Uk Obesity epidemic discuss

I live in Scotland, which is second only to America in obesity. Also the drugs capital of Europe, not even the party drugs, just because of all the heroin...and we have the UK's poorest city...yay. Lmao. We win. But nah our government do so much to try and get people to be healthy, I remember in primary 3 we had this brilliant month long healthy eating program at school where these people came in and we learned all about healthy food, and got to cook a new healthy recipe every day. I still remember the yummy veg soup and wholegrain pizza we made! We also got to mash up a banana and put it on our teachers face, as they were telling us about natural face masks :P
More schemes like this, CONSISTENT ones, like once or twice a year, would really help.

I think they've changed it now, but when I was at primary school we didn't have PE - We had use of the PE hall. This was usually for PE, and we had a rota with other schools where we got to use a PE teacher some weeks, but use of the PE hall didn't always mean actual PE - often we had to use our one hour time slot a week for drama!
On top of that, we only ever got a couple of months of swimming lessons. And we got the bus there, despite it being a 20 minute walk! The swimming lessons were rubbish too, as they didn't teach the non swimmers how to swim, just shoved arm bands on them and threw them in the shallow end. And this was for like 6 weeks. In the entire 7 years of primary school. If they started earlier and made it annual, maybe more kids would go swimming!

Then in Secondary school, although PE was compulsary 1st/2nd and 5th year, it was too easy to skive. I know because I did - and now I'm fat!
What doesn't help though with PE is that it can be very embarassing - especially the whole cliche of being picked last for sports. The best PE classes we had were swimming and the fitness gym, as we pretty much worked on our own. Also, I understand why a lot of girls skive due to hair etc, you get 50 mins of gym and ten mins to get ready for your next class - even if you're not that vain it's still quite tough to make yourself look halfway presentable in this time! Especially when you sweat as much as I do.

I think another reason we're such fatties is because of the way the higher education system works - in a lot of countries you need extra curricular to get into college/uni - here you just need the grades, which is good in one way but in other countries people will often take up sport to help with uni.
And of course, food in Scotland, is bigger, cheaper, greasier and a lot more deep fried than in England! My English friends don't believe how big our portions are compared to theirs!

Scotland:national dish, deep fried mars bar!

Also our drink and drugs culture - pretty much everyone these days drinks and smokes weed from like the age of 14, so they come home with the munchies and tan a maccy ds or chippy or whatever - again we have a lot more selection in our chippys than england.

Though one tiny excuse - IT'S SO ****ING WET UP HERE! ALL YOU WANNA DO IS STAY INSIDE AND EAT WARM FOOD!

LOL.
anyway.
ramblings.
over.

also - we are all soooooooooooooooooooo busy
i know it may be seen as a poor excuse - but if you and your partner both work and are out of the house from 7am to 6pm and sometimes 9pm - and then want to work out to be fit - then cooking from scratch is the last thing alot of people want to do at the end of a long day travelling to and from a busy stressful job
i say give my man a payrise then i can stop working and then can cook healthy meals and be a housewife!
id love to do that
in todays age there is so much pressure to work and get good pay and be healthy and have children etc etc etc..... no wonder somethng gives!

Part of the problem is the word "obesity" itself. Once we stopped using the word "fat" we medicalised the condition and looked for causes other than our own behaviour. It's no wonder people look instantly for a medical solution such as surgery or pills without first trying to eat less and move more.

good point!

i guess if some one is called obese it is medical and they have a reason

if they get labbelled fat it isnt nice - so maybe that would motivate to do something about it

i am not saying that there are no clinical reasons why people are obese (i work in medicine i know some medical conditions and medicines can cause weight gain) but i think too many people use it as an excuse

there should be better use of the school curriculum instead of the subjects such as humanities and media studies and the like.

you are aware Humanities includes History and Geography.. and we need geologists so that we can predict things like the weather, earthquakes etc and know how to prepare ourselves.. and i think History is a very important subject..

however... couldn't agree MORE about media studies! i remember having to take a compulsory media studies module as part of my english gcse ooh about six/seven years ago now, and it was just an excuse to watch four/five movies and pretend to write something about them.. (i didn't like it much.. but know my teacher and classmates thought it was great, fob off education for thelma and louise!)

A few people have mentioned that healthy eating etc should be covered in school. I teach in high sschool and through citizenship I teach about healthy eating, being active and the importance of a healthy heart and how to have a healthy heart. Now i cannot comment on all the school in the UK, but I just wanted to mention that most schools, like mine, will cover the basics. But i think that this shouldnt just be left to citizenship, it should also be included in food tec (i have noticed that all the things that the kids seem to make in food are unhealthy desserts...... not a great message and things that kids should be learning how to cook) and PE, to hightlight the importance of this subject, bringing in as many cross curricular links as possible

A few people have mentioned that healthy eating etc should be covered in school. I teach in high sschool and through citizenship I teach about healthy eating, being active and the importance of a healthy heart and how to have a healthy heart. Now i cannot comment on all the school in the UK, but I just wanted to mention that most schools, like mine, will cover the basics. But i think that this shouldnt just be left to citizenship, it should also be included in food tec (i have noticed that all the things that the kids seem to make in food are unhealthy desserts...... not a great message and things that kids should be learning how to cook) and PE, to hightlight the importance of this subject, bringing in as many cross curricular links as possible

I loved food tec at school! But we always made healthy stuff.. which was quite annoying at the time.. i only made one cake! Haha.. I made lots of vegetable curries, bolognese type foods, but i don't ever remember using oils, butter etc. Lots of vegetables, and taught how a balanced meal would look on a plate with pie charts etc.. clever! But not now.. my little sister in law is on about making cakes, and desserts and that type of thing.. not good!

Making healthy options cheaper might help but I doubt it. I didn't find it any more expensive to buy healthy foods than unhealthy, if anything it worked out cheaper because I didn't have all the rubbish in my basket. Organic is another matter, I can't afford that lol. Cooking from scratch is so much more time consuming than sticking a frozen meal in the oven or microwave and I think that's a big part of the problem. A lot of people just don't have the time to do it. Or the inclination after a long day at work.

People also don't know HOW to cook. I'm one of the generation who was never taught to cook at school. I was absolutely lost when I moved out and relied on things that came with cooking instructions such as frozen chicken nuggets, frozen chips, microwave meals etc. I've graduated to cooking meals from scratch but it's taken a lot of searching the internet for instructions and recipes. I'm all for bringing in life lessons in school, things such as shopping on a budget, cooking healthy meals, changing plugs etc. Personally I think it would make much more sense to teach things like this than to teach some of the things I had to learn!

Getting people off their backsides and exercising would help but how do you do it? Again, people don't have the time or the inclination after a day at work to go out and get some exercise. And for those struggling to put food on the table joining a gym or taking up a sport isn't an option, it's too expensive. Walking is free but most people seem to hate doing it.

I saw this on the breakfast news on TV this morning too...some reference was made to the fact that half the population in the UK would be classified as obese by 2030 if the government doesn't do something now..clearly this has to start with children being fed healthier diets and being encouraged to do more exercise and sport than they currently do both during and after school hours..I remember a while back when Jamie Oliver desperately tried to tackle this problem by encouraging schools to provide healthier school lunches....yet parents were shown on TV in some areas handing bags of chips from the local chip shop through the school railings at lunchtimes because their kids did not like the new food....I don't know how children can ever be expected to adopt a healthy attitude to food when their parents think it is clever to take this line of action.

Part of the problem is the word "obesity" itself. Once we stopped using the word "fat" we medicalised the condition and looked for causes other than our own behaviour. It's no wonder people look instantly for a medical solution such as surgery or pills without first trying to eat less and move more.

Fat is a feminist issue... or so we were told in the pre-PC 80s. :embarassed:

But Berry is right... we need to reclaim the word FAT and stop trying to make an excuse for our overeating. I affectionately call MFP "Facebook for fatties" when I talk to my real-life friends and family about it... because for me that's the best way to describe it. Of course MFP is much better than Facebook (the attraction for which I personally don't understand... but let's not go there :laugh: ) and it is most definitely a term of endearment :smooched:

I'm Kyle, I'm FAT... I want to stand up and be counted :bigsmile: