Opinion - News Analysis   

Fuss about obesity does a fat lot of good

Zoe Williams

NOBODY WANTS to be fat. Nobody wants anybody else to be fat. Politicians and medical professionals would like to see everybody un-fat. And still we get fatter. On my Marxist days I like to think of this as a groundswell of subversive collective action — a playfully ironic protest in which we destroy consumerism by consuming so much that we cost more to keep alive than we'll ever make. The coolest thing is that even children are involved. Who said you could be too young for politics? But on other days I have to concede that it's probably just because we eat too much by accident.

Deirdre Hutton, chair of the U.K.'s Food Standards Agency, has delineated how these accidents happen. We eat too much processed food — most at risk are teenage girls, male city workers, "people in poorer communities" (when did it become de trop to say "poor people"?) and the over-50s. Her first hurdle is to harry packaged-food manufacturers into making food healthier, or at least flagging up in big red letters how unhealthy it is.

But this is a pointless battle. Processed food is sugar-, salt- and fat-loaded because it does not taste nice otherwise; it has been sitting around too long. Anyone who has tried to have some fun with a two-day-old roast potato can vouch for this. Healthy processed food will always taste like self-denial; to get people eating well without feeling hard done by, they need fresh food.

How do you achieve this? Well, "male city workers" are time-poor — to get them eating nutritious hotpots nightly, you need to supply them with a helpmeet: a wife, for instance, or — not wishing to gender-bias this — a good friend to stay at home and stew while they work. In other words, you would need to reverse a trend of the past 50 years and bring back the doubly occupied single-income unit. That would be tricky, no?

"People in poor communities" are more straightforward — they would eat better if they had more money, thereby a) having more time for home-cooking, since they do not have to work so hard; and b) not having to shop exclusively in Iceland. How do you make the poor less poor? With redistributive taxation. How amazingly unfashionable; I feel I have just offered you a spam sandwich.

To return to teenagers, they tend to be either under-eating or overeating, largely for psychological reasons. You could reverse this by outlawing cultural images in which an unattainable body shape is presented as the norm, and strengthening their sense of self so that it extended beyond sexual objectification. That sounds hard as well.

It is so far unclear why the over-50s should be eating badly, but let us imagine that the erosion of the family unit has left people isolated, and home-cooking is an activity people rarely undertake alone.Obesity, in the end, is a function of social progress. To blame fat-loaded food is like blaming Bill Gates for the people who email you when you'd rather they stopped in for a coffee. To try to reverse it with well-meant advice is like telling a Viking warrior to chill out about his masculinity. I say we bring back rationing. It might sound extreme, but given the alternatives it also sounds surprisingly manageable. —

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

The rupee is back in focus
A burgeoning health problem
The great Indian laughter challenge
Doing business the Boeing way
Iran's heritage deserves respect
Fuss about obesity does a fat lot of good
Fallout of Plame affair
Assistance to Pakistan
Bihar dissolution
Laudable ruling
Disconcerting

Copyright © 2005, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu