Friday 14 November 2014

Personal Responsibility? How Outdated!

Anne Perkins on the NHS campaign to get us to slim:
Bad food is cheap food, fatty, sugary, easy to eat, always available. It is fast, not just to get hold of, but also to consume. It gives you a lift. What normal child would choose meat and two veg over a burger and chips, and how often would a normal, busy parent choose a fight rather than peace. Particularly if they like burgers too.
Well, that’s supposed to be a part of life, isn’t it? Yes, when children, we all want things that aren’t good for us. But when we grow up, we are supposed to have learned restraint and delayed gratification.

And more importantly, we are supposed to have imparted this to our children.
But here’s a really striking statistic that Stevens quotes: one in 10 children starting primary school are obese. By the time they leave, that’s almost one in five. Is this a dereliction of personal responsibility by the kids themselves, or by their parents? Or is it the food available in school, or in the streets around the school, or the way the school day is structured, or the absence of sports facilities, or the lack of the sports club tradition?
No, you were right the first time. Even leaving aside that the very definition of obesity is often based on a flawed test, it really isn’t rocket science.

YOU are responsible for what you put in your mouth, no one else.

6 comments:

Bucko said...

And bad food isn't cheap. I can usually make two or three meals for the price of the average take away.

We have take aways for a treat in our house, usually at weekend and always when we have a bit of disposable cash to buy it with.

If we're skint, we cook.

L fairfax said...

"Bad food is cheap food, fatty, sugary, easy to eat, always available"
Really?
I bought 15 bananas for £1 last Saturday. That was cheap and easy to eat so is it bad food?

Uncle Badger said...

What is so depressing is that these low-powered morons haven't even the vaguest clue why this demonised 'fast food' is actually 'bad' for you - nor even what 'bad' means. They just repeat the same tired old rubbish, usually dreamed up by marketing people (eg 'five a day') or fanatics with dietary axes to grind.

We simply do not know enough to make more than the most tentative pronouncements about what we eat. And anyone who pretends otherwise is almost certainly a charlatan.

Ian Hills said...

People used to burn off fatty food with hard physical labour, and with physical exercise plus games lessons at school.

We need to find substitutes for hard physical labour, and to bring back the tough exercise regime at school.

Fake health conditions should not be permitted to exempt fat children from this regime, nor serve to entitle fat adults to disability benefits.

And a little verbal bullying of these slobs will help, too.

JuliaM said...

"And bad food isn't cheap. I can usually make two or three meals for the price of the average take away."

So can I. But it takes effort.

And yes, for us, a takeaway is a treat. Not an everyday thing.

"That was cheap and easy to eat so is it bad food?"

Well, the skin will be classed as 'food thrown away' according to the govt waste quango, so... ;)

"We simply do not know enough to make more than the most tentative pronouncements about what we eat. And anyone who pretends otherwise is almost certainly a charlatan."

Unfortunately, one with the ear of govt and the media... :/

"People used to burn off fatty food with hard physical labour, and with physical exercise plus games lessons at school."

Yup, our sedentary lifestyles do play a part.

Furor Teutonicus said...

XX Bucko The Moose said...
If we're skint, we cook. XX

You appear to assume they CAN cook.

Most of their sort can not read page 3 of the "Sun" without moving their lips. Let alone a cook book.