Obesity a sickness? No, it’s just plain greed
Afew years ago, after an hour working out in the gym, I headed off for my favourite treat. Standing in line for my double-helping bacon sandwich oozing with melted butter and brown sauce, I felt a tap on my shoulder.
It was Ronnie, one of the trainers at my gym. He said: ‘Before you stuff that in your mouth, look at the size of the backsides of people ahead of you in that queue.’
Cruel, perhaps, but honest. Because as a personal trainer he knows the basic fact about fatties.
They’re overweight because they eat too much and exercise too little.
Yet experts all talk about an ‘obesity’ epidemic as if people who fill their faces suffer from some illness over which they have no control. And now our nanny state is stepping in with its latest ‘cure’.
Yesterday, we learned it is determined to force food manufacturers to make burgers and pizza portions smaller, reduce the size of crisp packets and lower the fat and sugar content of unhealthy foods.
what infantilising nonsense. It’s going to put up the cost of food for all of us as manufacturers comply. And it’s going to do nothing to stop people guzzling. It’s greed that makes you fat. Not ignorance about the dangers of junk food.
Like all normal-sized people, I have to work hard to stay trim. everyone knows endless burgers and crisps, washed down with litres of fizzy drink, are bad for you. But fatties lack the willpower to stop eating. Reduce the burger size and the Billy Bunters after instant gratification will just order two, with extra chips.
we are among the lardiest in europe. Two-thirds of adults and one-third of 11-year-olds are overweight, leading to heart attacks, strokes, cancer and diabetes.
But this initiative suggests the fatties waddling about our streets are the Government’s fault — they’re all victims, as though those giant sausage rolls automatically fly off the hot plate and into their open mouths. Or they’re obese because they’re poor, and everyone else is to blame for cramming them full of junk food and takeaways.
Until we hold families and individuals, parents and children, accountable, waistlines will continue to strain at their belts. we don’t need more laws to ram home the harsh truth about gluttony — just common sense and strength of character.