than sloth in the “victims”. Some people just cannot meet the ideal shape and weight criteria.
I am up to 13 stones now, but was 9 1/2 stones a few years ago. I am taking funny drugs however, and have 10 different sorts of fruit in my house this evening. Ideal weight would be 11 stones.
The amonnt of food any bodybuilder / weight lifter eats is amazing- yet many of them have rather small fat folds.
Never mind the economics, what about the physics of it? A major civil engineering problem for the Bazalguette de notre jour…
Consider this, though:
You are a naturalist, exploring on the beach, examining rock-pools and the like. You are used to seeing crustaceans of various types, the largest crab being perhaps of two ounces in weight. Brisk, agile and quick to conceal itself. All normal and then you come across a new colony of crabs which, although they are physically similar (number of eyes, limbs, pincers, etc.), actually weigh two pounds each, move slowly and are easily caught. But they do not seem to be possessed of an exoskeleton.
Would your first assumption not be that these crabs are, taxonomically at least, a different species? A regular velvet crab (Necora Puber, of the family Portunidae) is plentiful, edible and highly fertile. This new species (We shall call it N. Stupidus) is increasingly plentiful, totally inedible but, with the application of a complex set-up of pulleys, counterweights and ropes worthy of Mr. Heath-Robinson, can reproduce.
But why would you bother?
I blame Anna for the fact that I am now wasting an hour of my life watching this program. Right on cue the 47 stone wallah declared that the £250 per day bill is not his problem, ‘ its the NHS,innit’ !
That was a stupid thing for him to say (and think), I kind of took the doctors comment to him about the cost as a hint that if he didn’t start losing weight soon they’d reach the decision that it’s not worth him being there or the expense and put him out so the hostpital space can be used for someone else and there would be no gastric balloon or weight loss surgery, and he’d have to return to a house were he can’t fit through the bathroom door without having lost any weight – so it was very much his ‘problem’, silly man…
It’s not just the cost of the food that I wonder about; who pays the heating bills?
If these immobile people are comfortable for hours on end without moving – and the few clips I’ve seen don’t suggest they wrap up warm indoors – that suggests the ambient temperature is quite high.
Given how much energy the average UK resident must usually expend in keeping warm for much of the year, I suspect that if the central heating is cranked up to, say, an approximation of a Southern US summer, and the occupant of the house is sedentary and overeats even slightly, the pounds will start to pile on at a dramatic rate.
“…who pays the heating bills?”
Yet again I’ll fall for the bait, sirens/claxtons at the ready… Isn’t fat/blubber supposed to insulate mammals from the cold?
This thought crossed my mind. But you are forgetting his Yuman Rites. He has a right to roll around in a T Shirt while the rest of us are wearing every item of winter clothing that we own. At least, I am, having not yet received my Winter Fuel Allowance, if I ever do. The Government are spending acres of money as we speak, trying to get out of paying it.
A British pensioner friend of mine here received his GBP 248.55 fuel allowance in his Spanish bank account at the end of October. He said he initially had to email them 5 years ago to say he’d never ever received the winter fuel allowance, where the hell was it? Only after bugging them did he finally get it the following year but, to date, they appear to send it annually without needing to be reminded to do so.
Ah, but I am one of those people who bailed out on Britain before I was entitled to claim my Pension. The EU, or whoever, has now ruled that The British Government, whoever, had no right to deprive me. Forget this year, they had no right to deprive me for the last twelve years either. But so far I have not received even this year’s allowance.
The strange thing is that had I been Obese when I left Angleterre I would have been entitled to Disability Allowance, to be paid to me here for ever after. And no chance of anyone ever checking to see if I had lost a few stones.
EU ruling’s or whover’s rulings, you’re still entitled to a State Pension even if you weren’t living in Britain when you reached pension age. What expats do is fill in all the applications and start the ball rolling the year before they’re reach 60-whatever. You should try claiming it retroactively – that might wake them up!
From what I’ve read it appears you get a way better deal in Britain if you’re a foreign immigrant, a single mother, are decidedly overweight or somewhat mentally deranged than being British-born and bred with some work history and hit pension age and live out of the country. The Scandinavians have that whole thing down pat of course and their people can look forward to a comfortable old age and live royally down here in the sun! Come to think of it, I’ve never heard obesity be a problem in Scandinavia – guess it’s because they all receive a good, free education, can get jobs and just don’t need to pig out.
XX Isn’t fat/blubber supposed to insulate mammals from the cold? XX
Yes. With the correct application, you could run a small towns powrer station for a year on that bag of lard.
I suppose that a bit of Lipo Suction might be usable. But can they make this mandatory? “You will be sucked by Law because we are fed up with being sucked.” Sounds good to me.
Sorry, I know that some people can’t actually help themselves. And there is a bit more to it than just over eating. There is some imbalance that they haven’t yet worked out. And I don’t suppose that any of them want to be in this state. But someone is going to have to do something about the cause because mostly it is bloody sad. Sheesh, we know so much about ordinary everyday ills, but we don’t know why some people get so horribly fat.
I believe it’s also used to make soap!
I don’t think I want to think about that.
Why not have anyone who gets so fat that it’s seriously endangering their life and seems unable to lose any weight by themself sectioned and forced to go on a diet and exersise regime until they have reached a safe weight and a psychiatrist is satisfied that their mind set has changed at least enough to be confident they’ll at least keep some of the weight off/not put it all back on, sometimes you’ve got to be cruel to be kind…
And if they fail, throw them in the gas chamber?
That sort of thing has been tried before. Ended in a place called Nürnberg.
I’d say don’t let them out until they’ve reached a safe weight, had counciling and doctors are reasonably confident there is at least a chance they won’t relapse but if they do, and it’s to the extent were they cannot look after themself and face severe health problems and probably death, then I think they should be sectioned again as they are a danger to themselves. It’s what i’d want if I was in that position, it’s called tough love – obesity (and i’m fairly big myself) and Judaism are two different things. ..
Of course, such help has been available for years for those prepared to go on television…
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/supersize-vs-superskinny
@Macheath: Lol, that supersize vs superskinny strikes me as a bit like swapping your own bad habits for someone else’s in a way…
They achieved pretty good results with a 7 or 8 year old girl in America who, after years of constant binge eating and being hugely over weight, reached something like 30 stone which was causing major health problems, I don’t think she could walk any more, she got around by crawling, the huge weight on her body had caused her legs to become extremely bowed, she was having severe breathing problems and the future wasn’t looking good, until she was taken taken away from home and hospitalised for 6 months. She was made to follow a strict diet and exercise programme and lost about 22 1/2 stone, after she’d lost the weight you could really see just how badly bowed her legs were, but I think they were going to give her an operation to try and fix that. Meanwhile her mother, who claimed she was at loss for what to do, was made to attend parenting classes, which last I seen seemed to have worked, she used to have a huge store cupboard outside her house and fridge packed with junk food, now it’s more or less empty (though the mums still fat), she doesn’t let her daughter eat between meals and she has to attend physiotherapy 5 times a week but last I seen appeared to be keeping the weight off and eating much healthier. They probably saved that girls life by stepping in and forcing the girl and mother to do what they appeared incapable of doing on their own at that time…
Lol, they achieved pretty good results with a 7 or 8 year
Wendi. I have always received my Basic Pension. But that isn’t the point. I have never expected Means Tested Benefits, although on reflection, heaven knows why, or why Pensioners should be so grossly treated.. You know, if The State Pension isn’t enough, then what is to be Means Tested? By agreeing to Means Testing they admit that they are wrong.
But The Winter Fuel Allowance isn’t Means Tested and should be the right of all, according to Law, including those of us who choose to live somewhere else in The EU, before we became entitled to The Pension that we paid for, and incidentally without choice.
It is simply a matter of Law, regardless of whether or not we need it. The fact for me is that I do need it, but that is neither here nor there. The Law is The Law.
I spent some fifteen years paying for the education of my sons because I was not prepared to settle for the appalling State Education, and very nearly beggared myself in the process. And certainly had no time or money to even think about a Private Pension. But I did get my monies worth on that score.
However, any disabled person, being grossly over weight or otherwise can leave Britain and take their Invalidity Benefit with them. I know a very pretty woman who is not at all incapacitated who collects £60 a week from some brief bout of muscle seizure back twenty years ago.
And even more funny, I got Carpal Tunnel of my right hand last year which I must say did freak me for a minute. But then it went away on it’s own. I have still got the lump in my palm, and still wonder what I could have claimed for that if I had still been living in Angleterre. But I ain’t. and thank God.
It’ll come back unfortunately, and when it does, I hope you take my advice and come to Libourne – best carpel tunnel surgeons in the world – half the local population has carpel tunnel from all that vine pruning, and it really does only take half an hour to sort out…..(and about three weeks to learn how to write with a tennis ball bandaged into your right hand!!!) Go on coward, its only a local anaesthetic…..
Anna, the mere thought scares me witless, and so for a minute i am hoping and pretending. But I do know that if the lump is still in my palm then it is still a problem. Although perhaps not the worst thing that ever happened to anyone. I am just putting it off for a minute. And perhaps I would rather be entirely unaware of what they will do to me. But I don’t think that La Morbihan will be any more unable, and would almost certainly do the best that they can.
I know that I could go to my frightfully French Doctor who doesn’t speak a word of English, and then be treated almost immediately. But Carpel Tunnel isn’t exactly the end of the world.
More to the point perhaps that I trust him despite having called on him so rarely. He once saw that I was very ill, and I didn’t even need to tell him. I was just so ill that I could hardly speak . So I will always go for the likes of he.
But I do have a very fat friend, and i do worry, But he isn’t fat because he wants ro be.
In thr meantime
No, sorry, these really really fat people who’ve re-engineered themselves as Zeppelins are just repellent. Now that whale harvesting is so frowned upon, we could melt down the obese for their blubber instead. There’s a nice moral poser for the tinfoil hat brigade…
If individuals want to inflate their bodies and can afford to do so, and are happy with the consequences, fine – but really, all this tip-toeing around, not being judgmental, sort-of defending the treatment of these monsters at public expense, is absurd and immoral. Previous generations of humanity were not heartless unfeeling primitives – but I suggest nowhere in human history would publicly funded care for extreme self-induced obesity have been regarded as normal or tolerable. I don’t even feel very comfortable around normal “fat” people but that picture at the top made me want a stiff drink….
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