indefensible: (context: my comment there was in response to this)
I’m not so sure. I don’t believe ‘science’ is against obesity. Science should have no say in the matter.
Perhaps we’re talking at cross purposes? The consequences of obesity are pretty well established; it leads to heart disease, strokes, diabetes, and a raft of other bad things. I think that part of the debate science definitely has a role to play in.
That said, one of my favourite pieces of scientific trivia: if you correlate some measure of obesity, say BMI, against life expectancy you see a small improvement when you are slightly overweight. This is because most well-to-do people are slightly overweight, and most well-to-do people live a bit longer due to a host of social factors like education levels and private healthcare. Of course, correlation does not imply causation.
Obesity is a matter of social policy if it is a matter at all.
Ah, and now the wider question; if doctors tell us people are getting fatter, and science tells us that means people are going to die earlier (and cost more to look after), what should the government do about it?
Again, here in the UK, no-one has really tried much yet. No-one really knows what to try, I think, and I’m not sure that problem is confined to the UK. Mostly it seems to revolve around informing people of the serious health risks to being overweight, some social programs to build sports facilities, and hoping people will make smarter choices.
Whether or not you think government should do more, I don’t think it really can. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him burn off 500kcal cantering around before eating a dinner of low-fat hay.
Of course, you and I both live in cradle-to-grave social welfare states. As societies, we long ago invited the government to make many of our personal choices for us. When we asked to government to be responsible for our healthcare, we tacitly accepted that it would force us to make certain ‘choices’ for our own good.
Hmmm. I’m trying to think of instance were the UK healthcare forces people to improve their health, but I can’t come up with any. In the case of obesity, in extreme cases they can prescribe weight loss medication; for smokers they provide quite a lot of support if they want to quit, like cheap or free nicotine supplements, support classes and whatnot. But at no point I can think of does the NHS force a lifestyle change on a patient.
Thus we tax (in my country) pre-prepared foods, but not fresh vegetables. The hope is that it will make us choose healthier options. Sadly, it just makes the food choices of the time-poor (and cash-poor) blue collar worker more expensive.
Well I certainly agree that’s stupid. If we’re going to start in on the ill-thought-out attempts by government to influence our decisions though subtle levers like taxes, we’re both going to be at it a looong time!
In the UK, I don’t think there’s any such move. In fact the only anti-obesity measures I can think of was legislation to force all prepackaged food manufacturers to print full nutrition information on their products, which I don’t think is a bad thing.
