SD does not realise healthy food has nothing to do with obesity.

SD has a degree in ecology, and knows more about nutrition than you. For instance, he knows full well that calorie intake has rather a lot to do with obesity.

It seems too obvious to type but it is perfectly possible for someone to be both obese and malnourished.


Referring back to the false dichotomy here ;

Strontium Dog wrote:
Maybe we can we get this clarified once and for all: is our citizenry short of food or is our citizenry at record levels of obesity?

Its perfectly possible for many people to be obese and many people to be short of food. Its also likely that in such circumstances there would be an overlapping group that are malnourished.

Now, now smudge, don't complicate things with facts & shit

sorry

smudge wrote:It seems too obvious to type but it is perfectly possible for someone to be both obese and malnourished.


Referring back to the false dichotomy here ;

Strontium Dog wrote:
Maybe we can we get this clarified once and for all: is our citizenry short of food or is our citizenry at record levels of obesity?

Its perfectly possible for many people to be obese and many people to be short of food. Its also likely that in such circumstances there would be an overlapping group that are malnourished.

Oh yeah? Do you even have an ology?

Let's apply a little common sense to this discussion.

Calories, the measure of the energy component of foodstuffs, forms a significant part of a balanced diet, but only a part. A balanced diet is one that meets your energy and other nutritional requirements without predisposing you to adverse health consequences. The health consequences of a high-calorie diet are no more or less important or significant than the health consequences of low-calorie diet and they also depend on other factors like your daily level of activity, age, height and weight, general health and/or any treatments for pre-existing conditions or medications etc. The UK government publishes nutritional guidance in the form of Reference Intakes (RIs), where 'intake' is a proxy term for the energy/nutrient content of food. For example, the adult RI is:

Daily energy intake: 8,400 kJ/2,000kcal, comprising of:

• Total fat: 70g
• Saturates: 20g
• Carbohydrate: 260g
• Total sugars: 90g
• Protein: 50g
• Salt: 6g

In addition a balanced diet should also contain all the minerals, vitamins and other trace elements need to effectively maintain bodily processes. From this one can see that, for example, though a high fat diet may give you the required recommended daily calories it may still be nutritionally deficient. Therefore the number of calories consumed per day is not in itself a reliable indicator of the nutritional status of an individual or their diet.

The MSN article posted earlier did not just focus on the calorie intake of the nation, though it did report that the average calorie intake is c.5% too high and that the wealthiest consume, on average, c.100 calories more than the poorest - meaning the wealthiest are consuming slightly more than the recommended intake while the poorest are consuming slightly less.

The Family Food Report 2013 (PDF) itself shows that fruit and veg purchasing continues to follow a downward trend, from a peak in 2006/7, and additionally that as fruit and veg consumption went down between 2010 and 2013 consumers actually spent 6.7% more on fresh and processed veg and 9.2% more on fresh and processed fruit over that period. There is therefore an implicit connection between food prices and calorie intake, with non fruit and veg foodstuffs obviously contributing proportionally more to total calorie intake today than in 2010.

smudge wrote:It seems too obvious to type but it is perfectly possible for someone to be both obese and malnourished.

You win first prize for Stating the Obvious.

smudge wrote:Referring back to the false dichotomy here ;

Strontium Dog wrote:Maybe we can we get this clarified once and for all: is our citizenry short of food or is our citizenry at record levels of obesity?

That is not a false dichotomy. It's also not relevant, of course.

smudge wrote:Its perfectly possible for many people to be obese and many people to be short of food. Its also likely that in such circumstances there would be an overlapping group that are malnourished.

You also win second prize for Stating the Obvious.

Obesity is not specifically caused by high calorie intake but by the inability to burn them off by converting them into energy through exercise. If two people have the same calorie intake but one burns them off and the other does not then the former will be significantly healthier than the latter all things being equal. Certain athletes such as boxers or sprinters for example may have a very high calorie intake but they are also very healthy as they burn them off with regular and extensive exercise

ED209 wrote:

smudge wrote:It seems too obvious to type but it is perfectly possible for someone to be both obese and malnourished.


Referring back to the false dichotomy here ;

Strontium Dog wrote:
Maybe we can we get this clarified once and for all: is our citizenry short of food or is our citizenry at record levels of obesity?

Its perfectly possible for many people to be obese and many people to be short of food. Its also likely that in such circumstances there would be an overlapping group that are malnourished.

Oh yeah? Do you even have an ology?

I did once but my GP gave me some cream for it.

If you just ate MacDonalds everyday you would get very malnourished even though your calorie intake would be enormous.

Cheap processed is the scourge of our time.

As this thread has continued growing, I thought it apposite to post an editorial style post herein, and draw attention to some interesting comparisons that are, in my view, illustrative of certain key issues. I shall start by noting the interesting contribution made to history by a past Conservative politician, namely one Airey Neave, an individual for whom I have harboured much admiration courtesy of that past contribution.

Neave, during World War II, was a member of the Special Operations Executive and MI9, organisations that were involved in dangerous work alongside various resistance movements in Nazi-occupied Europe. During his tenure within these organisations, Neave experienced first hand Nazi methods of interrogation, lost numerous close friends, including some who passed through the notorious Fresnes prison before being shipped off to Buchenwald and Mauthausen, and became, during an eventful seven years, the first successful English escapee from Colditz. During these adventures, he somehow found time to pass his Bar examinations. It was as a consequence of his wartime activity, and his experiences, that he was co-opted, in 1945, on to the British Military War Crimes Executive, and during his occupancy of the relevant role, was selected to serve, in person, the indictment upon Goering, Hess, and the other captured top Nazis in their cells at Nuremberg.

During this period, Neave maintained copious notes, all of which were eventually to contribute to his personal account of the famous trial, and during the compilation of the book in question, Neave devoted considerable space to the exposition of the characters of the men in the cells, and the actions for which they were being arraigned. Two particular individuals come to mind at this juncture, namely Wilhelm Frick, former Nazi Minister of the Interior, and Julius Streicher, Gauleiter of Franconia. The first of these two individuals began his career, ironically, in the same field as Neave himself, namely the legal profession, and used his considerable talents for administration and the drafting of laws, to further the aims of Hitler and the emerging Nazi state. The second of these individuals, a florid character about whom Neave had much to say, most of it scornful in the extreme, began his career, quite bizarrely, as a schoolteacher in an elementary school, though no one familiar with his peculiarities would today consider him fit for the role. However, the real 'educational' role that Streicher performed, was done outside the classroom, courtesy of a periodical he founded, the infamous Der Stürmer, described by the proescution at Nuremberg as "the international organ of Jew-baiting".

Neave collected much evidence on these two individuals, as part of his role in the British prosecution team at Nuremberg, and was well acquainted with the enormities that these two were involved in. Frick's hand, for example, was evident in the infamous Nuremberg Laws, which stripped German Jews of their statehood, and was a major early step on the road leading to mass extermination and the gas chambers. Those laws put into 'legal' effect the lurid fantasies of Streicher, whose involvement in the most revolting aspects of persecution of the Jews was frequently accompanied by the spreading, within the pages of Der Stürmer, of hideous, lowbrow and at times filth-riddled propaganda. Whilst Frick affectatiously distanced himself from Streicher's crudest excesses, he shared the same essential views, including the lurid and libellous fabrications about the purported sexual misconduct of the Jews being persecuted. Whilst Frick was careful to avoid the gutter in which Streicher wallowed gleefully, his finely crafted legal fictions performed the service of enshrining those products of Streicher's gutter within the framework of jurisprudence of the New Order.

Throughout this shameful and ultimately murderous campaign, neither of these two men expressed an atom of humanity toward the victims of their ideologically driven hatred. With respect to the Nuremberg Laws, Frick declared that these laws were, astonishingly, "good" for the Jews, on the utterly specious grounds that they conferred upon the Jews a "legal status" within the new state, a piece of ideological apologetics that must surely count as amongst the most duplicitous in history. Streicher, meanwhile, continued calling for the death sentence to be carried out, against Jews purportedly 'guilty' of the fictitious 'crimes' he accused them of within his tawdry little rag. Said publication relentlessly delivered hate speech, together with venomous caricature, and was sufficiently and horrifically successful at dehumanising the Jews in the eyes of Germans, that it paved the way for the dreadful extermination later documented at the Nuremberg Trial. As the British prosecution team said of Streicher at that trial, quoted by Neave in his book:

"For twenty-five years he educated the German people in the philosophy of hate, of brutality, of murder. He incited and prepared them to support the Nazi policy, to accept and participate in the brutal persecution and dreadful slaughter ofhis fellow men. Without him these things could not have been. It is long since he forfeited all right to live".

The British prosecution team, aided ably by Neave, presented lengthy evidence to the court on the subject of Der Stürmer and its peddling of racist abominations. Whilst recounting his activities with respect to the examination of Streicher's propaganda activities, Neave wrote the following words:

These horrors were familiar to my generation whose apathy and craven leadership had brought Europe to the brink of defeat by Hitler. Our outrage and polite disgust had not been enough. We had not been ready to fight. We had been too late to rescue millions from a cruel death. Waiting in Streicher's cell, I thought with shame of the photograph of a naked Jewish girl. She was beautiful, dark and stripped for the gaschamber. She looked not more than twenty-three anbd in a few minutes would die. Her photograph, among the captured Nazi documents, haunted me. She waited for death with quiet dignity and we had done nothing to save her.

Of course, few prior to 1945 thought that the enormities examined in court at Nuremberg were possible. The idea of wholesale, industrialised extermination of an entire people, made possible by relentless peddling of viciously crafted ideological tropes, was something that the pre-1945 mind was incapable of even fantasising about. Nuremberg was, of course, the wake up call that warned us just what humans are capable of, when a doctrine takes hold. It also warned us of the power of propaganda, and how that tool could be used to further utterly obscene ends.

At this point, some will be asking why I have dwelt at length upon this piece of history, and in the process, invited entirely familiar charges with respect to the posting of this herein. The reason is simple. I contend that we are facing a similar combination of propaganda and policy, only this time, the target is based upon class, not race. This time, the people being demonised, the people being accused of constituting an 'enemy within', are, astonishingly, the poor and powerless.

Everything from the hate propaganda of tame, ideologically trusted organs such as the Daily Mail (which, of course, was a supporter of fascism before World War II), to the utterly vicious policies aimed at subjecting the poor to debt peonage, has its parallels in the Nuremberg Laws and Der Stürmer. Those implementing these measures, and spreading this hate speech, have become, despite any bleating protestations to the contrary they may wish to utter, the very people that Airey Neave prosecuted and sent to the gallows. Osborne, Duncan Smith and Dacre have become the Fricks and Streichers of our era, and moreover, frequently display an inhuman glee when prosecuting their evil deeds. A festering combination of ideology and financial corruption has turned these people into the monsters of our age, and as a corollary, we have reached the stage where basic humanity and basic ethical decency demands their ejection from office. They have, through their actions and their increasingly nasty prejudices, become an evil to be opposed, and failure to rise up and act to oppose the evil they increasingly sow across the land, will have terrible consequences. These people are educating their electoral power base to treat others as untermenschen, they are sowing discord, hatred and venality on a scale that entirely warrants the comparison with Der Stürmer and the Nuremberg Laws. They have become the enemies of every gilded Enlightenment treasure so hard fought for and won, indeed have become the enemies of humanity and decency itself.

Benefit sanctions: they're absurd and don't work very well, experts tell MPs

The government's controversial "sanction first, investigate later" system of punishing social security claimants for apparent breaches of benefit rules and conditions should be overhauled, MPs have been told.

And not just by the usual suspects.

The current benefits conditionality regime is bureaucratic, capricious and crude; it disproportionately impacts vulnerable clients, particularly those who are disabled, often leaving them distressed, impoverished and reliant on food banks. Sanctioning does not help clients into work; indeed, it is more likely to make it harder to get a job.

Who delivered this devastating critique? Hand-wringing liberal food bank volunteers? Lefty welfare advisers? No. It was the body representing the 180 organisations paid hundreds of millions by ministers to get long-term unemployed people back into work, including big corporates like Serco, A4E, Ingeus, and G4S.

The bottom line, according to the people that deliver the government's Work Programme is this: the current sanctions regime, introduced two years ago, makes the job of getting people off benefits and into work harder.

As Kirsty McHugh, the chief executive of the work programme providers representative group, the Employment Related Services Association (Ersa), put it:

"For a minority of people, receiving a sanction can be the wake-up call they need to help them move into work. However, for the vast majority of jobseekers, sanctions are more likely to hinder their journey into employment."

Continues...

As we all knew already, but it's always good to get more evidence I suppose. Perhaps Iain Duncan Smith will listen to the people he's paying to implement his stupid fucking policies, if no-one else.

Cali, whoever it is who's qualified to give out Orsons, should be awarding your post at least one, maybe two, of them. They'll no doubt be along shortly.

A company which became the first private firm to manage an NHS hospital says it wants to "withdraw from its contract".

Circle Holdings, which operates Hinchingbrooke Hospital in Cambridgeshire, said its franchise is "no longer viable under current terms". The move comes amid funding cuts and pressure on the casualty department, Circle said. The Department of Health said it was "disappointed" in the decision.

Circle took on Hinchingbrooke in early 2012, as it faced closure. It said there had been unprecedented increases in accident and emergency attendances, a lack of care places for patients awaiting discharge, and that funding had been cut by 10.1% this financial year. Circle has made payments to the trust totalling about £4.84m and could be required to make a final support payment of approximately £160,000, the firm said. Under the terms of its 10-year contract it has the right to end the franchise if the amount of money it has to put in to the trust exceeds £5m.

Chief Executive Steve Melton said: "This combination of factors means we have now reluctantly concluded that, in its existing form, Circle's involvement in Hinchingbrooke is unsustainable."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-ca ... e-30740956

Emm that is so sick but it is true.

Should be an interesting ding-dong around Circle, given the tendering process for Hinchingbrooke was started under Labour and the terms of the tendering process also decided by that Government. Never mind the extensive financial woes the trust manage to generate whilst Labour was in power. The further financial constraints placed upon the Trust have been the result of the coalition government's policies, which couldn't exactly have helped Circle succeed and will only serve to demonstrate the willingness of the private sector to "cut and run" when the going gets tough.

In so far as mud slinging between the two parties goes, this one should be especially hilarious.

There's no winners with Hinchingbrooke, except for those of us amasssing evidence that the private sector simply can't cut it - profit gets in the way of patients

I agree, politically there are no winners.

I don't think the argument about the private sector is done and dusted here though. Hinchingbrooke was a mess before Circle took it over and I'm not convinced it would be any less of a mess if left with a purely NHS leadership.

The only evidence that can be amassed here is that the problems at Hinchingbrooke aren't going to be resolved by a simple change in leadership.

Torydems pleading that the tendering process started under labour might as well say that the nhs started under labour and be done with it. That line is on a par with their apologists claiming that they aren't responsible for their benefits assessment fiasco because labour previously awarded a contract to ATOS before they did. The torydems awarded the contract to circle but more to the point they are responsible for the environment in which the hospital has been operating, and ultimately failed.

Looking forward, it's clear what happens next. An insolvency practitioner comes in and liquidates the remaining stock, capital assets and patients (donor organs or something ) using the proceeds to pay off creditors in a certain order until the cash is gone, and then everyone who isn't dead tries to find another hospital to treat them at market rates, that's how commerce works. It wouldn't possibly be another case of privatising profit, socialising loss would it?