Obesity is no disease: it’s a bad lifestyle choice
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LAST night my wife made an apple crumble. I haven’t got an especially sweet tooth – I’d rather have a plate of cheese any day instead of dessert. But I do make an exception for apple crumble.
It was so good I went back for seconds. Even as I was eating it I knew I shouldn’t be. While some people can eat anything and everything and not put on a pound, that’s not me. At this time of year, when most have us have overindulged, many of us realise that we really do need to lose a few pounds. We need to take action to do something about it.
For myself, it’s more than a few pounds. To be blunt: I am obese. In a line-up of sumo wrestlers and me, you would be pushed to spot the odd man out.
I have tried all sorts of diets and exercise plans and I have never stuck with any of them. And I see the result of that in the mirror every day. But while I’ve always thought I had nothing to blame for this except eating too much and exercising too little, it turns out it is not my fault at all.
It is your fault. Yes, you. According to Professor Andrew Goddard, president of the Royal College of Physicians (RCP), obesity “is not a lifestyle choice caused by individual greed, but a disease caused by health inequalities, genetic influences and social factors”.
See? By “social factors”, he means you.
WHICH only goes to show that you can be both extremely clever and very stupid. Because the idea that obesity is a disease is not just risible – it is also dangerous and likely to make obesity far worse.
The RCP’s recommendation that we reclassify obesity as a disease is an example of the victim culture that has taken hold across so many areas. Even doctors, a group you might have thought likely to rely on science and evidence, turn out to be as susceptible to political and ideological fads as anyone else.
And the victim culture, in which no one is ever wholly to blame for their own behaviour, is the modern ideological fad. From child abusers and murderers to muggers and thieves, supposed experts testify to how a criminal is actually just another victim – of their upbringing, their social circle or their circumstances.
You might think this concept of victimhood had no place in dealing with obesity, where there is a very simple formula: eat a lot, don’t exercise, you get fat. But instead of working from this, with the obvious consequence for those of us who are obese – eat less, exercise more, be less obese – the RCP is giving us a “get out of jail free card”. It’s not our fault. It’s society.
This might seem clever: a sympathetic pat on the back that might help “victims” of obesity lose the stigma and feel more inclined to tackle the problem. In reality, it is the opposite. If I am a victim, whether of my genes, my economic circumstances or my peers, then I am, in effect, helpless. If it’s not about my lack of willpower but a disease from which I suffer, then how can I be expected to use that willpower – which, disease or no disease, remains and will
‘It is my fault that I am fat, no one else’s’
always be the only way obesity can be tackled?
When doctors speak, many of us give their words far more credence than any other professionals. But medics are no less prone to parroting ideological nonsense than anyone else, and this is especially true of those doctors who get involved with medical politics.
IN THIS vein, Professor Goddard turns out to be yawningly predictable in his prescription for tackling obesity – it’s all about government action and laws and very little about individual responsibility: “It is governments, not individuals, that can have an impact on the food environment through regulation and taxation, and by controlling availability and affordability.”
None of this is to deny that health inequalities, genetic influences and social factors – the three factors cited by the RCP – have some influence. So too can all sorts of other things, such as the weather, the decline of the family meal and our sedentary lifestyles. But in the end obesity is a matter of personal responsibility and, yes, lifestyle choice. It really is only my fault that I am fat and no one else’s.
Quite apart from the implications for my own health, understanding this and not making excuses for it matters, because obesity really must be tackled.
According to Public Health England (PHE), two-thirds of adults and a quarter of children between two and 10 are overweight, and one in four adults is obese. Even if one takes those estimates with a pinch of salt (PHE’s survival as an organisation depends on it coming up with all sorts of scary stories about our health) then it’s still clearly a key issue.
It is estimated to cost the NHS £5-6billion a year. As Simon Stevens puts it: “If we keep piling on the pounds around the waistline, we’ll be piling on the pounds in terms of future taxes needed just to keep the NHS afloat.”
But while obesity has huge financial consequences for the NHS, and for the obese themselves, it is the very worst kind of ideological pretence to classify it as a disease. The obese – which means me – choose to eat too much and choose to do nothing about it. We are not victims of anything except our own indulgence.
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