“Is stoutness as big a problem as you’re making out?” “Yeah,
it’s huge…”
But is it an epidemic, we may ask?
Yet another example of yesterday’s satire becoming today’s
reality can be found in the Not The Nine O’Clock News ‘Stout Life’ sketch, with
presenter Janny Shtrait-Pawuh interviewing George Fletcher from Proud To Be
Stout, while the organiser of plump discos Reverend Tubs Wiston looked on.
Little did they know that thirty years later, health experts would be gravely
warning about the ‘obesity epidemic’ and how it threatens all of us…
Let’s go back to first principles. ‘Epidemic’ is one of many
medical terms deriving from ancient Greek. ‘Epi’: upon, ‘demos’: people. Quite
a sensible illustration of what happens when a contagious disease goes beyond a
mere outbreak and descends upon a far greater section of the population than could
have been expected. And just to complete the picture, the more serious ‘pandemic’
is reflected in the fact that in Socrates’ times, ‘pan’ meant ‘all’.
Here and now, there is no denying that obesity is a
condition. The condition may indeed be widespread (no pun intended). Equally,
the unthinking use of body mass index (BMI) formulae may have served to
exaggerate its prevalence, by unfairly tarring the naturally large framed with
the same brush as may be quite rightly used upon those who treat a KFC Bargain
Bucket as a light personal snack between meals.
But how on earth did we ever reach the point where the World
Health Organisation formally recognised obesity as a global epidemic? What a
gift to those in desperate need of more research funding at the taxpayers’
expense, and to the strident voices of the nanny state calling for more
regulation of food consumption and more levies on taboo products. The casual twisting
of language is just insult to injury.
With all due irony, Jim from the Royle Family would almost
inevitably have reacted with “obesity epidemic my arse”. A more balanced view
would perhaps be to file it alongside Christmas shopping, carbon footprint and
Labour government as a new entrant to the Top 10 most irritating two word
phrases.
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