Thursday, March 27, 2014

The New Normal

Caught something in the news today about problems of people being overweight in the UK. It seems that the average weight of the population is now over-weight, which means that many who are over-weight don't realise this is the case as they are, well, average. Wasn't entirely surprised about this. Whenever we've been back there over the last ten years I've had a distinct sense of looking at people who are generally bigger than they used to be.

I don't think this has anything to do with greed per se. I reckon it's just a matter of the easy availability of food. When I was a little lad there just wasn't that much food around, strange as it may seem to say. We had a fridge, but there wasn't much in it, and there weren't too many places to buy stuff to fill it - no supermarkets, just the grocery shop around the corner. We didn't go hungry, but food wasn't that prominent in our lives. Kids who were over-weight were really the exceptions.

I hate to sound defeatist, but I really can't see any way in which obesity rates can be controlled in any developed nation. And since, according to those who understand these things, this is likely to lead to a health crisis, we'd better brace ourselves.

No comments: