"More than 73 percent of Americans who die of COVID-19 are overweight or obese, CDC data reveal"

Says the headline in The Daily Mail.

That's hardly surprising is it? More than 73 per cent of Americans are overweight or obese, full stop.

Your taxpayers' money, hard at work.

From the BBC:

The NHS in England is to get an extra £20bn a year by 2023 as a 70th "birthday present", Theresa May says. It means the £114bn budget will rise by an average of 3.4% annually - but that is still less than the 3.7% average rise the NHS has had since 1948...

The five-year funding settlement covers just front-line budgets overseen by NHS England. About a 10th of the overall health budget is held by other bodies for things such as training and healthy lifestyle programmes, including stop smoking services and obesity prevention programmes. The BBC understands these will be protected, but beyond that it is unclear what will happen to them.

?!? One-tenth of £114 bn is £11.4 bn, which is approx equal to our net contributions to the EU budget.

Would anybody like to chip in for a battle bus, with "We spend £220 million a week on stop smoking services and obesity prevention programmes. Let's fund the NHS instead." written on the sides?

Fun with numbers (race to the bottom)

From The Evening Standard:

Fast-food takeaways will be banned from opening within 400 metres of schools in a bid to tackle the capital’s child obesity epidemic.

In addition, all new chicken, fish and chip and pizza outlets will have to sign up to minimum healthy food standards before getting planning permission. Sadiq Khan will announce the policy in his draft London Plan, the capital’s “planning bible”, due to be published later this week.

You know the answer is going to be 'zero', but let's do the numbers.

400 yds = 366 metres.

A circle with a radius of 366m has a surface area of 420,000 sq m = 0.42 sq km.

There are approx. 3,700 schools in Greater London (24,372 x 8 million/53 million).

3,700 schools x 0.42 sq km = 1,554 sq km.

Surface area of Greater London 1,569 sq km

I was a bit slow on the uptake here.

Dan Cookson beat us all to it, and even the BBC has pointed out that "In some parts of London, the only places that new fast food outlets would theoretically be allowed are in the middle of parks or the River Thames."

We're all going to die.

Leg Iron takes a critical look at one such announcement.

Here's the other:

Fruit snacks 'contain more sugar than sweets'

Great! Then people who skip their 'five-a-day' and eat sweets will stay slim.

Life copies satire

From The Onion, October 1998:

Morbidly obese man enjoys disabled privileges with motorized cart

Sixteen years later, from The Daily Mail, December 2014:

Obesity IS a disability, rules highest EU court after 25st Danish childminder was 'sacked for being too fat to perform his job properly'

"Large bottomed passenger calls on MP to wear paper bag over her head"

From The Evening Standard:

A plus-sized commuter today urged former public health minister Anne Milton to wear a paper bag over her head if she wants to sit opposite people on train seats.

The fuller-figured passenger, who has campaigned against repulsive ugliness, managed to get a seat on the 7.34am today. But she soon tweeted about being made to feel sick by a “very ugly woman”.

She tweeted: “Seats free on 7.34 but on those opposite facing rows. Fairly nice looking lass opposite left of me and a dishy bloke opposite right but a really gut-wrenchingly hideous witch directly opposite who is staring straight at me with a slightly crazed expression, which makes trying to concentrate on my mobile 'phone really difficult somehow.”

Being fat is now "politically correct"???

It is weird.

Political correctness is all about creating a climate of fear, fear of the thing itself or of being perceived as that thing etc.

For some reason, politicians and various do-gooders like yapping on about an "obesity epidemic" or "obesuty crisis" (being a complete misuse of those words), so I had hitherto assumed that being fat was politically incorrect and persecuting fatties was politically correct.

Apparently not. From The Daily Mail:

A weight-loss expert has blasted retailers for using size 16 mannequins, claiming they are 'normalising' obesity.

Presenter of the TV show Fat Families, Steve Miller told MailOnline 'political correctness is encouraging people to stay fat'.

He has urged society to adopt 'shock tactics' to tackle the obesity epidemic head on.

In any event, those size-16 mannequins look a perfectly normal shape to me, the size-10 ones are definitely borderline anorexic.

Presumably Steve Miller is a joker who wants to take the money and run.

Make up your mind, love...

From the BBC:

Dame Sally blamed the way weight was being portrayed by the media and clothes industry.

"I have long been concerned that being underweight is often portrayed as the ideal weight, particularly in the fashion industry.

"Yet I am increasingly concerned that society may be normalising being overweight. "Larger mannequins are being introduced into clothes shops and "size inflation" means that clothes with the same size label have become larger in recent decades.

"And news stories about weight often feature pictures of severely obese people, which are unrepresentative of the majority of overweight people."

Dame Sally also reiterated her belief that a sugar tax may be necessary to combat obesity…

So by putting about horror stories about really fat people, the media are lulling slightly fat people into thinking they're normal… and what effect do all these air brushed size zero pictures have?

Unfortunately the article does not say what new taxes and regulations she would like to see to combat "skinniness".

"UK women are 'best in bed' in Europe"

From the BBC:

The UK has more women who are 'good in bed' than any other country in Europe, according to European Union figures.

Data agency Eurostat, which looked at 19 countries, found nearly a quarter of UK women - 23.9% - were recorded as being 'good' or 'better' in bed in the year 2008 to 2009. Just over 22% of UK men were classed 'built for comfort, not built for speed', coming second only to Malta.

A woman is defined as 'good' or 'better' in bed if her body mass index (BMI), the result of a calculation involving weight and height, is above certain levels.

The BMI correlates fairly well with sensuousness. Statisticians found the share of 'good in bed' and 'even better in bed' women increases with age in all of the 19 member states that data was available for.

The data come from the European Health Interview Survey (EHIS) and was published by Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union.

Last month, Health Secretary Andrew Lansley launched a bid to reduce obesity levels in England by 2020.

The minister said: "The downside is that 'good in bed' can often mean 'pretty useless in the back of a car'".

How to work out your BMI

* Work out your height in millimetres and multiply the figure by its logarithm to base e
* Measure your weight in kilograms, convert that to imperial and then convert the result into millimetres
* Divide the square root of your weight in millimetres by the thirteenth root of your weight in millimetre equivalents and then multiply by i
* Add your shoe size and a large pinch of salt
* A BMI of less than 18.5 is 'unenthusiastic'
* A BMI of 18.5-25 is 'good' in bed
* A BMI of 25-30 is 'better' in bed
* A BMI of 3,000 or above means you messed up the calculations

"Stupidity UK - It's worse than feared"

From The Daily Mail:

Dire warnings that half of Britons will be stupid by 2050 are an 'underestimate', a shock report warns today.

The stupidity epidemic could be far worse than predicted because experts did not factor in how much stupider we are getting as we age, it says.

For example, most adults no longer realise that as stupidity is not an infectious disease, there cannot be an epidemic thereof.

The report blames junk science for confusing the public about healthy eating, and says ministers and GPs are failing to get a grip of the problem, with NHS systems 'pouring petrol on the flames of stupidity'.

More than a quarter of adults (26 per cent) are stupid, up from just 8 per cent in 1980.

In 2007, an alarming government review warned that by 2050, stupidity would affect half of all adults and cost the economy £50 billion a year. Yet a report by the National Stupidity Forum says the predictions were 'optimistic' and underestimated the 'true scale of the problem'.

According to today's study, by 2050 stupidity could be affecting more than 100% of all adults.

The forum – which comprises doctors and other experts – says the Government is focusing too much on propaganda rather than helping those who are stupid to realise how much fake science they are paying to be bombarded with.

It also describes a reward system for GPs, which pays them to record that patients are stupid without having to offer any genuinely sensible dietary advice, as being 'unfit for purpose'.

"Eurostar bars obese Frenchman"

From the BBC:

A clinically obese Frenchman, prevented from flying home from the US by British Airways, has been refused travel on a Eurostar train from London to Paris.

Kevin Chenais, 22, who weighs 230kg (36 stone), was flown back to London this week by Virgin Atlantic after 18 months of treatment in Minnesota. But Eurostar said it could not take him back to France because of safety rules.

Ferry company P&O has now stepped in, offering to tow him across the English Channel.

"Ban school dinners so children eat healthy packed lunches, headteachers urged"

From The Daily Mail:

School dinners are helping to fuel a rise in childhood obesity, Government advisers will warn today as they set out plans to revive packed lunches.

The chief executives of Kingsmill owner Allied Bakeries and Hovis owner Premier Foods, Henry Dimbleby and John Vincent, insist sandwiches are healthier and can provide more variety than the typical school dinner prepared by corporate outsourcing giants, usually including chips, doughy pizza or plain rice.

Their packed lunch plan, to be launched with education secretary Michael Gove, will say it is up to parents to improve quality and take-up of packed lunches.

Sandwich-making lessons at school are also to become compulsory for children ages seven to 14 from September as the Government aims to improve their understanding of spreads and fillings. Pupils will be expected to be able to make up to 20 different types of sandwich before taking their GCSE exams and encouraged to take the new NVQ in reparing toasters and sandwich makers.

The bakery chiefs have spent a year visiting more than 60 schools in the UK gathering evidence, and say packed lunches have improved greatly since celebrity sandwich maker Jamie Oliver began his crusade against Turkey Twizzlers in 2005.

Well, it probably is the obvious answer in terms of improving "take up" at least ....

Press release

Improving school food

Organisation:Department for Education

Published: 4 July 2012

Minister:The Rt Hon Michael Gove MP

Announcement that the co-founders of the LEON restaurant chain are to build an action plan for school food.

The government has today announced that it has asked the co-founders of LEON restaurant chain, Henry Dimbleby and John Vincent, to examine school food across the country. They will create an action plan to accelerate improvement in school food and determine the role of food more broadly in school life.

****
School Food Trust research shows that:

• take-up of school lunches is just 38% in secondary schools and 44% in primary schools;
• only 22.5% of schools provide at least one portion of fruit and veg per pupil every day;
• half of secondary schools offer pizzas and starchy food cooked in oil on most days;
• a third of young people are not choosing a healthy balanced meal at school.

The plan from Henry and John will examine which schools are doing things well and why. It will set out how all schools can reach a standard to be proud of. They will speak to experts, review research and visit schools as well as conduct primary research in order to build up a systematic picture of school food across England. An important part of their work will involve looking at what factors influence school food choices.

Today - the Daily Mail reports that -

Packed lunches should be banned because they're making children fat, claim government advisers

Parents who make packed lunches for their children should stop, as it is making them fat, government food advisers warn.

Restaurateurs Henry Dimbleby and John Vincent argue school dinners are healthier than packed sandwiches, crisps and fizzy drinks, in a report to be published next week.

The report will also suggest that take-up must rise to at least 50 per cent to improve nutrition in meals and to save school dinners.

"200 stone driver is rescued by 320 emergency workers in £200,000 operation"

From The Daily Mail:

An obese driver was trapped in his vehicle for more than a day as emergency services staff struggled to transfer him to a specialist ambulance for overweight patients.

The middle-aged man, thought to be from West Sussex and parts of Kent, was injured when his Humvee crashed into the back of several buses on the A29 road in Adversane, near Billingshurst.

In a rescue operation involving 320 emergency services staff the man was cut from his vehicle and moved into a bariatric ambulance – designed to cope with patients weighing more than a ton.

It took 180 firefighters, eighty police officers and sixty paramedics to haul him from the wreckage and the cost of the operation is thought to have been around £200,000...

Martin McKilligin, of the Falmouth Sealife Centre said: "Once he has recovered from his injuries, the man will be released back into the English Channel where he will delight whale watchers for years to come."

"Traffic light labelling introduced for politicians"

From The Daily Mirror:

A traffic light ­labelling system is being brought in for all the major political parties and taxpayer-funded bodies from today.

At-a-glance data showing levels of duplicity, dishonesty, laziness, self-importance and corruption will be used for each MP or local councillor, franked from green (trustworthy), through amber (take with a large pinch of salt) to red ('on the take' or 'downright stupid' and can be ignored).

Guideline Bullshit Amounts (GBA) have been replaced by "Reference Outputs" to show how much of the maximum permitted daily output of propaganda and thoughtless tub-thumping is in a typical 100-word section of their speeches, letters or articles.

After years of politicians running their own ways of misrepresenting facts and figures, the Office for National Statistics has drawn up the traffic light charter to make the choice easier for voters.

It comes as politicians pump out yet more made-up figures, such as the baseless claim that health problems associated with being overweight or obese cost the NHS more than £5 billion a year, which was promptly marked with red.

Almost two thirds of MPs in England are corrupt, stupid or lazy, a third of local councillors and a quarter of Assembly members, all of whose public utterances will now be clearly marked with the red traffic light.

Public Health Minister Anna Soubry said: "The UK already has the largest number of wild claims which are complete and utter bollocks and we know that people get confused by the variety of lies that are used. We're not even consistent, are we? Research shows that, of all the current schemes, people like this label the most and they can use the information to make better choices at the ballot box.

"We all have a responsibility to tackle the challenge of double-dealing and corruption, including the quangocrats and academics. By having all major political parties and most media outlets signed up to the consistent label, we will all be able to see at a glance whether a politician is to be believed. This is why I want to see all newspapers and universities signing up and using the label."

Campaign and pressure groups welcomed the scheme.

Which? executive director Richard Lloyd said:

"This labelling scheme will encourage our leaders to do more to reduce the amount of complete and utter dissembling in their pronouncements. The National Trust and the CPRE will have to add bright red stickers to each baseless claim suggesting that England is being concreted over."

British Heart Foundation chief executive Simon Gillespie added:

"This is undeniably a first-class scheme that will make it easier for shoppers to scan the shelves for what they would really like to eat and ignore the petty-minded nonsense that comes from my own taxpayer- or Big Pharma-funded lobbying fronts such as my own.

"All of our tosh about high levels of diet-related chronic diseases in the UK, including heart disease has confused shoppers quite a lot and it's essential we have clear and consistent labelling on all BHF press release so that journalists and readers can cheerfully ignore them.

"We're solid red, by the way."

Stuff that landed in my inbox this morning

"Too fat to skydive in Mum's memory"

Story over at Shit London.

"Biggest council rent increase in three years as four in 10 town halls refuse to freeze bills"

Spotted by Bob E in The Telegraph:

Council tenants are having to pay their biggest increase in rent for three years after four in 10 town halls turned their backs on Government cash to freeze bills.

Local Government secretary Eric Pickles has said town halls had a moral duty to freeze council rents for people struggling with rising household budgets. He set aside £450m over two years as part of the autumn statement package to help support the freeze.

But figures published today show that only 61 per cent of local authorities – 257 out of 421 – have are accepting cash from Whitehall to fund a rent freeze. The remainder have decided not to use the grant money, and instead of increased the rents for millions of low income tenants from the beginning of next month.

Fun Online Polls: The EU Budget and Taxes on fizzy drinks

The responses to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

Did David Cameron get a good deal in the EU budget negotiations?

Oh come off it, it's all just posturing - 46%
No, the EU's budget should be re-set to zero - 25%
No, because the UK's net contributions will probably go up anyway - 13%
Yes, he got a reasonable deal - 9%
No, he should have pushed for deeper cuts - 2%
No, with these savage cuts he is endangering the European project - 2%
Other, please specify - 4%

I was with the majority on this one, the whole thing is smoke and mirrors like anything else to do with the EU budget. There was a good turnout of 141 voters, thanks to everybody who took part.
-----------------------
They're at it again:

Fizzy drinks should be heavily taxed(1) and junk food adverts banished until after the watershed, doctors have said, in a call for action over obesity. The Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, which represents nearly every doctor in the UK, said ballooning waistlines already constituted a "huge crisis"(2). Its report said current measures were failing and called for unhealthy foods to be treated more like cigarettes(3)...

1) That's this week's Fun Online Poll, vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

2) These people don't understand their own terminology. A "crisis" in medical terms is:

1. the turning point of a disease for better or worse; especially a sudden change, usually for the better, in the course of an acute disease.
2. a sudden paroxysmal intensification of symptoms in the course of a disease.

I'm not even convinced that obesity is a "disease" as such and even if it is, it is a "chronic" rather than an "acute" disease, but at least the article doesn't refer to an "obesity epidemic".

3) So people who want to eat chocolate or crisps are going to have to go outside, regardless of the weather, I suppose.

That was then, this is now.

BBC July 2010:

A leading nutritionist says GPs should send obese patients to weight-loss schemes rather than offer NHS help because they will see better results.

Dr Susan Jebb of the Medical Research Council* found in a study that people in a WeightWatchers programme lost twice as much weight as those with GP care. WeightWatchers part-funded the study, but Dr Jebb stressed similar schemes would be as effective. The National Obesity Forum said buying in services could benefit NHS patients...

Tam Fry of the National Obesity Forum said: "GPs are generalists by definition whereas WeightWatchers are the 'consultants' in their field. It's therefore not surprising that the latter achieve the better results. Referral to any organisation with a proven weight-loss system which can be replicated anywhere has to be the best option for the patient, the GP and the NHS.

Spotted by Bob E in The Daily Mail January 2013:

The NHS has spent £4million on sending fat people to Weight Watchers over the past five years. GPs now routinely refer patients to the classes, which cost 'private' visitors around £45 for three months.

Recent studies have found the courses to be highly effective at helping people lose weight. GPs have been able to send patients to them on the NHS since 2007, after they were approved by the rationing watchdog NICE. They are offered by two-thirds of Primary Care Trusts...

However, concerns have been raised that many pro-Weight Watchers studies are funded by the company itself, and may therefore be biased. Claire Friedemann, of the centre of evidence-based medicine at the University of Oxford, told Dispatches: "The danger with companies funding their own research is that they may only publish results which are positive for them."

After analysing ten studies that suggested Weight Watchers was effective, she found that eight had been paid for by the firm itself. Her analysis also showed that while many Weight Watchers patients lost weight within the first three months, some had put it back on again after five years.

* From the MRC website:

Alignment with industry in research, training and translational investments is at the heart of the MRC's strategy and delivery plan - we are committed to developing and sustaining close and productive partnerships with industry in the UK. All our research boards and funding panels benefit from industry representation to ensure strong input from the private sector.

At present, we fund collaborative research with over 80 companies, ranging from large pharmaceutical companies to biosciences and healthcare companies. Notable successes include the The Division of Signal Transduction Therapy (DSTT) (also called the Dundee Kinase Consortium) which has attracted £10.8 million in joint funding from five of the world's leading pharmaceutical companies and the Centre for Drug Safety Science which currently collaborates with six different industrial partners on non-competitive projects with the aim to ultimately produce safer drugs for patients.