Taxing the fat to pay the thin

So, finally a doctor in the UK has been brave enough to speak out and voice what many people already think  – that instead of pandering to the needs of the morbidly and super morbidly obese with free mobility scooters and Disability Living Allowance, they should be made to contribute towards the massive strain they are placing on the health system, by paying more tax. And in turn, those who work hard to remain fit and healthy should be financially rewarded for their effort.

With obesity related issues draining every last penny out of the already overstretched NHS budget and £6.3 billion being spent fighting fat, this scheme sounds about on the mark to me. No doubt it’ll be met with cries of “You can’t say that”, but it has nothing to do with being judgmental or ‘fattist’, it’s just common sense. As is Dr Chand’s proposal to add tax to the type of fattening food that offers little or no nutritional value, yet guarantees maximum ‘junk in your trunk’.

Such a tax would of course cause outrage amongst the loyal Happy Meal brigade, all of whom would shriek loudly that it’s unfair to target those on lower incomes, who consider fast food a cheaper alternative. Quite frankly, tough. Tobacco and alcohol are already taxed in an effort to target smoking related illnesses and binge drinking, so why shouldn’t unhealthy food be too?

And as for the argument that junk food is the cheaper alternative, what a load of rubbish. It’s the easier alternative. With every supermarket offering cut prices bargains and more BOGOF offers than you can shake a stick at, it’s far cheaper to cook simple healthy food that it is to buy in a round of up-sized burgers, chips and coke. Even if you do have limited funds and an army of hungry mouths at home to feed. People who choose takeaways every night over cooking are just lazy, and parents who feed their kid’s junk for breakfast, lunch and tea should be done for child abuse. (see related post).

Strangely enough, many of these parents who claim they can’t afford to buy healthy food for their kids just so happen to smoke and drink. They think nothing of puffing £5 into thin air or pouring it down their throat, but they can’t stretch the family budget enough to incorporate something that hasn’t been regurgitated out of a deep fat fryer and into a styrofoam box. For £5 you can buy an entire chicken. So do you spend your money on 20 cigarettes, or a whole birds worth of protein to feed the kids? There’s the difficult decision of the week.

The argument that fast food is even fast is the biggest myth of all. At tea time it takes less time to scramble an egg, microwave a potato or even cook some pasta than it does to climb into the car, drive to the nearest nugget dispensing outlet, queue up, order, collect and scoff. Of course most children would probably prefer the nugget option, and as such be more likely to eat it up without a moan or a struggle, but since when was feeding them meant to be about taking the path of least resistance?

Children are just that, children. They should be eating what’s right for them, not what’s easiest for the parent, no matter how much money they have, how brain dead they are in the kitchen or whether by the end of the day they’ve simply lost the will to live. God knows I could well do without the constant battles about how many vegetables are lurking on my kid’s dinner plates, but I’d rather deal with the fuss they sometimes make than watch them both turn into Weebles, and wobble right off their Trip Trap chairs.

So is the idea of taxing the morbidly obese ever going to work? Nope, not a chance in hell. Why? Because many of those who fall into this category probably aren’t able to work in the first place. Their size, and the associated health problems that comes along with it, prevent them from carrying out even the simplest day-to-day tasks, never mind holding down paid employment. So if they were forced to pay more tax, they would no doubt need to be awarded more disability allowance to afford it.

Obesity is a problem that will carry on for many, many years to come. In part this is because many of those individuals who are contributing to the problem, simply refuse to accept any responsibility for their own actions. Instead they prefer to blame the government for its lack of support in helping them to lose weight. They complain about the shortage of free local sports centres and wide open spaces in which to jog. They claim that a bunch of carrots are exorbitantly priced and no one ever taught them how to cook.

In answer to that. It’s not up to the government (who lets face it can’t even run the country properly never mind a weight loss club) to prise the fork out of each and every chubby little hand across the land. There are 1000′s of miles of free pavements in the UK, go walk on them. If you can afford to upsize your £4.50 McDonalds meal you can afford a bunch of carrots. Go buy a cook book, or cheaper still, turn on the TV and listen to Jamie Oliver.

It seems incredible that so many people simply refuse to put two and two together and start addressing the problem, instead of comfort feeding and making it even worse. Even with all the fat fighting campaigns, health lectures and awareness raising TV programmes out there, all trying to ram the obvious message home, it’s hard to see what the solution will be.

Perhaps if those who need to shed the weight actually climbed out of their complimentary buggies and used their feet, they might be surprised to find the weight starting to drop off. Obviously there’s no miracle cure to losing this amount of weight, unless you see stomach stapling as a viable option, but it has been done, and is therefore not impossible.

I’m not even going to pretend to have a clue about the horrible vicious circle of a situation that you’d find yourself in, when you reach this sort of size. Or how demoralising and depressing it  could be to live with everyday.

I’m pretty sure that getting the weight loss ball rolling would indeed be painful, and a tremendous struggle of mind over matter to say the least. But any type of exercise was never designed to be easy, it was designed to be exercise. And anyone who’s ever tried a step class (and failed miserably) will know that exercise can be painful, complicated and downright humiliating whatever size you are.

afaef

If it’s not broken, don’t fix it

Why is it that some companies just can’t help themselves. First they give you too much choice, flooding your brain impossible decisions. Then they fiddle around with something that already works perfectly fine – and has done for many, many years.

Take the humble deodorant bottle. It’s simple, straightforward and stops you smelling like a tramp on a hot and humid day. It’s not one of those products that really needs to be fancy. You aren’t likely to ever display it next to the cut glass or amongst the family photos. Far from it, when the deodorant bottle does makes it out of the bathroom and into public view, it is normally being whipped out of a bag and up under a jumper in a quick, trying to be inconspicuous kind of way.

And as for the design. Well it’s small, flat bottomed and rounded on the top. It’s been like this for as long as I can remember and always seemed to do it’s job to me.

So given this, why do the packaging, marketing and design gurus out there have to brainstorm themselves into a corner and come up with a new design. Surely that’s a bit like reinventing the wheel, just for the sake of making it that little bit rounder.

I’m talking, in case your wondering, about the new ‘upside down’ deodorant bottle that seem to be springing up all over the place. The adverts are of course very catchy, implying how much easier and better life would be if you lived it upside down. Would it? Really?  I can think of a number of times right of the top of my head when it wouldn’t be so great. Maybe I’m just a fan of gravity.

Of course being a sucker for new packaging, I went out and brought one. I’m a double sucker really, if you consider my line of work and insider knowledge of how to sell a gimmick to the blissfully unaware.  Still, like my other fellow magpies and lemmings, I like bright, shiny things and am always happy to jump off a cliff at least once. Who knows, maybe I thought life in an upside down world might be more fun, it would certainly put more volume in your hair when you’re drying it…

Oh fool that I am, for listening to heart over head and letting my curious fingers do the buying. The bloody thing is useless. Yes, it dispenses a pleasant white lotion onto my skin, that does, granted, make me smell good. But it also dispenses a pleasant white lotion all over my hands, down the outside of the bottle and onto the floor.

Surely it has been tested by small men in white coats for it’s capacity to spill? So how could this be? Hmmmm. Let’s think for a second.

Oh yes, that would be the incredibly stupid nature of the design. Something perhaps to do with the whole ‘let’s push everything to sit in the bottom of the bottle and then remove the lid’ frighteningly good idea. Now how many marketing monkeys, dressed in skinny jeans and Che Guevara t-shirts did it take to come up with this innovative new crap design?

Did they perhaps think a more aerodynamic shape would help the gloop to leave the rolling ball at a greater speed and velocity? It’s a deodorant not a cruise missile for crying out loud. It doesn’t need to break speed barriers or have more bleeding thrust than a Lamborghini.

But then I though, hang on a minute, maybe it’s just me. Maybe it’s the way I’m holding the bottle. Perhaps after all these years I’ll find out I’ve been doing this, apparently idiot proof task all wrong. Then I noticed my husbands deodorant. Sat there, just like mine, all upside down on the shelf and caked in dried up gloop.

Haaa! It’s not me after all.

I know that products, especially those of the hygiene and beautifying sort do need to shout ‘I’m young, hip and trendy’ as they jostle for your attention on the shelf. They need to have sexy shaped bottles, bright shiny colours and lids that open in 10 captivating new ways. They need to make attention grabbing promise, ones that blind you with science and conjure up images of molecules, test tubes and miracles.

Of course all they really need to say is   ‘Use me today, and you too can have smooth, glowing, wrinkle free skin…. just like this pretty little pre-pubescent model in the poster’. Or even  ‘ Use me today, and you too can have hair that bounces and shines, never fades with age or splits when you brush it… just like this airbrushed, Botox injected, aging actress in the poster’.

That’s right. We did all notice that anti-aging creams are sold by toddlers, shampoos are sold by wind machines and foundations are sold by Photoshop. We may well be gullible enough to part with our cash, but we’re not stupid enough to believe in perfection.

So really packaging, marketing and advertising guys, here’s a revolutionary idea. Instead of spending 100′s of 1000′s messing around with the tried, tested and perfectly acceptable shapes of our bottles, jars and pots of potion, or trying to sneak a fuel injected turbo engine inside the lid, for a slightly faster roll, why not just lower the price instead?

Yes, yes, it’s a radical thought I know. But remember, the average buyer is of a terribly fickle breed. We hunt out discounts. We study the sales, promotions and BOGOFs like the Pope studies the bible. We want value for money and preferably change from a $10 note.  So make your product half the price of that snazzy shaped bottle sat beside it, and then sit back and watch us buy it right off the shelf.