Obesity

[ICTChris]

11 minutes ago, The Moonster said:

I'd like to see the correlation between those who are obese and whether they live in a deprived area. I'd be willing to bet that the most deprived areas see the worst obesity.  

I think this is true.  Whereas poor people used to be thin due to not having enough food now they are often fat because the only affordable food is junk.  ETA, Gaz also covers reasons why families who are poor might rely more on convenience food.

There's also an issue with people's ability to cook, their exposure to different foods, availability of fresh ingredients etc.  When I grew up I lived in a well off house and my mum was at home so we had a properly cooked meal every night - lots of families, deprived or not, don't have that now.

Edited July 30, 2020 by ICTChris

[Detournement]

1 hour ago, ahemps said:

Yes as a country we do if we listen to the statistics.

On a first aid course I went on a few years ago the doctor made a remark to the class that diabetes will bankrupt the NHS. If this is a self inflicted problem then we should be doing a lot more to address it. We shouldn't throw money at the NHS to fix a problem when we should be fixing the root cause which in the long term will save us money. 

Big Pharma will bankrupt the NHS. 

We should just make our own insulin and tell them to bolt. 

[Detournement]

3 minutes ago, ICTChris said:

I think this is true.  Whereas poor people used to be thin due to not having enough food now they are often fat because the only affordable food is junk.

There's also an issue with people's ability to cook, their exposure to different foods, availability of fresh ingredients etc.  When I grew up I lived in a well off house and my mum was at home so we had a properly cooked meal every night - lots of families, deprived or not, don't have that now.

I don't think people were necessarily thin because they didn't have enough food.

When you look at pictures from the 70s/80s people are much thinner but there wasn't widespread hunger in the UK. Reduced activity levels in work and transport, reduced levels of smoking and changes in food production to add loads of shitty sugars that increase appetites.

[The Moonster]

6 minutes ago, Gaz said:

I'll preface this by saying it's anecdotal evidence, but teaching in a rough area would back this up. This can be for a number of reasons as I've said above. I know several pupils who have McDonalds three or four times a week because it allows their parents to work longer hours and ends up being a net financial benefit. Which, when you're struggling to afford to heat your house, is a no-brainer.

 

1 minute ago, ICTChris said:

I think this is true.  Whereas poor people used to be thin due to not having enough food now they are often fat because the only affordable food is junk.

There's also an issue with people's ability to cook, their exposure to different foods, availability of fresh ingredients etc.  When I grew up I lived in a well off house and my mum was at home so we had a properly cooked meal every night - lots of families, deprived or not, don't have that now.

I remember a documentary type thing we watched in school about two areas in Glasgow right next to each other (I think it was Bearsden and Drumchapel) and the lassie was saying you're likely to die something like 10 years earlier if you're born on the Drumchapel side in comparison to Bearsden. I'd like to see obesity figures for both areas but I don't know if that info is even available.

[Marshmallo]

Not sure I'd blame office jobs - I work in an office and I'm absolutely shredded.

[coprolite]

2 hours ago, ICTChris said:

The UK Government have, as part of the response to the Covid pandemic, started a new initiative to reduce obestiy.  There seems to be some evidence that obesity was a risk factor for Covid patentis, with Covid patients falling into the obese category having worse outcomes than those who were not obese.  As with many of the Covid statistics, this will need to be studied and properly understood but that hasn't stopped government from jumping into things with initiatives to get people slimmer.  Boris Johnson, himself obese and a Covid patient, is apparently crediting hsi experience with converting him and his government to a more 'nanny state' policy.  Proposals include banning adverts for junk food before 9pm (the definition of junk food being food high in fat, sugar and salt) and restricting buy one get one free offers on things like pizzas in supermarkets.  There is a plan to allow doctors to prescribe cycling and give financial help to people to buy and repair bikes.

These measures are all in England but there are similar proposalsfrom the Scottish Government, although the introduction of the legislstion has been delayed.  Along with drinking and smoking obestiy is one of the health challanges that is often talked about in Scotland and a number of measures have been taken to improve the health of Scottish people in relation to booze, fags and fatties.  

Do we have an obestiy problem?  

Is banning adverts for McDonalds and BOGOFs on frozen pizza the answer?

Are you obese and will you be slimming down due to the pandemic?

Probably clinically obese and have put on a lot of weight because of being in the house, not doing my usual daily walk or cycle of 5-10 miles. 

For lunch i just had two leftover chinese chicken thighs (with the skin removed) and a french fancy. 

[Gaz]

4 minutes ago, Marshmallo said:

Not sure I'd blame office jobs - I work in an office and I'm absolutely shredded.

Not entirely to blame, no, but then I don't think one thing is entirely to blame. It's a combination of loads of different things, of which I'd say office jobs are definitely one of those things.

[Jacksgranda]

14 minutes ago, ICTChris said:

I think this is true.  Whereas poor people used to be thin due to not having enough food now they are often fat because the only affordable food is junk.  ETA, Gaz also covers reasons why families who are poor might rely more on convenience food.

There's also an issue with people's ability to cook, their exposure to different foods, availability of fresh ingredients etc.  When I grew up I lived in a well off house and my mum was at home so we had a properly cooked meal every night - lots of families, deprived or not, don't have that now.

We weren't well off - my parents worked at a job where they had a small wage but house and meals provided - and as my mother was the cook we had a cooked meal every night. Saturday's I can't remember what happened at lunch time, tbqh, and when I was bigger I was off to the football. Sundays we had a big cooked meal at lunchtime, usually a roast of some description.

I have never not had a cooked meal every night, even when I lived on my own, except through illness or choice.

 

[coprolite]

Just because deprived areas have more obesity doesn't mean that deprivation causes obesity. 

Maybe some people's poverty and obesity has a common cause. 

[Gaz]

8 minutes ago, coprolite said:

Just because deprived areas have more obesity doesn't mean that deprivation causes obesity. 

Maybe some people's poverty and obesity has a common cause. 

I don't think anyone's saying that deprivation causes obesity, though.

[coprolite]

5 minutes ago, Gaz said:

I don't think anyone's saying that deprivation causes obesity, though.

No, but some people had mentioned the link and i thought i'd contribute an observation because in my experience many people see correlation and infer causality. Maybe my observation wasn't needed, which would be great. 

Not all posts are argumentative. 

[Gaz]

1 minute ago, coprolite said:

No, but some people had mentioned the link and i thought i'd contribute an observation because in my experience many people see correlation and infer causality. Maybe my observation wasn't needed, which would be great. 

Not all posts are argumentative. 

Fair dos

[tamthebam]

2 hours ago, Shandon Par said:

Had a curry last night. Grateful of the canvas belt this morning as my stomach is a good couple of inches bigger than it was yesterday. 

aye. right. from your photos on here you look like a stick with big feet like a Giacometti sculpture 

[craigkillie]

14 minutes ago, The Moonster said:

 

I remember a documentary type thing we watched in school about two areas in Glasgow right next to each other (I think it was Bearsden and Drumchapel) and the lassie was saying you're likely to die something like 10 years earlier if you're born on the Drumchapel side in comparison to Bearsden. I'd like to see obesity figures for both areas but I don't know if that info is even available.

Never thought I'd be able to discuss this on P&B, but I did my PhD on stuff specifically related to this (not obesity specifically, but modelling disease inequalities), and this stuff exists across the city. The Drumchapel/Bearsden example you outlined being the most egregious case of two neighbouring areas with vast inequalities, but there are many others in the city - Maryhill and the West End, Govan/Ibrox and other parts of the Southside.

The figures can get even starker if you delve into smaller sub-regions of the city based on the Health Scotland reports of the time (the figures have since been updated a bit), the average male life expectancy across the Greater Glasgow and Clyde Health board region ranged from 59 in Parkhead to 80 in Jordanhill & Kelvinside. Glasgow has probably the biggest health inequalities in the UK, to the extent that there is an epidemiological phenomenon called the "Glasgow effect". There are a lot of factors at play, but nobody can really get to the bottom of it.

My PhD thesis is here just in case anyone is interested. It's mainly a lot of boring statistical models but there are some interesting maps of risk. It's all in black and white due to printing costs, but I have colour versions of some maps. For example, here's a map of respiratory disease risk across Glasgow in 2011, with "clusters" of similar disease risk coloured in blue. The blue lines therefore sort of represent "jumps" in disease risk. The darker the red, the higher the risk of respiratory disease. A value of 1 means the risk level matches the Scottish average, anything above that represents an above average risk (eg 1.1 say that the area has a 10% higher risk of respiratory disease than the Scottish average).

 

[Dee Man]

1 hour ago, Gaz said:

There are a myriad reasons why people are more overweight than they were 50 years ago.

Off the top of my head:

1) Parents who are unwilling to let their kids go out to play because the media have told them there are kidnappers on every street corner;
2) The number of single-parent families have driven a demand for smaller houses, of which mostly consist of flats with no garden;
3) The move to a service-based economy which sees people sitting on their backsides for 8 hours a day instead of walking around a factory;
4) The move to hourly / zero-hour contracts which means it is often financially better for a parent to work and get paid for an extra hour and buy their kids a McDonalds than it is to finish work at their required time, go to the shops and buy ingredients and take it home and cook them, due to the opportunity cost;
5) The closure of sports facilities by councils with little money;

I could go on but got distracted midway through number 5 and lost my train of thought. No doubt I'll think of more.

Not sure number1 is anymore prevalent than it was in years gone by. There were always stories going round at primary school every so often about a suspicious looking car going around outside the school with a dodgy looking guy in it or a van bundling kids away. The headmaster would read out a warning at assembly for everyone to be vigilant on their way home, making the solo journey once you had split from your mates utterly terrifying. Anytime you saw a van or a yellow/red/blue car or whatever the vague description of the day was, you'd be checking out the driver to see if he was shifty and looking in your direction to see if you had to get your sprint on. 

I think the only difference nowadays is that there is a name for these child predators. 

[The Moonster]

2 minutes ago, craigkillie said:

Never thought I'd be able to discuss this on P&B, but I did my PhD on stuff specifically related to this (not obesity specifically, but modelling disease inequalities), and this stuff exists across the city. The Drumchapel/Bearsden example you outlined being the most egregious case of two neighbouring areas with vast inequalities, but there are many others in the city - Maryhill and the West End, Govan/Ibrox and other parts of the Southside.

The figures can get even starker if you delve into smaller sub-regions of the city based on the Health Scotland reports of the time (the figures have since been updated a bit), the average male life expectancy across the Greater Glasgow and Clyde Health board region ranged from 59 in Parkhead to 80 in Jordanhill & Kelvinside. Glasgow has probably the biggest health inequalities in the UK, to the extent that there is an epidemiological phenomenon called the "Glasgow effect". There are a lot of factors at play, but nobody can really get to the bottom of it.

My PhD thesis is here just in case anyone is interested. It's mainly a lot of boring statistical models but there are some interesting maps of risk. It's all in black and white due to printing costs, but I have colour versions of some maps. For example, here's a map of respiratory disease risk across Glasgow in 2011, with "clusters" of similar disease risk coloured in blue. The blue lines therefore sort of represent "jumps" in disease risk. The darker the red, the higher the risk of respiratory disease. A value of 1 means the risk level matches the Scottish average, anything above that represents an above average risk (eg 1.1 say that the area has a 10% higher risk of respiratory disease than the Scottish average).

 

Thats very interesting, cheers. I'll give your thesis a look later on.

[Shandon Par]

7 minutes ago, tamthebam said:

aye. right. from your photos on here you look like a stick with big feet like a Giacometti sculpture 

More like a white Chris Eubank.

[Jacksgranda]

6 minutes ago, Dee Man said:

Not sure number1 is anymore prevalent than it was in years gone by. There were always stories going round at primary school every so often about a suspicious looking car going around outside the school with a dodgy looking guy in it or a van bundling kids away. The headmaster would read out a warning at assembly for everyone to be vigilant on their way home, making the solo journey once you had split from your mates utterly terrifying. Anytime you saw a van or a yellow/red/blue car or whatever the vague description of the day was, you'd be checking out the driver to see if he was shifty and looking in your direction to see if you had to get your sprint on. 

I think the only difference nowadays is that there is a name for these child predators. 

Christian B?

[Dee Man]

7 minutes ago, Jacksgranda said:

Christian B?

 

[welshbairn]

8 minutes ago, Dee Man said:

Not sure number1 is anymore prevalent than it was in years gone by. There were always stories going round at primary school every so often about a suspicious looking car going around outside the school with a dodgy looking guy in it or a van bundling kids away. The headmaster would read out a warning at assembly for everyone to be vigilant on their way home, making the solo journey once you had split from your mates utterly terrifying. Anytime you saw a van or a yellow/red/blue car or whatever the vague description of the day was, you'd be checking out the driver to see if he was shifty and looking in your direction to see if you had to get your sprint on. 

I think the only difference nowadays is that there is a name for these child predators. 

Not sure how old you are, but I think we were a lot freer when I was a kid. Used to spend the whole summer playing down Grangemouth docks when there were still cargo boats coming in, cadging fags off sailors and building rafts. Never got buggered or drowned once, thankfully. In my experience parents are much more paranoid now, given the minuscule chances of stranger abductions etc, which are just as rare now as they were then. We were also on alert for predators, teachers as well as strangers, running away scared but giggling about the absurd creep.