Yes, I sort of notice that too. Their baskets seem full of oven-ready pizzas, biscuits, cake and Coke. Maybe a love of cooking has become irremediably bourgeois. Actually it would make sense to not only tax fatty and processed food, but also make gym membership VAT free. That would reduce the cost by 20% at a stroke and send a good message.
There is a lot of truth in this. But equally, either the population has a different genetic make-up than it did say 30 years ago (unlikely) or the ubiquitous availability of calorie-laden food is the root cause. Did you see the Jacques Peretti films: The Men Who Made Us Fat? Really interesting!
Pmsl gym What world do you live in? Iceland and the like are popular because thats how poor people make ends meet. Cheap food equals highly processed food, and therefore shit horrible bad carbs overloading creating diabetes and other horrible things. Fresh food equals expensive. Add to that the lack of home economics and the culture of disposable everything and its no wonder there are issues.
I think the difference was peolpe were overweight but highly manual labour kept a lot of them more in shape, peolpe have sedantary lifestyles. Processed carbs, the death of all. A study two years ago showed how much, since McDonalds was introcude, the French had piled on bad cholesterol. This isnt the burgers, they eat lots of meat, its the shit the beef goes in: the bun was the likely conclusion
People now spend less on food as a proportion of their income than they have ever done, so I don't really buy the "poor people can't afford to eat properly" argument. What has happened is that grazing has taken over. Families often don't have sit down meals at regular times. Everyone works too hard for too long with too much commuting to want to spend time in the kitchen when they get home. And they are doing this to fill their homes with Chinese goods which they will then throw away. Yes, it's a culture thing. Ultimately, it's people's choice. You don't have to live like that. People prefer to.
That is also a good point. What is happening is that we now have to invent physical exercise for ourselves, when before it happened naturally. So you need as many incentives to make this happen as possible.
Once upon a time I weighed 17 stone and was a size 24 I did not become this through healthy eating I hated cooking and it was easy to buy chocolate, biscuits, cakes pizza, sweets, Pepsi It wasn't overnight it was overtime I did not exercise I stayed in my house When I was growing up we didn't have these "luxuries" and I was stick thin and outside playing all day I changed my outlook when I had to buy a size 24 skirt I took to the gym and I followed a soya diet and made healthy food Only I battle with food still going to the extreme of not eating because I havnt dealt with the underlying cause because I don't want too Thankfully my employer and the people I work with accepted and didn't penalise me for my weight gain I think that all these "luxury" food that was instilled in me is no luxury it ruins your life at times and I think it should be taxed but it's easy pickings for companies who make this stuff to put it there for people to buy it makes companies money
I make the gingerbread men once a year (sometimes twice if I've given a lot away). It's a frightening process: Into a saucepan, you put treacle, golden syrup, some ground ginger and a lot of brown sugar. When that has all become liquid, you stir in a massive amount of butter. When that's dissolved, you stir in the flour until eventually you get a dough. That is what is rolled out, cut out and baked. At the end of the process, you get innocuous-looking gingerbread men, which are thin and crispy. You then decorate them with icing-sugar - just sugar with a tiny bit of water and colour. If I listened to myself, I'd chomp up several a day, but as I know what has gone into them, every one is consumed with a certain amount of guilt and I don't do more than 2 a day. I assume just about all biscuits are like this. i like baking, but I don't do much of it or I'd be the size of a house.
Not seen any statistics, reliable or not, on the % of income spent on food over time, but as child care now costs £1000 per child per month, its no surprise either that working parents, who areacy have very little spare time, choose both the quick easy and cheap option Society is broken. Thats the problem.
Fresh food = expensive? What, like carrots, potatoes, onions, cheap cuts of meat (hardly ever cheaper than now)? It's laziness, and perhaps some ignorance, that prevents people on tight budgets from eating healthily. How many fat people from Asian (I use the term to encompass Middle-East through to China in this case) ethnic minorities are there? How many of them do you see filling their trolleys with pizzas and frozen deserts in Iceland? A lot of them have limited incomes.
I challenge you to go and feed a family of 4 for under a tenner, for 3 days, with fresh food. 5 bananas...more than £1. 10 packets of crisps? £1. Big bag of potatoes £3, massive bag of chips £1. Add that to succesful marketing campiagns, superfit Peter Andre goes to Iceland remember... Add to that that 40 years ago more grew their own, allotments were popular amongsth young and old and was a cheap, reliabe source of fresh prduce. Now its mostly old fellas in sheds.
On the Asian point thats a culture thing imo, and in Asia to be fat and obese is revered, its wanted, its a symbol of wealth. Like it was in Dickens stories. What does that tell you.
One sensible reply amongst lots of the usual senseless, thoughtless shit. Well done bradders. I firmly believe it is possible to eat well on a low budget. Ducbird is quite right about poor families shopping baskets being full of junk food, which is full of carbs and calories and low in nutrients. 10 to 1 a fat person walking down the street will have a bottle of sugary fizzy coloured water in their podgy fist. But the question was about the EU categorising obesity as a disability and thereby giving obese people extra rights, to which I say no, absolutely not. Bradders suggestion of burning them is the way to go :Angelic:
It is possible, no doubt. Look at the french, they waste nothing. Again another cultural variance, also something which my grandparents did. Its society. Its broken. Anyone who wants an insight into what it takes to lose weight, keep weight off or genrally lifestyle change and maintain it, drop me a line. I can assre you its harder than giving up booze, fags, sex and bikes all rolled into one.
Grow your own & cook you own - walk cycle instead of car when possible It's the obese kids that upset me
Poor people on budgets are not the only obese people there are plenty of middle of the range who are rather large and the guys that come in with the largest beer guts who wear slip on shoes because they have no chance of doing up laces buy alcohol like it's going out of fashion There are token given by the state which are for vegetables and baby milk to encourage healthy eating I would like to bet that the majority of obese people don't work or have already some kind of disability making the already obese even bigger
if i cut out the fags and whiskie i will be as fat as a pudding. i poped in to asda in linwood when i was down in the city never seen so many unhealthy obese people in all my life, you dont see that up here, and oban is a relatively poor low pay area, but what is big up here with the kids is sport.
I do agree with you on this bradders; why it is broken and how to fix it we might disagree about though. For me the first thing is for people to start taking responsibility for their lives and stop looking to the state.
Make all food expensive and poor people will die of starvation. Therefore reduce the social care bill. Winner winner chicken dinner :Angelic:
