They'll learn, and change their ways. and die later Or not, and die.earlier

fify

There is that.

Alan B wrote:

He's right, but the reality is that personal responsibility is the call of everyone who makes a shitload of profit off the status quo. People said that same thing about smoking, and it's also used for big corporations to deny responsibility for things like plastic recycling or adding shitloads of sugar to everything. Basically it's always the strategy to put the responsibility on the individuals least able to do something about it to protect profits. And it's one thing to cite personal responsibility for adults, but look what happened when people tried to make school dinners healthier. The vested interests that make massive profits from making them eat shit rallied against it. As usual, one of America's big social problems is impossible to fix because of the legalized bribery that runs their political system. And given that so much of our eating is habit-based, what kids get used to eating in school will have a huge impact on the sort of food they eat for their whole life.

It's also a country that's built around the car. How many people live in a place where it would be completely impractical to go to work by public transport? Hell, how many Americans can't realistically do their grocery shopping on foot? Americans already work some of the longest hours in the developed world, get comparatively fuck all holiday allowance, and commute some of the longest distances, and then you're expecting them to find the time to cook meals from scratch and spend 30 minutes in the gym every day. The Japanese work similarly long hours with few holidays, but the whole way their towns and cities are built is different. They also have a system where employers are actually responsible for the health of their workers and they have an annual health screening that will tell employees if they're overweight. Although from what I've heard, they're not shy about telling people they've put on weight either, so perhaps there's something in that.

I'm not suggesting there's no personal responsibility involved, of course, but you can't make sweeping changes to a continent of people simply by basing it on shaming fat people. It's simply not going to work.

Everyone gotta die. Question is do you want to die with a recollection of youth still clear in memory, a good appetite and a heart attack at 57 or die slightly thinner, from cancer and with a failing memory of no consequence at 75.

aufbahrung wrote:Everyone gotta die. Question is do you want to die with a recollection of youth still clear in memory, a good appetite and a heart attack at 57 or die slightly thinner, from cancer and with a failing memory of no consequence at 75.

False dichotomy.

TopCat wrote:

aufbahrung wrote:Everyone gotta die. Question is do you want to die with a recollection of youth still clear in memory, a good appetite and a heart attack at 57 or die slightly thinner, from cancer and with a failing memory of no consequence at 75.

False dichotomy.

Not quite. Easy to equate quantity of years with quality years. There is the false dichotomy become lost in the derivative of debate. Some eat, smoke and live to their nineties. It's genetic. Not lifestyle choice. My uncle lived to his ninties and smoked the strong smokes. No rhyme or reason. If they could bottle the genetics, the health gurus could go take a hike.

If I'm going to have 2 years of poor health before I die, I'd rather it was after 10-20 years of retirement rather than while I'm still working because I haven't made the money to retire yet.

The 40,000 Americans who died during August due to being overweight wasn't laid at the door of 'genetics'.

Alan B wrote:The 40,000 Americans who died during August due to being overweight wasn't laid at the door of 'genetics'.

That seems like a rather obtuse understanding of genetics. For one it ignores the genetic components related to obesity. Secondly people rarely die simply of being too fat. Rather being overweight contributes to some other illness that likely has a genetic component as well.

Robbie Coltrane is fat, and he's OK

Unfortunately not. He’s crippled by arthritis and spends time in a wheelchair.

Eye (I), but still alive, and WHAT a life, Fal.

Oh well, at least they've got the heroin epidemic to even things back out again.

Keep It Real wrote:Eye (I), but still alive, and WHAT a life, Fal.

Yeah he’s alive, but you said he was ok, as though his weight hasn’t had an effect on him.

I didn't know being overweight causes arthritis - my mistake. I was just very pleased to find out he's still with us the other day been watching Cracker, as you probably can gather from my sig, Fitz = booze, fags, gambling...not good, yet quintessential in a way. Episode 3 this eve after XR meeting

Keep It Real wrote:I was just very pleased to find out he's still with us the other day been watching Cracker...

The thing is, he's always been Fitz Cracker to me, not Hagrid, and he seemed so old/wise back then, never-mind unhealthy, and Cracker was time ago...and all the drinking and smoking! I is explaining cat.

purplerat wrote:

Alan B wrote:The 40,000 Americans who died during August due to being overweight wasn't laid at the door of 'genetics'.

That seems like a rather obtuse understanding of genetics. For one it ignores the genetic components related to obesity. Secondly people rarely die simply of being too fat. Rather being overweight contributes to some other illness that likely has a genetic component as well.

Of course there is a genetic component to the cause of death. That's obvious. But it is the external 'forces' (eating too much) that triggers a 'genetic response' resulting in an illness. Stop eating to excess and there will be no associated 'genetic response', illness or death. The genetics is only automatically responding to a situation not of its own making. It can share no part of the blame.

This is like adding diesel to the petrol in a car's fuel tank. If this continues over a period of time, the car will deteriorate in performance. Different models (different 'genetics') will behave differently but the car will eventually fail. You can't blame the car.

Alan B wrote:

purplerat wrote:

Alan B wrote:The 40,000 Americans who died during August due to being overweight wasn't laid at the door of 'genetics'.

That seems like a rather obtuse understanding of genetics. For one it ignores the genetic components related to obesity. Secondly people rarely die simply of being too fat. Rather being overweight contributes to some other illness that likely has a genetic component as well.

Of course there is a genetic component to the cause of death. That's obvious. But it is the external 'forces' (eating too much) that triggers a 'genetic response' resulting in an illness. Stop eating to excess and there will be no associated 'genetic response', illness or death. The genetics is only automatically responding to a situation not of its own making. It can share no part of the blame.

This is like adding diesel to the petrol in a car's fuel tank. If this continues over a period of time, the car will deteriorate in performance. Different models (different 'genetics') will behave differently but the car will eventually fail. You can't blame the car.

If there is a common problem with cars, even if it was primarily caused by operator error, we most certainly would "blame cars" at least in the sense that we'd figure out how change them to prevent that situation from happening rather than simply telling people to "be better drivers". A lot of unnecessary deaths have been prevented exactly because we've treated cars that way.

purplerat wrote:

Alan B wrote:

purplerat wrote:

Alan B wrote:The 40,000 Americans who died during August due to being overweight wasn't laid at the door of 'genetics'.

That seems like a rather obtuse understanding of genetics. For one it ignores the genetic components related to obesity. Secondly people rarely die simply of being too fat. Rather being overweight contributes to some other illness that likely has a genetic component as well.

Of course there is a genetic component to the cause of death. That's obvious. But it is the external 'forces' (eating too much) that triggers a 'genetic response' resulting in an illness. Stop eating to excess and there will be no associated 'genetic response', illness or death. The genetics is only automatically responding to a situation not of its own making. It can share no part of the blame.

This is like adding diesel to the petrol in a car's fuel tank. If this continues over a period of time, the car will deteriorate in performance. Different models (different 'genetics') will behave differently but the car will eventually fail. You can't blame the car.

If there is a common problem with cars, even if it was primarily caused by operator error, we most certainly would "blame cars" at least in the sense that we'd figure out how change them to prevent that situation from happening rather than simply telling people to "be better drivers". A lot of unnecessary deaths have been prevented exactly because we've treated cars that way.

All that shows is that it's not a great analogy. The average person isn't fatter now that they were 50 years ago because their genetics have made them so, they're fatter because of changes in diet and lifestyle, to a large extent imposed on them by the society they live in.

purplerat wrote:If there is a common problem with cars, even if it was primarily caused by operator error, we most certainly would "blame cars" at least in the sense that we'd figure out how change them to prevent that situation from happening rather than simply telling people to "be better drivers". A lot of unnecessary deaths have been prevented exactly because we've treated cars that way.

What part of 'adding fuel to a car for which it was not designed' - (regardless of any other design faults) - did you not understand?

People who eat too much and dangerously put on weight have nothing to blame except their overeating. Any illnesses developed and early deaths can be avoided if they stops overeating and loose weight. They will be free from overweight problems and live longer, how much longer will depend upon other factors unrelated to excess weight.

Remove the cause and the effect disappears (regardless of how any 'effect' was generated).