Is obesity a sickness or just plain greed?

I COULDN’T agree more with Amanda platell exploding the myth that obesity is a sickness (Mail). The only person responsible for stuffing food into your face is you. And let’s explode another myth: that the poor have to eat junk food. I lived in Redcar in the deprived North-East where, since the closure of the steel works, there has been high unemployment. Despite this, the pubs and takeaways were busy. For the price of a burger and chips, the High Street greengrocers sold a huge bag of mixed, fresh vegetables that would help feed a family for a week. And the butcher had bags of chicken wings and off-cuts for less than a pint of lager or a takeaway coffee. The real reason for the obesity problem is laziness. people don’t want to cook and won’t prepare fresh food. Until the NHS and Gps stop using the word ‘obese’, which gives credence and respectability to a self-made problem, and tell people they are fat and need to mend their ways, nothing will change.

C.D. FIELD, Mellieha, Malta. HOW ill-informed and insulting to describe obesity as ‘just plain greed’. To label everyone who is considered to be obese as a glutton and lazy is cruel. It only adds to the obesity epidemic by making bullied people overeat through sheer misery. I was a healthy teenager when I was frogmarched to the GP after a girl at school had called me fat. My mother thought losing a few pounds would do the trick and I was prescribed a drug akin to speed. A few pounds did melt away — along with my health and selfconfidence. I ended up suffering with bulimia, and it’s taken 30 years to be me again. HILarY HaLLIWELL, Christchurch, Dorset.