When BIG really isn’t beautiful

Some people might have thought that my previous post about parents murdering their kids was a little extreme. And then a story popped up on the world news that backed up everything I had said.

It’s about Leanne Salt. A 24 year old girl who is happily feeding her 8 month old triplets towards a life full of medical problems, and all but giving them a helping hand into an early grave. A girl who should be locked up for the great big helpings of child abuse that she is dishing out to her kids, along side the junk food she’s filling them up on.

Despite the fact that only a moron wouldn’t know better, this 30-stone lump sees nothing wrong with how she is bringing up her triplets. Far from it. She is actually proud of the fact that her babies became card carrying members of the Happy Meal club at just 6 months old.

Refusing to acknowledge that she is doing anything wrong, she believes that because she takes the batter off their fish and chips, she is giving them a healthy diet.

And after all,  as she says, she does feed her babies vegetables every Sunday. Perhaps she believes that an onion ring and a pickled gherkin count towards their 5 a day? Or should that be their 5 (at a push) a month.

Now 8 months old, these poor babies are being fed around 1,249 calories a day, with a diet consisting mainly of junk food, fish and chips, crisps and microwave meals.

Seriously? Is this woman for real?

It goes without saying that such an eating machine has zero respect for her own body, or her diminishing life expectancy, but how can she be so incredibly selfish when it comes to her kids?

And there in lies the problem. As well as being selfish, the girl is obviously plain stupid. Certifiably dumb actually. Devoid of brain cells and missing any sort of solid matter between her ears. After all, anyone who seriously believes that watching what you eat and consuming healthy foods leads to anorexia is one stitch short of a lobotomy.

Her line of reasoning? “I do worry my kids could get picked on if they get fat, but I’d tell them that big is beautiful.“

Yes, that will make them feel so much better when their mother is harpooned in the school car park by Greenpeace. Or when they get diagnosed with diabetes. Or when they drop down from a fatal heart attack as they turn 21.

Of course beauty is very much in eye of the beholder, and big can be beautiful. But there are always exceptions the rule, and this has to be one of them. I don’t know when Miss Salt last looked in a mirror, I suspect it’s been a while, but beautiful is not one of the words that immediately springs to mind.

And that brings me to the question that everyone who has heard about this girl is surely asking themselves. How in God’s name did she even snare anyone mad, brave or drunk enough to impregnate her in the first place? And when she did, presumably with the aid of chloroform, how did the the deed itself (I shudder as I write that) even take place.

Now I’m certainly no physicist, but aren’t there some laws regarding mass, volume, weight and proximity that would have made this nigh on impossible? It would be like trying to mate Dumbo with Mickey Mouse.

So taking the fact that some poor bugger did somehow manage to put 3 buns in her cavernous oven, and then wake up with a hangover from hell and run screaming from the house, how did she even know she was pregnant? Did she wake up one morning and think, that’s odd, my stomach looks slightly swollen today?

Let’s face it, she could have gestated an elephant without attracting any attention. Well apart from the fact by the 9th month she had gained a further 10 stone.

And now for the bit of the story that really makes you believe that the world has gone mad. Being that she was the fattest mother of triplets that medical science had ever clamped eyes on, it took a team of 68 people to deliver her babies, at a cost of £200,000 to the NHS. This included the operating table that had to be specially-built for her Caesarean section.

Well come on, you didn’t think that she was going to have a natural birth did you? All the crow bars in the world and a forklift truck wouldn’t make that a possibility.

Now that she is back at home with her brood and securely wedged into her 5 seater sofa, she is happy to live off benefits with no future plans to ever lift a 20 kg finger and do any work again. After all the poor girl is apparently already too busy to clean, tidy up or prepare proper meals for her children. The family only get dressed to leave the house once a week – so that they can collect her benefits.

And let’s not forget that if the governments latest  hair brained scheme takes off, then one day she’ll also he paid to walk (roll) her kids to school as well.

On the upside, Miss Salt is making some plans for their future. She has decided that she now deserves to be given her own council house, and is completely ready to face the world alone.“I know how to microwave a meal and make up instant mash, so I think we’d all manage.” Stand aside Jamie, the girl’s got your job in the bag.

And what is the shocking truth about this tale of chips and child abuse? This girl is not alone.

A recent survey by the Infant and Toddler Forum found that 29 per cent of children under the age of three ate a takeaway at least once a week, while 23 per cent eat crisps and 16 per cent drink fizzy drinks almost every day.

Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down

All these years I have been living under the assumption that it pays to be healthy, to watch my weight and try and refrain from eating my weight in Pringles every night. Apparently this is not the case. Apparently it pays to be obese. Literally.

Typical. All those years spent worrying about how big my bum must look to the person behind me and the wasted guilt over the calorie content of the Chunky Kit Kat I just wolfed down on the way back from the gym.

Now the British government are to roll out a scheme next year, which will see them handing out pounds to an increasingly super-sized nation. Maybe I should start gaining a few stone and cash in on the action… Hmmm, maybe not. Summer is but one dose of sun burn away and my bikini already seems to have shrunk while it was in storage over the past winter months.

What on earth are you on about now I hear you cry. More burger bashing and rants about how parents are killing their kids? No, not this time. This particular gem is the brilliant game plan of an ingenious government, a government who are about to start paying obese people to walk their kids to school.

With 60% of men, 50% of women, and 26% of children predicted to be very obese by 2050, of course it is a good thing that the government are trying to do something to shift a nation of Webbles off their increasingly round bottoms. But why should those who are extremely overweight be paid to get up and get moving. What sort of example does this set their children? That they don’t care enough about their own health to do it for free? That if you base your ’7 a day’ around the menus of McDonald’s, Pizza Hut and KFC and don’t try to shed the pounds on your own, then the government will reward you for all your hard work?

OK. So it’s not actually cold hard cash that’s being handed out, it’s points. Points for making ‘Junior’ pound the pavement to school. Points for using a bus instead of a car. Points for running in the fresh air. Points for buying an ice-burg lettuce instead of a gallon of ice cream. Points for attending an exercise or weight loss class. Points for losing half an inch when you are there. Points for not using the TV remote. Points for buying your fries at the counter instead of from your car. Points for getting a plain Cheeseburger instead of a double. OK, so the last few may not be true, but when dishing out these points, where do they intend to draw the line?

And how do you collect these points? Why, with a loyalty card of course. You simply go for a jog in the park, swipe your card and then collect your voucher to pay towards your healthy food, sports equipment and gym sessions. Why stop there? Maybe the points could also be counted towards a nifty stomach staple and some lunch time liposuction.

I wonder if, just like the supermarkets do, the government will also make a bit of money off the side by selling on these loyalty card details to companies harvesting information. Perhaps the downside of the scheme will be an avalanche of Spam from Weight Watchers and ‘The Miracle Wonder Diet Pill’. Mind you, with all that extra exercise, these card holders might just appreciate a little bit of Spam to spur them further.

I wonder how they will even decide who gets paid and who is and isn’t deemed fat enough? Do the obese get outed in a public weigh in?  Will obese children also be included in the scheme? Surely this type of labeling would increase the social stigma that is already attached to being overweight.

The main reason for the controversy that this scheme has provoked comes down to money. What else. Many are claiming that it will be too easy for fraudulent fatties to cheat the system, by simply hopping out of their cars, swiping their cards and then driving away.

Secondly it is said that the scheme is nothing more than bribery, and this is surely not the way to go about slimming down a nation. It does seem like a very slippery slope to climb to the top of.

Lastly, and perhaps more importantly to the healthy people out there (and there ARE some left you know), the £30million price tag to foot this bill is incredibly unfair to those who are already having to tighten their own belts to make ends meet.

Wouldn’t it be easier and cheaper to simply clone Gillian Mc Keith and have her dispatched out to the four corners of the country. She could single handily scare the sh*t out of most unhealthy people, and then chase them up and down the streets with a toasting fork and a bag of freeze dried lentils to beat them about the head with should they stop running.

Or how about giving Jamie Oliver the money. I’m sure he could put it to good use with his numerous campaigns encouraging the country to ditch their take away menus and pick up a saucepan instead. Why on earth should he have to struggle to get the governments backing. Surely they should support anyone with the incentive to try and make a difference.

Or here’s an even easier solution. Instead of taxing the thin to help bribe the fat, start taxing the very fat so that they can help support the burden that obesity is already placing on the NHS. If every person was weighed by their doctor (yes I know, technically an invasion of privacy and a daylight nightmare to women everywhere) then those who cross a ‘clinically obese’ threshold could be put into a higher tax bracket.

This isn’t unfair, per say, it’s a logical way of making people more accountable for their own health and giving them more of an incentive to lose weight, than say being told they can earn 2 points towards a pair of legwarmers for taking a walk in the park. Of course when the person loses weight, they pay less tax again. Win win all round.

What about for those who don’t work and pay tax? Cut the benefits accordingly. Do I sound harsh and unsympathetic? Probably. But maybe it could be seen as an incredibly tough love scheme to help those who have gone past the point of knowing how to help themselves.

I probably sound cynical and ‘fattist’ as well. I don’t mean to be, ‘fattist’ that is, I will always be cynical. As I’ve said before, obesity is not a ‘Fat Versus Thin’ debate, it’s all about looking after yourself and making sure that you have a longer life span than a household appliance. After all, an obese person dies on average 9 years earlier than somebody of normal weight, and a very obese person as many as 13 years.

In my defense it does seems that as the dress sizes increase and the size 8′s, 10′s and 12′s are shunted off the rails and into the ‘Unnaturally Healthy’ section, the world is starting to accept that being unhealthy is the now the norm. That’s crazy.

I’m all for embracing what you’re born with and accepting your body shape, but I don’t remember seeing any news headlines about a load of 22 stone babies bursting into the world.

OK, now someone quick pass me the cake tin. I’ve got points to earn. I reckon if I eat for 4 hours a day and put in a year of some really hard work, I could potentially earn a membership to the local health spa, with a free seaweed wrap thrown in free.

Damn it. I’ve just remembered that I won’t qualify, I’m living in Australia now. Never mind, this is now the world’s fattest nation, so give it a few years and the scheme will surely be rolled out over here.

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What IS on the end of your fork?

Of course I have been aware of the food scare crisis going on in China over recent weeks, but I admit it was only last week that I sat up and really took notice. I was emailed a list of some of the potentially contaminated products and was disturbed to say the least when I saw on the list the same Baby Bite rusks that my little boy has been powering his way through for the last year.

Like many people I imagine, I had thought the risk were limited only to certain brands of baby formula. Apparently not, it appears it could even be spreading in far wider food circles than that, even covering Dove chocolate and M&M’s.

With 4 Chinese babies already dead and nearly 11,000 babies and children still being hospitalised, the world is now sitting up and starting to get itself into something of a flap. Dozens of countries, from Indonesia to Kenya to Colombia, have now banned Chinese dairy imports amid fears sparked by the tainted infant formula.

As a precautionary measure, Tesco (UK) removed ‘White Rabbit’ milk sweets from its shelves, a brand that the New Zealand’s Food Safety Authority have now warned contains “unacceptable” levels of melamine – a chemical used in making plastics and fertilizer that can cause kidney stones and even kidney failure.

Of course the Chinese government are busy trying to play down the problem, or in other words stick their head in the sand where no one can ask them too many awkward questions. Despite Xiang Yuzhang, the quality watchdog’s chief inspection official, telling reporters in Beijing that “There is no problem,” the world it seems is just not buying it. Perhaps because another senior Chinese product safety official has also insisted that the problem was “under control, more or less“.

Not the most comforting of words to use really, ‘more or less’. Those in charge of Chinese media spin must be shaking their heads in horror.

It does seem these days, according to the media at least, like the world is forever lurching from one food scare to another. It’s hard to know what’s safe to eat anymore, whether something is healthy or packed full of cancerous additives and which panic reports and urban myths to believe.

A World Health Organization study reported this year that unsafe food is responsible for illnesses in at least 2 billion people.

Of course it’s impossible and unrealistic to expect everything we eat to be 100% germ free. Food now is grown, flown and consumed all over the world and passes through more pairs of hands than you can shake a stick at. So while you may keep your kitchen as sterile as an operating room and religiously and rigorously wash every piece of fruit that you eat, the chances are the food you eat has already been contaminated in some way, long before you even brought it home. Possibly 1000′s of miles away by some backpacking fruit picker who went to use the loo and forgot to wash his hands. What a lovely image as you bite into your Royal Gala.

A long history of food scares, many of which turn out to be completely unfounded are enough to have you turning anorexic with fear.

The outbreak of listeria in 1989 that had customers fleeing from  supermarket soft cheese and cooked chicken. Edwina Curries ‘egg fiasco’ of 1999, when the country stopped poaching, scrambling and boiling their breakfast for fear of getting salmonella. The 23% of pigs taken for slaughter that the British Government then reported were also infected with salmonella in 2000. The BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) and the outbreak of E coli that caused widespread mayhem in 1997.

The numerous links with cancer for a whole host of foods, including salmon, prawns, low fat milk, MEAT, bread, rice and even potatoes. The reports that cling film was dangerous, chickens nursing the flu could kill and swordfish gives you mercury poisoning. The concerns over food irradiation and the ongoing debate surrounding margarine.  The media furore over GM (genetic modification) food and the unknown fear over what long term effect a chemically enhanced cucumber may have on our body in 20 years time.

Even trying to eat your 5, or is that now meant to be 7-a-day has become a mission in staying alive, with recent reports of fresh spinach, tomatoes and peppers all testing positive for salmonella and certain brands of carrot juice (organic no less) being linked to botulism.

When you start looking at your fork and wondering what exactly is in the food you are about to eat and whether it will one day cause you to grow another limb, then you know it’s time to dig out a vegetable plot and only eat what you can manage to grow.

Much like with the everyday products that we use, the medications we pump into our bodies and the diets that we follow, it seems that in this day and age, eating has never been so dangerous.

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