Thread: Fat Ass English

The English go on and on about how fat the Americans are...but the truth is the English are just as fat if not fatter. I start a harmless thread about what great food I'm eating and leave to the English to claim everyone in America is fat. It must be because they are in denial about their own girth. I can't think of another reason...

so the question is put forth...Are the English in denial about how fat they are?

Originally Posted by Lovebucket

sorry ph. your not gonna get very far with this one methinks

Tackling child obesity in Britain

By Helen Briggs
BBC News Online


Paediatric dietician Heidi Guy has a unique insight into the pressures facing British kids.

I feel like I have lost some weight and I feel happier with myself now

Jessica, 11
In the two years she has been running a child obesity clinic at St Richard's Hospital in Chichester, West Sussex, she has heard some alarming things.

Some of her young patients admit to eating dozens of bags of crisps and chocolate bars in a weekend.

Children are bullied in the playground over the brands of food in their lunchbox and there is over-whelming peer pressure to look good and fit in.

"I would say just about all of them have been bullied or teased because of their weight," she says.

"We go through boxes and boxes of tissues and a lot of them are very tearful about everything."

Obesity epidemic

Britain is said to be on the brink of an obesity epidemic. According to figures from the Department of Health, more than 8.5% of 6 year olds and 15% of 15 year olds in England are classified as obese.

Yet despite these stark statistics there are only a handful of specialised clinics that offer help.

Facts on obesity
The % of obese adults in England has almost trebled since the beginning of the 1980s
21% of men and 23.5% of women are obese
The proportion of overweight children increased by 7% between 1996 and 2001
The NHS Child Obesity Clinic at St Richard's Hospital, which was set up in February 2001, is one of the pioneers.

It tackles the problem on two fronts. Children referred to the unit are asked to complete a food diary to identify areas of weakness. They are then given sensible dietary advice on portion sizes and healthy eating.

Staff at nearby University College, Chichester, run an after school activity club that promotes exercise in a supportive, non-competitive environment.

"Their confidence and their ability and their self-esteem are so dramatically improved because they're in a club with other children who are also significantly overweight," says Heidi Guy. "So they're not competing against the slim kids."

New Leaf

Professor David Candy, a paediatric gastroenterologist at the hospital, is one of the founders of the New Leaf (Lifestyle, Eating, Activity and Fitness) programme at St Richard's.

In his smart suit and cartoon tie - standard wear for paediatricians - he is a popular face in the children's outpatient centre.

Professor Candy says when children join the programme their fitness is assessed by walking a mile on a treadmill at their own pace. Some of them are totally exhausted by the end of it.

He says the key thing is to encourage children to exercise in an environment where there are no winners and no losers.

"At school, there's the embarrassment of the changing rooms - and nobody wants them on their team because they have to move around a lot of extra weight.

"Here none of that happens and they're all here for the same purpose and there's no teasing."

Self-esteem

Children as young as three and even babies have attended the clinic at St Richard's but the average child is aged eight or nine and there tend to be more girls than boys.

A Shining Beacon

The Brit TEFL community in LOS, however, is suffering mightily from maltrition due to lack of resources. "They're really helping our national average," according to Mr. D. Dog, of Jomtien, Chonburi.

Third times a charm huh mate???

So what's the ratio to obesity in the UK compared to the States.....I mean you wouldn't be stupid enough to come to a conclusion from that one article......or would you???

early returns are indicating a might side of denial...

LoL....I don't even like England, but your obsession kind of makes me wanna 'defend' Old Blighty A bit old this one though, but not that old:

Obesity kills 300,000 people a year in America and is the nation's number-one health hazard. Nowhere is this more true than in Mississippi, where food is cheap and exercise unheard of. Matthew Engel visits the heaviest state of a country that is in danger of busting the scales.

Thursday May 2, 2002
The Guardian


It is one of those silent, brooding mornings in a small Dixie town: already hot and humid just after breakfast-time. There is hardly anything here: just a shop, a filling station and a building with a sign saying Total Fitness, though judging by the rusty chain holding the padlock, that has been closed for a long time. There is hardly anyone about either, and they all move slowly: partly because of the heat, partly because they cannot do otherwise. The average weight of the population appears to be around 20 stone. The name of the place, without a word of a lie, is Chunky, Mississippi.

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The US has what has widely been described as an obesity epidemic. And Mississippi is the sickest state in the country. More than 62% of its population meet the accepted definition of being overweight, and 24% are officially obese. These figures are certain to be understated because the information comes mainly from phone surveys, and people tend to lie about their weight. But they always did lie; and still the rates have almost doubled in a decade.
Obesity is now said to be responsible for 300,000 American deaths every year - that's 100 times the number killed on September 11 - and it eats up 12% of all the US's healthcare costs: $100bn a year. Mortality increases by up to a quarter for the overweight, and can double for the obese, never mind those described as "supermorbidly obese". Last month, the US tax authority formally recognised obesity as a disease, allowing patients to claim for the cost of prescribed weight-loss treatments. This disease causes heart attacks, strokes and diabetes. As a health problem, it now far outstrips drinking and smoking.

Manhattan and San Francisco may be full of joggers and rich young things rushing to see their personal trainers before dawn. But any European who penetrates the very different Bible-bullets-and-Big Mac America that exists outside these sophisticated cities will spot the symptoms at once. Many of the people there no longer walk; they waddle. Most of the time they prefer to sit. In Mississippi, 33% of adults take no exercise at all.

The other half of the equation can be seen in any restaurant. The word "sandwich" conveys something more like a large loaf: Americans believe they are being swindled if they are not served portions that would disgust most Europeans. A middle-aged Englishman, mildly concerned about his paunch, can look around the room and feel like Gulliver in Brobdingnag: a midget amid a race of giants.

It would be fitting if Chunky were the true Fat City: Ground Zero of this catastrophe. But there are plenty of other contenders in Mississippi alone. The problem is known to be acute in the river delta, where mechanisation took away the harsh old jobs in the cotton fields. The Overeaters Anonymous class in Tupelo has a valid claim for the title of America's corpulence capital, as does the office handing out food stamps to welfare claimants in Meridian (next to Sam's Fashion, which sells 58-inch waist trousers).

The clientele on the slot machines in the Starlight Lounge of the casino on the Choctaw reservation in Neshoba County are fairly substantial, though they are outweighed by the customers of the Piggly Wiggly supermarket next door, where the Choctaw shop. There may be nowhere at all to match aisle 10 in Piggly Wiggly's, between the Brown Cow ice-cream ("swirled with thick, rich chocolate syrup") and the giant-sized packs of bacon-and- cheddar fries.

The worst of this will not be in the rich white suburbs. Mississippi is used to coming first - or last - in national league tables. Usually, it is ranked number one among the states for poverty, and 50th for education. Both are relevant. But Mississippi is not unique. Its obesity figures are only slightly worse than several other states: not only in the south (Colorado, with its mountain air and bike paths, is at the other extreme, at about 13%). The worst-affected community of all is said to be the Pima Indian tribe of Arizona. The US is not even the most obese nation on earth: in parts of the South Pacific, such as Western Samoa and Nauru, the slender have been driven almost to extinction.

Dr Alan Penman, an epidemiologist with the Mississippi department of health, prefers not to use the word epidemic. "That implies something that comes and goes," he says. "What we have here are normal adaptations to the kind of environment we now live in. It's Darwinian. Everyone is at risk, if not actually affected, because we have created what some people have called an obesogenic environment. The Americans have done it very well, better than anyone. And it's not going to go away for generations."

Chief among the probable causes of the crisis is prosperity. The old correlation between poverty and starvation is no longer relevant in the US, a country where it is exceptionally cheap and easy to eat large quantities of bad food. Indeed, it can be difficult to do anything else: supermarkets have a far less sophisticated selection than in the UK, especially in poor areas, and a huge proportion of space devoted solely to snacks. American consumers are bombarded with far less of even thespurious health information found on British packets ("85% fat-free" - ie 15% fat). The price of a double whopper with cheese is coming down, though its calorific value (1,060) is not.

Black women aged 45-54 (56% of whom are obese in Mississippi) are the worst affected of all. But the epidemic, or Darwinian adaptation, affects all sections of society: black and white, male and female, rich and poor, old and - most worryingly - young. Obesity rates among American children are rocketing, and both the US and the UK have recently observed the first childhood cases of type two diabetes, a disease formerly confined to the rotund middle-aged.

Penman comes from Ayr, and recognises in Mississippians some of the characteristics that have given the Scots similar, if milder problems: a taste for fried food, and a distaste for exercise. Many of the causes are endemic to all western societies: sedentary jobs, irregular mealtimes, couch-potato children. But he is confident that things will never get as bad in Britain as they are in the US.

For a start, in some parts of the country, Americans have eliminated not merely the need to walk, but even the possibility of it. "I'd love to be able to walk to the store, pick up some milk and come home again, but our towns don't really allow that," laments Mary Gilmore, a dietician in Meridian. The distances are too great, the pavements non-existent. In the sprawling suburbs and small towns, public transport is often as rare as in an English village. In any case, it is almost impossible to carry the milk: it usually comes in gallon containers (a US gallon is four-fifths of a UK gallon). In a country where the cost of packaging exceeds the cost of the food, buying any other way is far more expensive.

This does not apply only to milk. Gilmore runs classes to encourage people not to diet - which rarely works in the long term - but to change their lifestyles. Her students, many of them now disarmingly svelte, were reminiscing for me about how they became fat. "One of those bars is a dollar and six cents, but a six-pack is only two-fifty," one of them, Judy, was saying. "I like a lot for my money." Unfortunately, I had missed the start of the sentence. "Frozen Snickers," she repeated. "Go try."

Frozen Snickers are not particularly Mississippian, but other items are: fried catfish, crawfish, shrimp and oysters; even fried green tomatoes and fried dill pickles (rather tasty, actually). Plus lashings of sweet iced tea ("the house wine of the south"). Even the local attachment to religion is unhelpful. "Church puts a lot of weight on folks," according to Candace, another class member. "There are regular social occasions, and food is always there, and you don't want to offend people by refusing what they've brought. We have a lot of family reunions, too. We even overeat at funerals. There are casseroles, and people put in cream of chicken soup, tons of Velveeta cheese, bacon and ..."

"Hush, Candace," said Bill, across the room. "You're making me hungry."

The attraction of Gilmore's class is that she does not rule out casseroles or even Frozen Snickers. She advises regular sit-down meals - which happen less and less in societies where mothers have full-time jobs - and regular exercise, however light. She calls her programme "10,000 Steps", the number she thinks people should take a day, and hands out pedometers to help them keep count. Some of her clients have dropped as low as 1,200: sub-sedentary, she calls them. Most people must use 300 just going to the toilet and back.

In Mississippi, there is also the climate, which for half the year is too enervating to make any activity attractive. Before air conditioning, it was as easy for kids to play outside as in; now it is easier to justify their inactivity.

The state is only just starting to wake up to the problem: a bill to reintroduce compulsory PE in schools failed in the legislature this year, when schools complained that they did not have the time or resources to implement it. The popularity of American football means many parents are happy to see their boys gain weight, even if it is fat, not muscle. And the grandmothers are pushing in the same direction: many of them remember when poverty in Mississippi really did mean starvation.

Dr Ed Thompson, the state health officer, feels a sense of frustration at dealing with a disease that cannot be cured by normal medical means. "We've protected society from many communicable diseases. But we're now dealing with lifestyle decisions," he said. "We can immunise you, we can keep malarial mosquitoes away from you, we can give you clean water. But we can't exercise for you. In the end, the individual has to make the choices. We want to make it the norm to have a healthy body weight. How do we achieve that? As soon as I figure out how to achieve world peace, I'll tell you."

"You can't just put out messages saying, 'Eat Less. Exercise More,' " says Penman. "That only works for the worried well. You have to create an environment where people make those choices without thinking."

But as things stand, everything in American society is heading in the opposite direction. Britain is to some extent protected by its lack of space and stern planning laws. American developers, meanwhile, can put up houses however and wherever they want, and communities are becoming ever more car-oriented. What's more, the fast-food industry is going through what USA Today calls "drive-thru mania", with 80% of the growth going in sales to customers who have cut out, of their alleged 10,000 a day, the 50-odd steps to get from the car park to the counter and back. This applies even to such unlikely companies as Starbucks and 7-Eleven. "I don't like getting out of my car," a Californian single mother told the newspaper. "Who does?"

The health professionals are doing little to buck the trend. Gilmore's class takes place in a hospital building with a drive-through pharmacy. The Mississippi health department, where Thompson and Penman work, has just moved into a new four-storey office block. Except in emergencies, it is effectively impossible to use the stairs.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0...708373,00.html

And:

http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRel...on/Obesity.asp

This is good:

Little exercise, little fresh food. Now the US government is forced to act on obesity

Special unit sent into West Virginia as weight-related health problems soar

Julian Borger in Washington
Saturday June 4, 2005
The Guardian


An overweight couple relaxing on a beach. Photograph: Stuart McClymont/Getty Images



West Virginia is used to indignity. Its Appalachian hills are a byword for poverty and its people derided as hillbillies.
Now insult has been added to injury in what will be seen as an unwelcome first in the history of the United States.

A team of federal "disease detectives", normally sent to combat outbreaks of infectious bugs, has been dispatched to the state to chart its frightening obesity epidemic. Epidemiologists from the Centres for Disease Control (CDC) have never before been deployed in this fashion, and it reflects the growing anxiety about the threat obesity poses to the health of the nation as a whole.


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Over two-thirds of American adults are overweight and 30% are obese, as are 15% of the country's children. The incidence of diabetes and high blood pressure is widespread and rising.
The figures for West Virginia are even worse. A quarter of the state's children are obese. There are no available clinical statistics for the state population as a whole. On the basis of what West Virginians told researchers about 27% are obese (with a body mass index of over 30), but the actual figure is thought to be nearer 35%. The prevalence of obesity has nearly doubled since 1990.

The result is that 10% of the population suffer from diabetes, 33% have high blood pressure and 28% report doing no physical activity over the course of a month.

"We are the highest in the country for several things. For hypertension we're number one, we're number four for diabetes and three for obesity," said John Law, a spokesman for the West Virginia department of health and human services. "We determined we have a lot of people dying and we have a lot of health costs as a result of obesity, so we wanted the CDC to come in and look at this as they might look at an infectious disease."

The health "Swat" team has just spent three weeks taking their clipboards and scales around West Virginian schools, offices and restaurants in an attempt to understand why so many of the state's people, particularly its children, are getting so fat so very fast.

The disease detectives looked to see if there were any pavements along the roads for pedestrians, whether employees were encouraged to take any exercise, and whether bottled water was on offer alongside the sweet fizzy drinks in automatic dispensers in schools. People were asked whether they "were offered at least one or two appealing fruits and vegetables every day," and "would you replace regular sour cream with low-fat sour cream?"

"This is a team of public health professionals from CDC that are dispatched for West Nile virus and for meningitis. But this is the first time we've dispatched a team of disease detectives around the problem of obesity and it was a recognition in one of our states that their obesity problem was very large," said Donna Stroup, a CDC doctor in charge of health promotion.

However, the CDC's director Julie Gerberding, insisted that the inquiry had not been imposed on West Virginia, the butt of so many jokes through the ages.

"CDC doesn't send people into the states. We get invited, and we are just delighted that the health officials in West Virginia appropriately recognised that they had a serious problem with obesity in their state, and they really wanted to do more than just describe it," Dr Gerberding said.

The CDC produced an obesity map of America, confirming that the problem was worst between the coasts. That would not come as a surprise to anyone who has travelled through the American "heartland" where most restaurants are fast-food outlets, and fresh fruit and vegetables can sometimes be hard to find.

The figures also make clear that there is still a strong link between obesity and poverty, despite a recent study suggesting wealthy Americans are catching up fast. The three most obese states - Alabama, Mississippi and West Virginia - are also the poorest.

West Virginia is third from bottom of the league when it comes to child poverty, with 27% of its children living below the bread line. It has the highest death rate in the nation, is second among 50 states for cancer deaths, and second for smoking. High unemployment and heavy reliance on coal mining are undoubtedly other factors behind the low life expectancy.

The deployment of the medical version of a Swat team has helped dramatise the scale of the crisis, but some health statisticians were sceptical over whether the results of the West Virginia survey would teach the world anything new about obesity and its dangers.

"You're not going to find anything we don't already know. We'll find out that there aren't any sidewalks and there is lousy food in schools," said Daniel McGee, a statistician at Florida State University. "I don't think much will come of it. There is no comparison group, from somewhere where there are sidewalks and good food, maybe because they couldn't find one."

CDC spokesman Llelwyn Grant denied that the survey was a waste of federal money and time. "This is not about discovering the obvious," he said. "It is not about finding out why people are fat, but it will be used to guide the state's future planning in helping the community towards good health and nutrition."

Faced with dramatically rising rates of "adult-onset" diabetes and other obesity-related diseases among young West Virginians, the state's Public Employees Insurance Agency has taken unorthodox measures, using video games in an attempt to get sedentary children moving.

Eighty-five West Virginian children have been recruited for a study in the impact of a Japanese game called Dance Dance Revolution, which involves dancing on a metal mat in time to on-screen directions.

Initial results suggest the game could be effective for some children, but health experts argue that only a fundamental change in diet and lifestyle is likely to make a serious impact on the fat epidemic in West Virginia.

A growing epidemic

· Obesity is rising throughout the world and affects at least 300 million people.

· In the US the percentage of young overweight people has more than tripled since 1980. Some 16% of children and teens are considered overweight with childhood obesity growing at the rate of 20% a year. Some 30% of adults, more than 60 million people, are obese - one in three women and more than one in four men

· In the UK, two-thirds of adults are overweight. Of these, 22% of men and 23% of women are obese (at least 13kg-19kg overweight), putting their health at risk. The level of obesity has tripled in the past 20 years

· Obesity is rising among British children. In the past 10 years it has doubled in six-year-olds (to 8.5%) and trebled among 15-year-olds (to 15%)

· Obesity is responsible for $100bn (£55bn) in medical costs and 300,000 deaths annually, according to the American Obesity Association

· Throughout the 1990s, the average weight of Americans increased by 4.5kg (10lb). The extra weight meant airlines burnt 350m more gallons of fuel in 2000, costing an extra £157m.

· In 2004 24 states took steps toward phasing out soda and junk food in schools, following 20 states that already had such bans

· Americans eat 200 calories more food energy per day than they did 10 years ago. On any given day, 30% of American children aged four to 19 eat fast food. Overall, 7% of the US population visits McDonald's each day, and 20%-25% eat in some kind of fast-food restaurant

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/...499143,00.html

And some comparisons here I think:

http://www2.essex.ac.uk/ces/Research...enExercise.pdf

So you boys still out pork us but we're getting there

Posted after 2 minutes 50 seconds:

Originally Posted by panhunger

early returns are indicating a might side of denial...

LoL....not denying anything mate....but using the old 'yeah but you lot are fat as well' even when there's less obesity in the UK than in the States.....isn't really going to get you anywhere mate.

Anyways it's you boys and your fast food and fizzy drinks that did it....gits!!!

I think it's funny that folks identify Americans with obesity. Last I looked there were fat people...uhm...just about everywhere.

Still, I was quite amazed at the number of overweight people I saw on my last jaunt to the US! Part of this is the amount of food people eat--a plate of food at a restaurant is enough for TWO people! And of course we've all heard 'don't waste food. Eat everything on your plate!' And people like buffets because they feel they're getting their money's worth...and more!

Everything is BIG in the US--SUPER Big Gulps, GIANT hot dogs, BIG steaks, TRIPLE decker cheeseburgers with milkshakes, lotsa carbs, fats, and sugar.

And...people eating when they aren't hungry!

^ Well them ones in Africa actually have malnutrition But I get what you mean

I thought they'd done away with super sizing in the States? Or is that just like Macca D's???

ph -is there the smallest chance you're a lard-arse yourself? You seem to be quite touchy on the subject but don't worry a good session of comfort-eating will sort you right out -and fortunately hasten your demise.

This is what happens when ethnocentric assholes start posting. I have seen two slams one of me, and now this In only 30 minutes of logging on. You are not gonna have a good time on here mac dork if you keep being an asshole.

Why don't you take a chill pill anal-one -the first post I made in a year you laid into me and now you can't take it. Why don't you start crying to get me banned as it appears to be your m.o. on other threads. The word your groping for is 'ethnocentric' and I'm not. And I'm having a ball thanks.