by Emmeline » Jan 08, 2015 9:24 am



I do have people in my family & friends circle who struggle with obesity but they all go to work, pay taxes & make efforts to improve their health. They aren't the people who I'm angry about.

I knew someone who was a bit fat. Therefore everyone who is a bit fat must be similar to them and should behave similarly. If they don't they must just be lazy and worthy of contempt.

No flaw there then.


Edit- add quote

Emmeline wrote:

smudge wrote:
Clearly you don't have anyone in your family or social circle that struggles with obesity/food issues. I do. It is surely not difficult to grasp that obesity is often a mental health issue, that mental health services are stretched and patchy, that these issues are complicated and time consuming to treat, that sufferers truly suffer, that sufferers deserve compassion, that the limits of your personal family experience is no excuse for lack of empathy.

I do have people in my family & friends circle who struggle with obesity but they all go to work, pay taxes & make efforts to improve their health. They aren't the people who I'm angry about.

So what you're saying is that you don't have experience of anyone who fits the mould of the people you are deriding here.

ETA - you originally attacked all those who were not obese due to disability or medication but from eating all the pies, which would probably include some of your obese family and friends.

Fallible wrote:

Emmeline wrote:

smudge wrote:
Clearly you don't have anyone in your family or social circle that struggles with obesity/food issues. I do. It is surely not difficult to grasp that obesity is often a mental health issue, that mental health services are stretched and patchy, that these issues are complicated and time consuming to treat, that sufferers truly suffer, that sufferers deserve compassion, that the limits of your personal family experience is no excuse for lack of empathy.

I do have people in my family & friends circle who struggle with obesity but they all go to work, pay taxes & make efforts to improve their health. They aren't the people who I'm angry about.

So what you're saying is that you don't have experience of anyone who fits the mould of the people you are deriding here.

ETA - you originally attacked all those who were not obese due to disability or medication but from eating all the pies, which would probably include some of your obese family and friends.

I did then clarify who I was talking about:

Meanwhile, there are people who have never worked or paid taxes living off the rest of us. Within that group are some morbidly obese people who have no intention of trying to be healthier and instead claim benefits for carers, cleaners, mobility scooters etc. These are the feckless, idle scroungers I'm pissed off about.

I might not have direct experience of these people but I have friends/family with neighbours like this so I know they exist other than in my imagination. I doubt these people are the only ones in the entire country.

@ em/fall: I guess we all rant sometimes and at that time, logic is not really our main concern. Can't we leave it at that?

Rachel Bronwyn wrote:I tend not to rely on anecdotes about others' neighbours when determining what to get riled up over.

You might if several of your friends'/family's neighbours were being sexually discriminated against. If you were told anecdotes about that I doubt you'd be emotionally neutral.

babel wrote:@ em/fall: I guess we all rant sometimes and at that time, logic is not really our main concern. Can't we leave it at that?

I fully acknowledge that mine is an emotional response, which has somewhat surprised me.

Rachel Bronwyn wrote:I tend not to rely on anecdotes about others' neighbours when determining what to get riled up over.

Tbickle wrote:

Rachel Bronwyn wrote:Health is too different from one person to another to make generalisations about healthcare costs based on lifestyle. Some people will spend their entire adult lives fat, die at ninety-three and have never suffered ill health resulting from the weight. Some extreme athletes will never dislocate a joint much less become a paraplegic. Other people who seemingly do everything right will be riddled with disease and a shortened lifespan.

This is just simply not true. Not only is there a tremendous amount of data to support that excess weight is strongly correlated to a shorter life span, it is directly linked to various debilitating and deadly diseases.

Uh, no shit. It doesn't apply to every single fat person. There are outliers. This is also true.

Sure, there are also outliers in smokers who happen to live a long life. Do you think that it is unfair to increase the costs on smokers?

This line of argument is often used by the HAES supporters and is just factually incorrect.

I don't know what you're taking about because you just said "NO U" and then said something I agree with. I said, on an individual basis, you can't make generalisations. You can make predictions and determine increased likelihoods someone who is fat will get sick. You can't know a person is sickly because they are fat and have any certainty they will die young though. There are fat people in the world who will live healthy lives and require minimal medical costs. They're just not the rule.

The obese, as a whole, cost the health care system an incredibly more amount of money mostly due to their excessive body weight. Some obese people will live a long and happy life, the reality is that the majority of them will not. When it comes to medical insurance or a national health care system, they need to be able to look at the larger picture and identify key groups of detrimental health behaviors and populations of people that are either at risk, or are taxing the system based upon empirical data. If a country has millions or billions of people to look at, do you honestly think that it is feasible to disregard key activities or health factors in creating policy in lieu of only individualized tests?

I will agree that weight is not the sole factor in determining health of an individual, but excess body fat is a contributing factor to many cardiovascular issues, diabetes, and even cancer.

Blah blah blah blah don't know why you're lecturing me over something I agree with any haven't argued but whatever.

Responding to a comment is now considered lecturing?

An individual in a healthy weight range will have less suceptibility to certain diseases than the exact same person who happens to be overweight or obese.

Bullshit. Just because someone's a healthy weight doesn't mean they don't have an unhealthy lifestyle. They may well be an alcoholic. Using weight as if it's a sole determining factor of likelihood to become ill is pure ignorance.

Read what I said again, "the exact same person". This is purely a hypothetical example. Take any random individual and have two parallel worlds where everything about them, their exact actions, and everything else is exactly the same. All things being equal (levels of activity, stress, economic standing, risky behaviors, etc.), a normal weight version of that person will be less susceptible to various ailments than the parallel obese version of the person.

And even if someone does drink to excess all we can know with certainty is the likelihood they'll become ill is increased. Same deal with fat people. That single factor is not a guarantee of increased health costs. It's a statistical likelihood but there will always be outliers and assuming you know someone is sick and burdening society based on their weight is just that - an assumption. Appearances don't tell us everything. There are some fat people who will cost the world little and lots of skinny people who get a free fucking pass from this kind of judgement because they're fun to look at but are actually burdening society to a greater extent than most fatties we complain about.

As a group, the overweight and obese will cost more. The evidence is clear on this. The reality is that it is impossible, for a plethora of reasons, to only rely on customized, in-depth, individual health analyses when determining individual health care costs. There are too many people, it costs too much, not enough resources, and there are many people who just frankly don't go to or are frightened of going to any type of a medical service. This now requires the health care industry or Government institution to look at these large pockets, where frankly the outliers are few and far between, of the population and increase costs accordingly.

It's not just for practicality purposes though. I doubt its efficacy but another intention may be to try to enforce positive changes by increased direct costs to the individual. An individual may not be as motivated to lose excess weight as they are when it's costing them additional money each year.