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Is It Fat Shaming To Be Concerned About Child Obesity?

That child obesity isn’t what we’re told it is is true. Chris Snowdon has shown that quite conclusively.

I show some more credible evidence and argue that the true rate of obesity among children in this age group is closer to one in twenty, not one in five. Indeed, it could easily be one in fifty.

The point being that:

I argued last month that Britain’s childhood obesity statistics are worthless. They are based on an unjustifiable assumption about the scale of child obesity in 1990 and that error has plagued every subsequent measurement. A flawed methodology has led to the number of obese children being greatly exaggerated.

So, the problem is rather less than is being said. It’s also true that obesity isn’t about to bankrupt the NHS. For fatty lardbuckets die younger and it’s cheaper to have people dying younger – yea even if being treated for the disease of being a fatty lardbucket – than it is to have someone die at 90, healthy but Alzheimered for a decade. The same is true of those on tabs and booze. These things, even ignoring pensions, save governments money.

So, the reason why we should be fiscally concerned is wrong, the incidence of the problem is wrong too.

However, however, let’s assume that they’re right for a moment, there is some obesity epidemic and that’s something we should all be concerned about. What happens when that meets the other fashion of the age, self-esteem?

A primary school headteacher has been accused of “fat-shaming” pupils after he told parents that their children were too overweight and should walk to school to lose weight.

Dr Huw Humphreys, head of the Christ the Sower Ecumenical Primary School in Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, sent a newsletter to parents which said: “Our children, overall, are fatter and more obese than other children in Milton Keynes.”

He urged children to walk to school, adding: “They could really do with a lot more exercise.” Dr Humphreys later apologised, after his letter prompted a backlash from parents.

“It is simply not acceptable for the head to fat-shame our children – particularly when this is supposed to be a Christian school,” one parent said.

To be honest I can’t see the connection between self-esteem and which flavour of Sky Fairy – even one of the several about the bloke being nailed to a tree trunk – myself but then people, eh?

Let’s even go one further and say they’re both right. Obesity is a problem, self-esteem is a problem. What in buggery do we therefore do about fat shaming? Is it bringing a vital medical problem to attention or is it a societal imposition of why the fat kid always gets picked last for the football team?

Or, given both sets of whingeing, what is it that we’re actually supposed to do?

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Twatting on Tim
6 years ago

NHS: suggested that the NHS and education both suffered ‘hopelessly inappropriate’ management structures yesterday and was asked to justify that claim. I am happy to do so. The art of management is to ensure that tasks are appropriately identified as necessary, are then done effectively, once only wherever possible, and by those best able to do them. You might call that a somewhat brief theory of management, but for the current purpose it will do. Let me put this in the context of these two national, free at the point of delivery activities whose primary aim is to make available… Read more »

Rhoda Klapp
Rhoda Klapp
6 years ago

Haven’t you got a blog of your own? It is extremely bad mannered to drop irrelevant and lengthy screeds all over this one. Try to stick to the topic. Somewhere else.

Spike
6 years ago

This obesity “epidemic” and the American “opioid epidemic” strangely lack any theory of contagion. There is nothing about seeing a lard-ass at the ballpark that makes me run to the concession stand for another chili dog. Many a Republican candidate has dumped water on my attraction by turning to the “epidemic” buzzword. He is the candidate tough enough to use the “public health” tyranny to cure this disease! In fact, we have almost no public health problems (the public not being an organism in any case, except in the minds of Community Organizers). Most of our epidemics are the effects… Read more »

NiV
NiV
6 years ago

“This obesity “epidemic” and the American “opioid epidemic” strangely lack any theory of contagion.”

Actually, for obesity yes there is! Have you ever heard of Ad36? Or SMAM-1?

https://www.wired.com/2016/12/mysterious-virus-cause-obesity/
http://adv36.com/research/

And for the technical version…
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4517116/

BenS
BenS
6 years ago

Sloth-shaming instead?
Or how about “locking-up-kids-for-hours-a-day-in-a-classroom-instead-of-letting-them-out-to-romp-and-roam” shaming?

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