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The anti-fat campaign is just fat-headed

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Contradictory: Either we're all going to turn into great fat, cancerous, diabetic slugs or we're all going to live for longer and longer

Help! Help! Half of all British men are going to be obese by 2040! They’re all going to have heart attacks, diabetes and cancer! !t’s going to cost the NHS £320bn … And we’re all DOOMED!!

That, in a nutshell is a summary of the latest bout of health hysteria to be launched in our direction. Tim Marsh of the National Heart Forum has just revealed these terrifying (he hopes) statistics at a European Congress on Obesity. And it’s nonsense.

Now, I’m not disputing that there are a lot of fat blokes around, and fat women, too, come to that. They waddle round supermarkets, dragging their chubby children behind them. They sit in airport departure lounges,  overflowing the skimpy plastic chairs, while other, thinner passengers utter a silent prayer: ‘Dear Lord, don’t give me the seat next to the man-mountain over there.’ And when they die, they need oversized coffins because they can’t be squeezed into the pine boxes made for normal-sized folk.

But let’s just stop to think this through for a moment.

And while we do, let’s consider the fact that public sector workers are currently going on strike because of reforms to their pensions. Question: why do pensions need reforming? Answer: because we’re living longer.

According to government statistics, a British man of 65 can now expect to live until the age of 83. And some researchers think this may be an underestimate. They’re saying that men may soon overtake women in the longevity stakes. And looking further ahead,  othr researchers are claiming that a third of all babies born this year will live to be 100.

So which is it?

Help! Help! Half of all British men are going to be obese by 2040! They¿re all going to have heart attacks, diabetes and cancer!

Either we’re all going to turn into great fat, cancerous, diabetic slugs who are heading for an early, oversized grave. Or we’re all going to live for longer and longer, costing the government a fortune in pensions.

But it can’t be both.

Either way, there’s no need to panic. Because the one thing we know for sure is that death is not a question if ‘if’, but ‘when’. We’re all going to go, sooner or later, on way or another. And it’s just absurd to say that fat people are going to cost the NHS £320bn with all their blubber-related diseases, because that supposes that thin people don’t get diseases like cancer, or dementia, or strokes that are equally expensive to treat.

What’s more, if fat people really do die earlier, then they’re actually doing the rest of us a favour. After all, someone who keels over at 60, having paid tax all their working lives, but never collecting a pension is leaving that much more in the pot for those healthy macrobiotic nut cutlet-munchers who grimly hang on into their nineties.

Living longer: According to government statistics, a British man of 65 can now expect to live until the age of 83

The exact same argument can be made in favour of smoking, too. Any sane government would encourage smoking, since it raises huge amounts in tax and saves even more in uncollected pensions. And why shouldn’t people be allowed to make the choice to live the way they want? The world is full of self-righteous, issue-obsessed busy-bodies who want to bully us out of our pleasures. You can’t have a glass of wine, eat a couple of sausages, drive a petrol car or water your garden without someone telling you that you’re damaging yourself or the planet.

And most of it is just nonsense. Think of all the panics we’ve had that didn’t come to anything. Britain has not been decimated by heterosexual AIDS. All the computers in the world did not come to a grinding halt on 1 January 2000. Sea levels are not rising as fast as alarmists said they would. And look out the window. This is May. It’s cold and wet. Does that look like global warming to you?

  More... Half of all men in England ‘will be obese by 2040’ - and cost of treating related illnesses may reach £320bn Hot sauce ingredient reduces 'beer belly' fat and could play key role in future weight-loss surgery

Maybe people would be better off if they were thinner and fitter. But maybe, too, we wouldn’t be getting children in primary school going on diets and putting themselves in danger of anorexia – which is far deadlier, far younger than obesity – if people weren’t going on, and on, and on about the dangers of overweight.

Me, I’m the lean and hungry type. My best mate’s a bit chubby. Maybe stress will do for me. Maybe the weight’ll do for him. So what? We’ve all got to go some time. We might as well enjoy ourselves before we do.



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