It turns out that stoners enjoy eating fast food. Who knew? A new study has linked the legalisation of marijuana with an increase in demand for salty, sweet fast food. Economists at Georgia State University say that “monthly sales of high calorie food increased by 3.2 percent when measured by sales and 4.5 percent when measured by volume.”
“You think marijuana does no harm – that’s pretty much the consensus today,” said Georgia State University economist Alberto Chong in an interview with The Academic Times. “But there are unintended consequences, and one of them is the fact that you really get very hungry and you start eating crap.”
The researchers added that while the tendency to binge on junk food after smoking a joint may be a stoner stereotype, their findings have real implications for public policy at a time when more than 40% of American adults are obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention…
An earlier version of the paper included a breakdown of junk food sales by type that did not make it into Economics & Human Biology. Legal marijuana boosted sales of ice cream by 3.1%, cookies by 4.1% and chips by 5.3%, according to Chong and Baggio’s 2019 working paper…
But is more weed being smoked than when it was illegal? Cannabis was hardly tricky to get back then, which was one of the drivers to legalisation. Walk down pretty much any street in the UK and you can smell the skunk. Attempts to control it are futile. The new prudery is about food that makes you fat. You can be stoned, but if you’re fat, the State will really monster you.
When all else fails, attack fat people. It’ll take more than prodding to get the chubsters into shape. And the Guardian says, “It’ll take more than a soup-and-shakes diet plan to tackle obesity in the UK.” Such is the demonising of fat people you wonder why border patrols haven’t yet introduces a Hole In the Wall-style admissions policy. If you can slide though the right-sized gap, you can enter the UK.; if you can’t you can head to the USA. As the Telegraphnotes, Britons “more likely to ‘fat-shame’ obese people than Americans.” That’s the power of guns for you – plus memories of the Dust Bowl and potato famine. A nation of immigrants remembers why it arrived, and over a stack of pancakes and syrup vows never to return.
Julian Baggini is unimpressed with all that ready grub. He wants to tell us about the “twin scourges of processed foods and food poverty”.
The human body is such a homeostatic, self-regulating system. Deprive it of calories and it starts to burn fewer of them, and tries to horde away any excess as fat. So all the time the dieter is congratulating themselves on their weight loss, their body is wondering what the hell is going on, and doing all it can to reverse it.
Hordes of calories – the one attacking your dinner plate?
‘Hordes of fat’?
…we have lots of evidence that people get fatter when they eat more highly processed foods, especially refined carbohydrates. They are also slimmer when they eat more home-cooked meals. So a serious anti-obesity strategy would require the government to take on the food industry’s promotion of highly processed foods.
He supports the government controlling what you can put inside your own body. To become the correct shape he wants “controls on business and greater redistribution of wealth”. Limit choice and the proles will thank their betters. One size fits all.
No longer is ‘fat’ a pre-runner to ‘and jolly’. Fat means death. Fat must be wiped out because: fat people give you cancer, probably (Daily Mail); fat people use up more aviation fuel and thereby kill the planet (Guardian); fat people kill kittens (Star); fat people will end the NHS by falling ill (all newspapers). Today’s news is that a “third of all viruses are linked to diabetes”. So the other two thirds of us who contract Covid-19 get it because… we’re too thin / old / young / poor / unloved? No matter. The key fact is in. Thin is good. The secret to long life is to be thin, which surely is why the Grim Reaper is as thin as a rake. And look who’s leading “by example”. Yeah, it’s reformed chubster Boris Johnson, who reduced his BMI by falling seriously ill and having his sustenance drip fed. And where he leads you too can follow his shining example. Here’s what you do:
Go to a hospital and shake as many hands as possible.
Struggle to breathe.
Got to intensive care.
Look beach-body ready.*
*Beaches are restricted to one per person until further notice.
The news on Coronavirus is positive. More than 19 million Britons may already have been infected with the virus, say researchers at Manchester University. It’s the lead story in the Mirror. Better news is that 1,000 people have been injected with a vaccine and it’s “so far so good” (Metro). We could have a vaccine this summer (Express). Oh – and get this – new antibody test are found to be 100% accurate in stating if someone has already had the virus (i). And in London, signs are that the virus is dying out. Fewer than 24 people are catching coronavirus each day in London (Telegraph). Analysis by Cambridge University estimates the R reproduction rate of the virus to have fallen to 0.4 in London, with the number of new cases halving every 3.5 days. If you don’t know what the R number means, this should help:
Most newspaper leads with the positive news. But the Guardian talks of “chaos”, leading with allegations that a private firm contracted to run the government’s stockpile of personal protective equipment was hit by “chaos” at its warehouse.
And as for the risk of dying from Covid-19, the Sun leads with news that a quarter of those killed by the bug have diabetes. A double-whammy for them. Overweight and obese people are at increased risk of diabetes, hypertension and heart disease.
So the Times leads with news that Prime Minister Boris Johnson is readying a “much more interventionist” approach to tackle obesity as part of the fight against coronavirus. Can the Government make Covid-19 part of the decades long drive to turn the fat social pariahs? Of course they can. They always do. But people do have the right to be fat.
And do medical practitioners want to tell people they are too fat? And what is ‘too fat’? At least one medic finds it easy to tell:
The Guardian’s cover is a thing of wonder – the wonder being did anyone read it before going to print? Having invited readers to “fight fatphobia – ten ways to do the right thing” (well, if it’s a phobia, you should seek therapy or avoid the fat let you feel physically ill), the Guardian tells readers that “unhealthy lifestyles put four out of five adults at risk of an early death”. You’ve got a problem that need fixing if you look at someone whose obese and think them unhealthy – but don’t worry because 80% of them should die before you.
True enough being fat was once a sign of being jolly; whereas now you’re a victim and scourge of the NHS. But the juxtaposition of those competing headlines is dire. An it’s underpinned by those ‘Ten Ways’, including: “A fat activist once said clothing was the alphabet we used to express ourselves – and fat people have fewer letters.” What about XXXXL?
Oh, read it all if you must. But the pick is people praising others for their weight loss:
Make it a rule not to use language that focuses on your own or others’ weight. We have no idea what someone is going through, whether they are dealing with body shame or trying to heal from an eating disorder. When we stop using this kind of language altogether, we create an environment in which people of all sizes can coexist without a sense of weight surveillance.
More evidence of abuse are restaurants which don’t offer “sturdy chairs without armrests”, undoing the myth that the “proximity to fatness bears the threat of contamination” and a medic dishing out “medical discrimination” who failed to spot a fat woman’s cancer (Note: I wasn’t fat when five doctors missed mine.)
Right now hundreds of skeletal and grey-skinned models are ordering double celery in the hope of getting work. Cosmopolitan magazine has featured a big girl on its cover and the dye is cast. Not only do bigger-boned models fill more of the page, thus negating the need for copy and ads for weight loss, liposuction and cosmetic surgery but the also make the magazine relevant in its ‘Celebration of Diversity and Difference’. This means anyone can be a model because everyone is beautiful. And with bigger pool to pick from , modelling rates are bound to plummet. Whereas ‘super model’ Linda Evangelista reportedly said “I don’t get out of bed for less than $10,000 a day” in the 1980s, today’s tall and skinny bird will be there for 10,000 lira (Turkish) and sleep standing up.
Tess socks it to the ‘haters’
And so the debate: will Tess Holliday, the Cosmo cover model, prove that we – given that so many of us are fat as the nation reels from an obesity crisis (see all press) – prefer to buy magazines that reflect us as we truly are: fat? Or are mags just a trite form of escapism in which we fetishise other people as celebs and learn how to look like them, dress like them and smell like them?
Cosmopolitan Super Diets & Exercise Guide Spring/Summer 1980 cover with Kathy Davis
The encouraging news is that if you’re big you’re more likely to sweat than someone who’s thin, thus making it easier for perfumiers to fill vials with the celebrities’ essence from their scraped sheets and underwear. Look out for a whole range of Tess Halliday scents with names like ‘Difference’, ‘Diversity’ and in a bid to reclaim the word from the haters, ‘Obese’.
In the meanwhile, we can fret about how many children – won’t somebody think of the the children – will be inspired to pile on the pounds by Cosmo mag’s brave stance – the answer being none. Oh, and the rest of you can pick up a copy of Cosmopolitan magazine for free in your – get this – gut-busting gym.
NOTE: Cosmo’s editor in chief is Michele Promaulayko, who got the job “having spent eight years as executive editor prior to her blockbuster run at Women’s Health“. On Women’s Health you can read lots and lots and lots about how to get slim and stay slim.
This is being trailed as something of a scandal but it’s actually just great, the way the system should work. Some people should be charged more:
High street retailer New Look has been criticised by shoppers for allegedly imposing a “fat tax” across its plus-sized range.
What’s the standard complaint from fatty lardbuckets the average sized British woman?
Here, she found that the Green Stripe Tres Jolie Slogan T-Shirt was being sold for £9.99 in the standard range and £12.99 in the Curves range – a 30 per cent difference in cost.
So, what’s happening here then?
Firstly, realise that no one does price things by adding up their costs then trying to sell them at that plus a profit. So, arguments that larger sizes require more cloth don’t work. Instead, what everyone does is look at absolutely the maximum they think they can get away with charging. Then they charge that.
Hey, that’s capitalism, every producer of absolutely everything really is out to screw you. It’s markets which temper this. So, someone realises that there’s loads of fatty lardbuckets average sized British women out there looking for clothing more attractive than a Soviet potato sack circa 1955. They go make and sell them and make a fortune doing so. They really do set out to screw those fatty lardbuckets average sized British women. And they do screw them – unlike anyone else to hear the complaining.
Then other manufacturers spot those profits and copy what they’re doing. Prices fall, the range available expands, everyone – other than the original manufacturer – is happy. That’s just how the system works. It’s also how it’s supposed to work, it’s all in Adam Smith.
If New Look can get away with charging higher prices to fatty lardbuckets average sized British women then this tells us that there aren’t enough plus sized ranges out there with decent looking clothing. And the fact that New Look can charge higher prices is what will create the competition and cure the problem.
No, really, markets do in fact work. Which is why we’re not all in Soviet potato sacks, you know, the place which abolished markets and the price system?
Can it proven that fast food makes you fat? Researchers at the University of the West of England (UWE Bristol) examined 1,500 state primary school pupils aged four to 11, looking at their postal addresses and weight. Turns out that the kids living closer to fast food outlets – within around half a mile – were more likely than their peers to gain weight during the primary school years.
This is, of course, all about protecting children from being fat – a physical state that once marked you as jolly but now casts you as a mentally negligible victim.
So can it proven that fast food makes you fat and is a danger to children’s health? Or is this more about correlation than causation? Poorer people eat the most fast food. Relocate the eateries, or make them sell just salads and watch the fatties slim down. Or better yet, turn the fried chicken shacks into gyms and therapy suites.
And what of the business angle? If you’re going to open a fast food franchise or fish and chip restaurant, you’ll do best locating where poorer people live and the rents are cheaper. Unsurprisingly, the study noted a higher density of fast food outlets – i.e. cheap food – in poorer areas.
In July, Cambridge University’s Centre for Diet and Activity Research counted 56,638 takeaways in England. And it too noted that fast food shops are more prevalent in England’s poorest areas.
NHS employee Matthew Pearce, who led the research, tells media: “We know from national data that the number of children classified as obese doubles between the first and last year of primary school. Understanding the reasons for this is important to protect the future health of children. Obesity is driven by many complex factors. Our study adds to existing evidence that the neighbourhood environment plays an important role in the development of obesity.”
“While ultimately it is down to individuals on how they choose to live, it is widely accepted that we live in environments that make managing our weight increasingly difficult,” Pearce adds. “We therefore need national and local policymakers to take decisions that support more favourable conditions that enable people to eat healthier and become more physically active.”
So what’s the plan, then? Put simply: tell the idiots how to live. Much harder to implement is the other plan: let’s get richer.
Health News sensation. The Press Association has news: “Swapping a daily beer for a glass of water cuts the risk of obesity by a fifth and aids weight loss, research suggests.”
Yep. It’s true. Consuming less calories can stop you becoming fat. Who knew? The newswire story then gets topped and tiled to become a scoop.
“Switching daily beer for water cuts risk of obesity, study finds,” says The Guardian:
Replacing a beer with a glass of water every day could cut people’s chances of becoming obese by 20% on average, according to a study. Researchers from the University of Navarra in Spain found that the same holds true for sugary soft drinks – having a water each day instead cut the risk of obesity among more than 16,000 participants in the study by 15%.
The Telegraph: “Experts at the world’s largest obesity conference said the simple change is an easy way of beating the bulge.”
We’re also told: “Experts suggested that the fact beer is so calorific may be to blame.”
In tomorrow’s shocking news: Katie Price sleeps on her back!
Why are you fat? Why are you not fat? Polly Tonybee knows. She writes in the Guardian:
The Tories must tackle the real cause of obesity: inequality
When fat meant prosperous and jolly and thin meant poor and mean, it was about inequality. Now that fat means you’re poor and thin means you’re on message, it’s all about inequality. The only thing that fits for all is that the rich and knowing want to school you.
Polly want to ban advertising of certain foods to youngsters watching telly.
Obesity is no one’s choice, as everyone wants to be thin: young children now worry about body image, and rates of anorexia – obesity’s evil twin – are rising.
The simple fact is that we eat more calories than we can burn off. When the poor had no cars and central heating, they walked and worked in manual jobs. They were thin. The rich with their hearths, carriages and desk jobs were fat.
To be obese signifies being poor and out of control, because people who feel they have no control over their own lives give up…
It signifies the post-war miracle of plentiful food for all.
It is inequality and disrespect that make people fat…
…the social facts suggest Britain would get thinner if everyone had enough of life’s opportunities to be worth staying thin for. Offer self-esteem, respect, good jobs, decent homes and some social status and the pounds would start to fall away.
This abstraction that being thin means you have more to live for and have higher self-esteem is bizarre, as is the news that being fat means you have psychological issues. Food isn’t eaten because you’re greedy, don’t walk enough, don’t do physical labour and it’s cheap. Food is State-sanctioned therapy. And you’re the victim.
Oi, fatso! David Aaronovitch has a plan to win the “obesity war”. He writes in the Times:
It’s not enough to fiddle about with food labelling and a distant sugar tax. Bans may be draconian, but they’re essential
Bans are for censors. No ‘may’ about it. They are draconian. They are not essential.
He adds:
Of course, we could try to attach the same opprobrium to being fat as to being a smoker.
Second-hand fat? We are getting fatter, yes. We are getting fatter because we do less. We have more down time. More of us live in small flats – stairs burn calories (just ask the aged who downsize). We have central heating. We have telly. Is there shame in being a smoker? No. although people who light up electronic cigarettes, especially the ones with the glowing end, do look like twats.
All the evidence indicates that per capita consumption of sugar, salt, fat and calories has been falling in Britain for decades. Per capita sugar consumption has fallen by 16 per cent since 1992 and per capita calorie consumption has fallen by 21 per cent since 1974.
One more little factoid on this: the current average UK diet has fewer calories than the minimum acceptable diet under WWII rationing. Quite seriously: we are gaining weight on fewer calories than our grandparents lost weight on.
Back then you could be fat and jolly. Now you must be fat and unhappy. The bitter and thin want revenge.
Aaronovitch adds:
Ban fast-food outlets from stations and airports. Ban the sale of confectionery and sugary drinks to the under-16s. Ban the sale of over-sugared products in supermarkets (as measured by a ratio of sugar to other nutrients). Ban the bringing into schools of unhealthy foods. Ban the presence in offices (like our own here at The Times) of vending machines that seem to sell mainly crisps and chocolate. Specify a weight-to-height ratio limit on air passengers wishing to avoid a surcharge.
According to a new study in the UK, overweight infants consume larger meals but they do not eat more often than healthy toddlers. Hayley Syrad from University of London in the UK and colleagues used parent-reported intake for 2,564 children aged 4-18 months to study meal size and meal frequency in relation to weight.
The report found overweight children were consuming larger meals than their counterparts (141 calories versus 130 calories). Report author Hayley Syrad, from University College, London, said: “The research suggests eating frequency is having no impact on weight and it’s not that parents of larger children are giving them an extra Mars bar or apple – it’s that their portions are bigger.”
Yes, it is true! Fat people eat more than skinny people. Who knew?
The Mail says Soo Kyung Bae has created “shocking THIGH GAP jewellery to highlight women’s ‘unhealthy obsession’ with super-skinny legs”.
Er, no, Daily Mail. Hanging a long pendant between a woman’s legs make her and you look a like a dick.
Looking like a dick is what happens when you get your news from the Metro. The jewellery is not real. It’s just a campaign to get people talking about ‘thigh gap’ and how bad it is to crave a different body not suited to your build. In other news, you can read in the Mail:
Jamie Oliver has a sidekick in his war on cheap food and the poor. The Guardian reports:
Double Olympic gold medallist James Cracknell has joined calls for sugary drinks to be taxed as part of a series of measures to combat rising levels of obesity.
He reasons:
“There will be inevitable opposition to what will be labelled as ‘nannying’, but the same was true of the reaction to legislation on seat belts and drink-driving.”
You don’t need to drive. Driving is a luxury controlled by rules of the road. You are given a licence to drive by the State, James. You do not – well, not yet – need an official licence to drink and eat. Unless James thinks sugary drinks impair driving skills – although the opposite may be true.
And lest you still think James has a sound point, the story continues:
Double gold medallist warns of national crisis in Policy Exchange report that also calls for annual BMI checks for children
Are you addicted to Red Bull, the drink that, as the advert says, ‘Gives You Wings? “Huge Lena Lupari“, 26, “guzzles 28 cans of the energy drink a day”.
Huge Lena says:
“I’m hooked on Red Bull, it’s like a Class A drug. But recently I started getting migraines and then black spots in my vision. My gran had the same symptoms and within two years she was dead. I’m trying to cut down but I’ve tried before and I always relapse. I can’t let it go.”
Brian Butler need to move when notice was served on his Providence, Rhode Island, nursing home. Problem is that Mr Butler tips the scales at 1,000 lbs (450 kg, 71.5 stones). Moving isn’t easy. So. He was placed inside a cargo container, lifted by a crane and loaded onto a flatbed truck. He was then driven to his new home.
In “SUN GIRL’S DAY FROM HELL”, Amy Jones (size 8) pulls on a fat suit and heads off to: the gym (“A child points and laughs”); the bus stop (“A gaggle of kids point and giggle”); lunch (“customers stare as I order the Steakhouse Meal”); the pub (“no one rushes to serve me”); a saucy lingerie shop (the cut-away playsuit is not in her size); and the Tube (I’m me with accusatory stares”).
Good job fat tourist Amy can pull off her ridiculous rubbery get-up (Why do they stare? Why?) and put an end to the “abuse”. At her Sun desk, Amy says “40 percent of Brits are the target to personal insults at least once a week”. She learns that “criticism is unhelpful when it comes to losing weight”.
Amy Jones may care to flick through back copies of the Sun and learn that a fat suit is one thing but get fat and – look out! – her collegues will be on her:
There is Fat Wayne Rooney, who is mocked-up and mocked by the Sun:
Organisors of Mr Gay UK turn on a man for being not the ideal weight. Stavros Louca was robbed:
When Stavros decides to enter the Mr Gay UK beauty pageant nothing goes quite to plan. This is the story of one man’s unbreakable spirit – a tale of triumph, heartbreak and how to wear your underpants.
THE fat and rich exercise; the fat and poor take pills:
…a new study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine,researchers from Concordia University looked at the incomes and health habits of more than 3,000 children and teens between the ages of 8 and 19 and more than 5,000 adults over the age of 20.
At least two-thirds of the study subjects reported attempting to reduce food intake or exercising in order to lose weight in the past year. Despite these efforts, the adults in the study gained an average of three pounds, while the youths gained about 12 pounds. The people in the lower income brackets gained about two pounds more than those in the highest one.
One reason for the disparity might have to do with the tactics they used to try to shed pounds: Compared to adults making $75,000 or more, those making less than $20,000 were 50 percent less likely to exercise, 42 percent less likely to drink a lot of water, and 25 percent less likely to eat less fat and sweets. And adults making between $20,000 and $75,000 were about 50 percent more likely to use over-the-counter diet pills, which aren’t proven to work.
CHRISTINA Briggs, 26, is fat. And flame-haired. She’s on benefits, too. Give her pair of NHS-supplied false breasts and a ciggie and Briggs would be the nation’s Aunt Sally with her own show on Channel 4. If she’s lucky, she could forge a career as Channel 5’s authentic face of the white working classes, like White Dee did with her stint on Celebrity Big Brother.
The Star leads with Briggs, the “25-stone SPONGER”.
HALF the time we’re told that the entire country is becoming obese, waddling around with dripping rolls of fat hanging from our frames, the other half the time we’re being screamed at for our unhealthy obsession with being thin. And in that latter conversation we’re also always being told that being thin is very unusual and women of the past were never like that. I mean, look at Marilyn Monroe! Hips and tits on ‘er and she was even an actress!
Today it’s Hannah Betts in the Torygraph whining about it:
Chillingly, a US size 000 measures up to a UK size 0, five sizes smaller than a UK size 10, itself on the smallish side in a culture in which the average British woman is a size 16, and the public’s ideal physique a size 12 (according to YouGov). A US size zero measures 25 inches around the waist; a triple zero, a meagre 23 inches.
It can be difficult to visualise the bodies behind such unvital statistics. My eight-year-old nephew, so lean that he can fit into his baby pyjamas, has a waist of 23.5 inches; his lithe nine-year-old sister, measures 24 inches. The girths of these adult women are smaller, despite their being significantly taller, in a way that seems hardly possible. The average triple zero poster girl stands at 5ft 7in. To be so narrow-framed at this scale is to be emaciated.
A petite therapist friend puts matters into perspective. “I am the smallest person in the world and my childlike waist is about 28 inches,” she says. “I have bought UK size 6 clothes from Topshop’s petite range, which is horrifyingly too small, making me wonder if they require ribs to be removed, or whether it is actual children who wear them. I am truly shocked.”
IT’S rather sad to see the people who actually run the NHS being so confused about the realities of that very NHS. The latest being this idea that all of us becoming fat lardbuckets will mean that the NHS runs out of money. So, therefore, we’ve all got to be dragooned into eating less so as to save the taxpayer.
The problem with this is that fatties don’t cost the NHS cash, they save it. Here’s the standard story:
