Wonky Lifestyle Nation

[purpletigron]

This Thursday, 9 September, at 21:00 the British Broadcasting Corporation (in whom I believe) will start a new series called 'Fat Nation, the Big Challenge'[NOTE: This Web site does not work with Opera].

"Did you know that two-thirds of us are either overweight or obese, or that one in four of our children are classified as obese? The future cost to the NHS and to the nation’s health is immense and it’s time to do something about it. The Big Challenge aims to help you take small steps to a healthier lifestyle.

BC ONE's landmark series to transform the health of the nation kicks off with 200 volunteers from one Birmingham street preparing to start their new fitness regimes. Presenter Matt Allwright also visits the USA to find out what made Americans the world's fattest folk, and how Brits can avoid a similar fate."

I'm glad to see that the small print emphasises the need for an overall, long-term healthy lifestyle, and I accept that there are more people in the UK who are overweight than underweight. But I still disagree with the headline focus on 'fatness', when being overweight is only one possible sign of a lack of balance in a persons lifestyle - and there are other common underlying causes to overweight, such as thyroid disease - and in any case, being slightly underweight is more damaging to health than being slightly overweight!

Anyhow, I've signed up to the Big Challenge, and I will be closely following the two year course of this series, not least because it's very relevant to my new profession.

Comments

Puritanism and the Parisians

[overconvergent.livejournal.com]

There's a wonderful passage somewhere in A E Housman's selected works (I think) which says that you should be careful what you warn people about; his example was Puritanism. He says correctly that this can be a great danger in political and personal thought, but it's not the danger that most faces (say) the good citizens of Paris. I think that they're trying to focus on the dangers that actually face people-in-general; this of course may not apply to specific people.

I would be very interested to read committee meeting minutes where the government's health advice team discusses how to talk to the public, what the areas to focus on should be, and what can be left until later (the dangers of excessive exercise are probably not highest on their agenda, for instance).

Re: Puritanism and the Parisians

[purpletigron.livejournal.com]

I need to actually watch the first Fat Nation programme, as opposed to having it on in the background whilst chatting over dinner... but getting the British fast-food junkie to meet Morgan Spurlock seems like an interesting move :-)

[vgnwtch.livejournal.com]

I wonder to what degree they'll talk about obesity as the result of personal choices, and to what degree they'll acknowledge cultural pressure and the physical environment (town planning, public transport, community centres, etc.).

[purpletigron.livejournal.com]

My half-watching of the first programme suggests that, as expected, they are concentrating on personal choices, unfortunately.

It could be said that our cultural environment reflects our 'reveal preferences': that people who talk about healthy lifestyles whilst actively participating in the building of unhealthy communities can justly be accused of 'Nannyism'.