How embarrassing that ALL the fatties I saw on my Turkish holiday were British

While on holiday with my family in Turkey last week, i felt embarrassed to be British. The most obese figures piling into the buffet at the hotel all seemed to be Brits. And i don’t mean just overweight: i mean gargantuan. i mean eye-poppingly colossal.

The same was noticeable in the town’s weekly open market. You could see some of these colossi vainly trying to find something that would fit them, and the Turkish stall-holders shrugging their shoulders, as if apologising for their inability to stock the appropriate XXXXL.

But i wondered what those frustrated traders were really thinking: specifically, about the sort of country Britain is to produce such a race of horizontal giants.

The answer, in part, must be: one in which self-restraint is increasingly absent. The inability to defer gratification may be inevitable in what has been called the ‘i want it now’ society. But if that characteristic is increasing, it is a matter of more than merely medical concern.

This was set out by the trailblazing ‘marshmallow’ experiment conducted by Stanford University in the Seventies. The children in those psychologists’ control group who demonstrated greater ability to decline offered marshmallows — in return for more goodies if they held back from immediate consumption — when re- evaluated as adults, demonstrated a notable range of advantages over those who couldn’t defer gratification, not just in terms of Body Mass index, but also in academic outcomes.

Strain

But the medical consequences have the greatest effect on all of us (whatever our shape or size) via the NHS budget.

While adult social care is facing unprecedented strain, as the number of the elderly dependent increases ineluctably, more and more taxpayers’ billions are being spent on treating the effects of morbid obesity among the young and middle-aged.

it emerged at the weekend that the number of those being given weight-loss surgery within the NHS had increased six-fold over the past ten years.

The standard operation — in which, more or less, a knot is tied in the patient’s stomach to make it physically impossible to consume too much — costs around £7,000 a go.

in terms of NHS management, this might actually be sensible: if it prevents such people from developing type 2 diabetes (which can lead in turn to blindness, and limbs requiring amputation) it will save greater future costs to the taxpayer.

But how sad it is that this should be necessary: that so many thousands of people have been unable to exercise any sort of restraint, even though they must know the consequences.

Perhaps they have persuaded themselves they have the sort of metabolism that makes obesity inevitable.

in reality the number of people with the much discussed ‘fat gene’ — actually a mutation of the gene known as KSR2 — is fewer than one in a hundred.

For the rest of us, there is no such excuse. i, too, am inclined to gluttony and come from a family which has not always shown much restraint at the dining table.

My paternal great-grandfather Gustav died because his extreme corpulence made it impossible for him to undergo surgery. And my father Nigel, when Chancellor of the exchequer, was as well known for his extensive circumference as for his fiscal policies.

After he had left office, he went on a skiing trip, fell over — and found he was unable to get up without the help of companions. That humiliating experience impelled him to go on a serious diet. Out went potatoes, cheese and wine — his three favourite forms of calorie intake.

he lost something like a third of his body weight. it had such an effect on his appearance that people would ask me if my father had become very ill — when the opposite was the case. To avoid any such misunderstanding, he even wrote The Nigel lawson Diet Book. it sold many more copies than his political memoir, to his rueful amusement. Mine is a middle- class family; but it appears that the highest incidence of morbid obesity is seen lower down the income scale. it is no coincidence that the largest numbers of NHS weight-loss operations are carried out in the far-from-affluent North east of the country.

Those on the political left argue that it is because junk food is the cheapest way to eat that obesity is so widespread among the relatively poor (unlike in previous centuries, when the fattest people tended to be the richest).

Yet there are other factors behind this. england’s ‘fattest district’ is Copeland in Cumbria, where more than three-quarters of the inhabitants have been classed as overweight or obese.

Junk

This is one of those parts of Britain where hard physical work — especially at the docks — had once been the most common form of employment.

As the councillor responsible for public health at Cumbria County Council pointed out: ‘Compared with 50 years ago, the work of more people is less active. heavy industries made people move around, rather than sit at a computer. We are in a different world.’

it is not just a matter of work: in our homes, too, we are surrounded by laboursaving machinery such as dishwashers and microwave ovens. And the internet means that increasingly it is not even necessary to walk to a shop. everything is brought to your doorstep, if you can’t be bothered to make the effort — and Britons now spend more per household on internet shopping than any other nation.

This helps explain why we are becoming, on average, fatter — even as we have actually reduced our calorie intake from what it was 50 years ago.

And it’s not true that junk prepared food is the cheapest way to eat. Fresh produce is less expensive. But it requires the effort to cook. here, too, the ‘i want it now’ attitude prevails; why cook, when you can just buy and graze immediately?

i don’t see a solution for this: although if the nation looked at itself as others must see us, it might help.