Could you stomach a fat tax?

The other night I watched a rather good episode of Panorama called ‘Taxing the Fat’. For those who didn’t catch it, despite what the title might suggest it didn’t actually go down the obvious route.

It didn’t suggest that the very obese should pay more towards their own self-inflicted health problems – although they probably should. It didn’t suggest that mobility scooters should be limited to those who really deserve them – although they probably should. It didn’t even suggest that those who weigh more than a set of monogrammed Louis Vuitton suitcases should have to pay excess baggage – although they probably should.

No, rather the program was suggesting that everyone, regardless of their weight or size, should have to pay that little bit more for calorie-laden, high-fat, nutritionally devoid substances. The sort of food and drinks that serve no other purpose in life other than to fill us up quick, make us happy and pile on the pounds.

Unsurprisingly rather a lot of people are a tad concerned, no, let’s make that downright horrified at the very idea. But they shouldn’t be.

Don’t get me wrong,  I don’t particularly want to see the price of a chunky KitKat double overnight, but, as far as the principles of making certain foods a treat as opposed to a staple, I couldn’t agree with the theory more. The Danes have already imposed a ‘fat tax’ and it’s made them the healthiest bunch in Europe.

So how does that actually work for them you may wonder. Well, the forward thinking government over there has piled a 25% tax onto ice-cream, chocolate, sweets and soft-drinks, with margarine, oils, animal fats and high-fat dairy products to be targeted later on in the year. That’s not to say it’s all bad news of course, tax has also been decreased on sugar-free soft drinks.

But while it may have slimmed down their nation’s waistlines, can you imagine the outcry over here if Cameron N’ Clegg dared to try and stop people eating like pigs. Which is, after all, the whole point of such a tax.

People would be striking left, right and centre and coming out with all sorts:
They don’t have the right to dictate what I eat. They can’t police my fridge. They can’t make me healthy if I don’t want to be. They can’t prevent me eating my weight in pizza every night.

But why can’t they? The government already has to use taxes to pay for the disability allowances and stomach stapling operations that people who simply can’t and won’t stop eating say they need, so why not try some alternative funding?

After all cigarettes and alcohol are taxed are they not? And while you may say, but that’s because they’re drugs and bad for your health, well so’s food really. Well it certainly is for those who seem determined to eat their way to diabetes and a very large, early grave.

Of course those who live on junk and junk alone will always give the same excuse for doing so – it’s cheap.  And those who protest against taxing unhealthy food will always say the same thing – it’s not fair. Rubbish and simply not true.

The argument that lower-income families need BOGOF bargain basement food to just survive is a very flawed one indeed. Experts may well claim that the cost of such foods are ‘cheaper per calorie’ than healthier options (and therefore cost you less to fill your tummy) but when these cheaper calories are empty calories then surely that theory is knocked on the head.

Besides which, if you choose to stock your trolley with nothing but rubbish, processed junk and microwaveable crap, and fill your body with nothing but saturated fats, sugar and salt, then let’s be honest, it isn’t all about the low-cost is it. It’s about being bloody lazy.

To sum it all up, there was a woman on the program who came out with an observational gem that went something along the lines of this: “But if they put up the prices then we won’t be able to buy a multi-bag of crisps for ₤1 anymore..”

Yes dear, that is kind of the point.

Where NOT to go to pass the time

A collective sigh of relief goes up across the world this week, as, after several weeks of captivity, parents are finally being set free. Yes, school holidays have once again come to an end, and children everywhere are gathering up their pencil cases and musty lunch bags and being packed off back to their classrooms.

Of course lots of parent do relish these special weeks spent at home, re-bonding over the craft box and cooking up a cupcake storm. Other parents however, particularly those who aren’t naturally programmed to moulding papier-mâché and making their own play dough, sometimes find these long periods of time a little bit tricky to fill.

Once the novelty of an alarm clock free morning and a sandwich-making free evening has worn off, and you’ve spent several days watching your creative child stick tissue paper and glitter directly onto the dining table and build a cubby in every single room, it’s likely you might start thinking of other places to spend the day.

‘Other places’ that aren’t at home, to be more precise. Places that won’t involve you having to vacuum up afterwards, and require the odd bit of plastering and repainting when the playing goes wrong.

If and when the weather doesn’t cooperate and rain pours down day after day, soft play centres – the sort with swinging ladders, tunnels, slides and multi-coloured balls – are a tempting refuge. It’s true that spending a day at such a place is likely to knock at least a year off your lifespan and leave you with a nasty chest infection, but at least you are safe in the knowledge that, short of the odd friction burn and heat exhaustion, your children can knock themselves out without actually coming to any real harm.

The downside of these play centres is of course the entry fee. It’s generally on par with a central London mortgage repayment. And to add insult to overpriced injury, the parent is also charged just for the privilege of sitting, watching and breathing in the rancid air.

After you’ve set foot through the door and all shoes have been removed and stored in a pile under the counter, you will of course remember that the obligatory socks are still sitting at home in your child’s drawer. So your wallet is forced to come back out again and a new neon-coloured nylon pair (Easyjet style, Harrods prices) are passed over the counter to your child’s outstretched little paw. They of course will claim to love these new socks more than life itself. You will consider them hideous, and likely deposit them in the bin on the way out.

Finally the door (or gateway to hell, depending how you look at it) is opened, and your newly socked child is set free, static sparks flying in all direction as they run across the matching nylon carpeted floor. Reluctantly you follow suit and enter the room. Your ears are met with the thunderous sound of a hundred children all screaming, yelping and hollering in delight.

Just audible beneath this din, is a distinctive white noise. The low-level humming of a gaggle of mothers, all rocking backwards and forwards on their plastic seating in a desperate, shared pain.

Moving forward into hell, you spot the only beacon of hope in the entire place – a café at the end of the room. As you draw closer, the ‘café’ takes the form of a scratched up old counter and a chiller cabinet stocked full of last weeks’ salmonella and botulism experiments. Located somewhere beyond the coffee maker and the enormous display of food colouring and MSG is the kitchen, with it’s impressive line up of deep fat fryers spitting out grease all over the floor.

Unsure about which of the food would kill you and which would just make you sick, you settle on a hot chocolate and a purple coloured muffin. How wrong can you go with hot chocolate? It’s made inside the machine and spat out into the mug below. The muffin, which admittedly does look slightly solid around the edges, at least claims to contain a type of fruit.

The unwashed looking child behind the cash register takes the remainder of your money and hands you a numbered baton. You’d much rather just stand and wait for your order, but apparently loitering around the counter is not allowed. You must go to your table and wait to vibrate.

Not particularly keen to strike up a conversation with anyone in sight, you are forced to walk the length of the room in search of a table free of rubbish and off-putting inhabitants. You hurry past mothers dressed head-to-toe in stone washed denim and others dressed head-to-toe in fleece. You rush past those on day release from the local young offenders institute, and scuttle past those who obviously favour hemp on a stick to soap on a rope.

Eventually, several trips past scattered prams and regurgitating babies later, and you are finally settled into your plastic seat. You’re sitting just about near enough to the rope cage to see your child fly past, but not so close you can smell the feet. You finally have your ‘refreshments’ and enough dog-eared celebrity magazines to help pass the time, while you wait for your child’s colour-coded wristband to expire.

An hour passes and your child shows no signs of tiredness or even the slightest willingness to leave. The litre bottle of water you’ve just washed down the muffin with leaves you with little choice. You must leave the safety of your seat and brave the bathrooms.

The smell hits before you’ve even pushed open the door. The floor is swimming with something and none of the cubicles have locks, let alone anything resembling a loo roll. Hopping from dry patch to dry patch, you mentally calculate if you’re still covered by the tetanus jab you had for your holidays last year. Emerging from your cubicle you find a small crying child stood opposite your door. His trousers are around his ankles and his Thomas pants are full of something they shouldn’t be.

You briefly cast your eyes back to the liquid matter on the floor.

Now you’re faced with something of a social dilemma. Do you make a hasty escape and hope the soggy child’s mother is about to appear, or do you take possession of the said soggy child and go off in hunt of the careless owner? It’s not that you’re necessarily an uncaring cow with a heart of stone, but clearing up your own child’s accidents is one thing – sorting out the mess of a child with a shaved head and a cubic zirconia in one ear is quite another.

Luckily for you, the mother of ‘mini thug’ swoops in on him and drags him back out into the room, his Thomas pants still dripping across the floor.

Emerging back into the fresh air (the word ‘fresh’ becomes relative in a place like this), you decide that your senses have taken enough of a beating for one day. You spot your fuchsia-coloured child refuelling at the table and seize the opportunity to grab them and make a beeline for the door.

On the way home your exhausted child in the backseat tells you that it was worth all the pain. But it’s only taken 2 hours up of the day, and now you’re emotionally drained and financially crippled. To cap it off, the bottom of your jeans look slightly damp and the car now smells suspiciously of wee.

 

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Going to hell in a breadbasket

Who doesn’t love to eat out?

The joy of someone else having to decide what to cook and clearing up the mess at the end of the meal. The perfect chance to order something you wouldn’t have a clue how to cook, with ingredients you’d certainly never recognise in the supermarket. Eating out is a valid reason to eat off a table instead of a tray. It’s the opportunity to actually hold a conversation, instead of woofing down your food in front of the TV.

Yes, going out to eat is the perfect time to relax and enjoy your food. Unless, that is, you have children. Then it’s really only one small step removed from hell.

It has to be said that, whichever way you look at it, there’s absolutely nothing relaxing about walking through the doors of any restaurant and wheeling an overloaded pram through the very tiny space. Or ordering off the menu when you suspect your children will refuse to eat a thing. Or clearing up spilt drinks and bread rolls that cover every inch of the table. Or needing 6 books, 3 colouring pads and a pack of crayons just to get through the starter. Or having to take them for a poo the exact moment your main meal arrives. Or having to consume your own cold and congealed meal in 60 seconds because everyone else has finished and the waiters are eyeing you up, your bill and coats in hand.

By the end of such a meal out, both you and the people seated around you, are inevitably wishing you’d just saved the money and avoided the stress by staying at home. There at least you can scream at a decibel of your choice and stop your children leaving the table until something has made it past their lips.

We were at Sizzlers a while back, having one of those impromptu meals out that always seem to be such a great idea when you drive past a restaurant starving. Sizzlers is a one of those restaurants that offers various slabs of meat and fish on a plate, as well as a ‘eat as much you can’ salad and desert bar. These always seem like such a great idea on the way in, but the food generally ends up looking and tasting the same – something along the lines of ‘fridge’.

With some serious training in the food eating and table manners department under their belt, my kids, for the most part, aren’t too bad when it comes to eating out. There have of course been those moments when I’ve wanted to curl up and die, but compared to some restaurant monsters I’ve seen, mine are an absolute delight in comparison.

We were at Sizzlers a while back, having one of those impromptu meals out that always seem to be such a great idea when you drive past a restaurant starving. Sizzlers are one of those restaurants that offers various slabs of meat and fish on a plate, as well as a ‘eat as much you can’ salad and desert bar. These always seem like such a great idea on the way in, but the food generally ends up looking and tasting the same – something along the lines of ‘fridge’.

Upon arrival you have to queue up, choose your meal from a picture on the wall and pay for it as you go in.  So if and when it arrives looking nothing like the picture on the wall and tastes like shit, there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it. Except perhaps throw up.

Anyway, disappointing food aside, it’s the clientele at Sizzlers that can really turn your stomach.

Sat next to us was a family who had more food on the floor around them than they did on their table. The chief culprit was a small child standing up in her high chair and throwing platefuls of whatever she could reach onto the floor. The mother, who was sat only feet away, was either oblivious or brain-dead – between you and me; I’d say she was both.

To make matters worse, the other little feral children at the table were busy scurrying backwards and forwards to the food bars and bringing the majority of the contents back with them. Not to eat mind you, just to stack up, squash and leave as ammunition for Baby Feral in the high chair.

Seated on the other side of us were a mother and daughter combo – an unstoppable eating machine if ever I’ve seen one. In the space of time that it took for us to get our garlic bread, they had consumed half a cow and chips each, trawled the salad bar several times and been up the desert station 3 times. Just when we thought there was nothing else but the furniture and fittings left for them to eat, the daughter winched her sizeable frame out of the chair and nipped (I’m being kind here, there was nothing nippy about her) back to get one last bowl of ice cream. With all the toppings.

Between our 2 neighbouring tables, it’s surprising there was anything left for the rest of the room to eat.

So there you go. The perfect example of badly behaved children and people eating to excess all rolled into one depressing restaurant. Needless to say we haven’t been back since.

There is one nearby restaurant however that has perhaps come up with the perfect solution for parents who want to eat in peace. If I rated the food, I might have been tempted to take them up on their offer. Unfortunately I find the food here pretty dire, though considering what might be tucked away in their kitchen, I’m not really that surprised.

I can’t even image what the conditions of this offer might be. Perhaps the children have to be washed beforehand, or have any buttons or sharp jewelery removed?

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On the downside, the restaurant also has this sign on the door, so perhaps they aren’t quite so parent friendly after all..

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How NOT to stop kids having sex

I haven’t had much time to write recently – work and migraines have been getting in the way – but today I saw a headline flash past my eyes and I had to have my say.

So what caught my attention? Condom’s for 12-year-old boys, that’s what. Yes, you read right. 12-year-old boys.

12-year-old boys who will, I guess, then be on the hunt for 12-year-old (or God forbid, younger) girls to test them out on. For many reasons, this has to be so, so wrong.

The ‘Hotshot’ condom, which has been ‘downsized to fit its 12-14 year old customer base’, is already available in Switzerland, and, if the manufacturers have their way, will be heading for the British high street and your kids wallet soon.

Lamprecht AG, the condom manufacturer behind this controversial contraception for kids, claim they set off down this path in response to a study conducted on behalf of the Federal Commission for Children and Youth. A study which showed that  not only were more 12 to 14-year-olds now having sex, but that an alarming number of them didn’t use any form of protection.

While as a parent, the idea of children so young having sex is a deeply disturbing one, and quite difficult to get my head around, it is hardly shocking news. It seems that every time you open a paper these days, there’s yet another pair of gormless babies staring back at you, sat there dressed head-to-toe in Mothercare’s finest and clutching their very own ‘hasn’t got a hope in hell’ baby.

When you see such a case of under-aged stupidity, it’s hard to know who you want to slap round the face first. The naive idiots apparently vying for the title of ‘World’s Youngest Parents’, or their own parents sat besides them, insisting that of course little Tracey and Dwain will make great parents – if they ever look up from their respective DS’s for long enough to notice what’s just popped out of Tracey and slid off the sofa.

So yes, there’s no getting away from the fact that (some) kids these days obviously have no fear of getting down and dirty with the person sat next to them in class. Nor that – judging by the sheer volume of pram-pushing girls in their Hannah Montana t-shirts – these kids ever think for a millisecond about the possible consequences of their actions.

England is now the teenage pregnancy capital of Europe, so I guess, on paper at least, arming kids with protection is a good idea. Or it would be if it wasn’t so wrong.

No child – boy or girl – could possibly be emotionally, physically or mentally ready to have sex at this young age. And  no 12-year-old boy is (or should need to be) emotionally mature enough to be trusted with something as important as preventing pregnancy or the spreading of a life threatening disease.

Most boys of this age aren’t even responsible enough to be left alone in a house with a box of matches. Some would probably forget to wash, eat or sleep if their parents didn’t remind them too. So who really believes that a randy pint-sized  man would ever want to make the effort, or for that matter feel comfortable enough to walk into a chemist and be asked – ‘Something for the schoolyard Sir?’

Of course there’s no disputing that such studies are needed to highlight how big a problem there is. Or that young boys must to be taught why they should be keeping it tucked away in their Ben 10 underpants until they are..  well until they are old enough not to be wearing Ben 10 underpants at least.

But that said, I think governments and Family Planning organisations are giving 12-year-old boys a little more credit than they actually deserve.

These kids in question aren’t having sex at ridiculous ages because they are maturing earlier than every decade that went before. Or because they are making an informed and intelligent choice about what they are ready to do. They are having sex because they see ‘Sex’ every which way they turn, and they think it’s cool to do it – and very uncool to have to admit they don’t. They aren’t going to suddenly get all responsible and grown-up just because they’ve got their own section at the condom counter.

So short of giving a free pack of 6 away with every computer game, or sticking them in with the fries when they up-size their Happy Meal, I really don’t see how providing  XS Junior condoms is the answer. If anything it gives out the worst possible message to horny young boys everywhere – that actually it’s OK to convince the girl who sits next to you in class to drop her High School Musical knickers, and hop onto the bean bag for some ‘recess’ action.

Really it comes to this. If you put aside every argument about whether selling condoms to and for kids is morally or ethically right, what about it being legally right? It’s bad enough that school nurses are allowed to hand out contraception at all, and that under-age girls can get the pill without their parent’s knowledge. But making condoms specifically for kids? The last time I looked the age of consent was 16 – and for very good reason.

Of course SWAT teams aren’t ever going to swoop in and arrest every person under that age for doing something they legally shouldn’t, but if you actually provide young kids with the means to have sex, surely it’s the same as encouraging them to break the law?

What’s next? School vending machine’s selling alcopops in pink plastic bottles endorsed by Brittany Spears? Or ‘extra light’ cigarettes, with packets that feature the latest Disney film.  After all, everyone knows that kids drink and smoke before they should, so why not make it more accessible and fun?

While we’re at it, why not go the whole hog and just let kids drive cars. I’m sure Toyota or Ford could design a ‘downsized’ car with booster seats and bigger peddles, so that their feet could actually reach the brake.

That would be crazy you cry, they’d end up killing themselves or someone else. Of course it’s crazy, and yes they surely would. Legitimising anything that kids are neither physically equipped to do or old enough to handle is a bloody stupid idea.

Yes, something needs to be done to stop young kids getting into bed and up the duff, but I fail to see how the solution will be found in a small, square packet labelled ‘Hotshot’.

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Demon children and saintly spoodles

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Taking your child away on holiday can sometimes be a very dangerous thing to do. In only a few short weeks they can morph into a human being barely recognisable from the one you once knew. As routine, balanced diet and consistency goes out the window, everything you ever taught them seems to follow, including good manners, eating habits and general all round intelligence.

In the case of my 3 year-old, this certainly seemed to be the case. He left Perth a mild-mannered, book loving, happy eater, and arrived in England a screeching, uncontrollable terror. Who wouldn’t eat a single vegetable. Including beans. Coated in tomato sauce. Made by Heinz. Heavens above, what child refuses those?

What the hell happened up there at 33,000 feet you might ask? I’m still pondering the very same question myself – but looking back it’s easy to see where it all went so wrong.

A stranger to sugar and capable of sleeping for up to 4 hours in his afternoon nap, my son found his world being tipped upside down as he was dragged from his bed and shoe horned into the car on the way to the airport. There we were, in the middle of the night, singing to try to keep him awake. Dragging him behind us at speed, force feeding him cookies (albeit low-fat ones) to coax him on a plane he didn’t want to go on, and then telling him he must then lie down and go back to sleep, with bright lights and dinner trays clattering all around him.

It was a recipe for disaster from the start, and the rest of the holiday carried on in much the same vein. Erratic bed times, long stretches in the car, sporadic mealtimes containing all the wrong foods and a difference set of people every time he woke up. To say he was a fish out of water was an understatement. More like a little boy in a parallel universe.

As a direct result of this holiday madness, and so not really his fault at all, his behaviour often veered on the side of manic. Energy levels went through the roof, ears sealed off to reasoning and his mouth went into screeching overdrive. And all in a country where you are no longer allowed to ‘discipline’ your child in public … tricky.

He now saw eating – unless the food in question came under the food group ‘treat’ – as an unncessary inconvenience, and as mentioned before, anything that had once grown up from, across or dropped to the ground was now met with a pursed mouth and muffled cries of “Don’t like it”. A tad frustrating, especially as the week before he’d happily opened up for aubergine and olives.

The ‘highlight’ of this out-of-control behaviour came however, at perhaps the very worst time possible of our entire holiday. I’d go as far as to say, that in the collective 12 years my offspring have been alive, never have I wanted to hang my head so low in shame.

While visiting a potential school for my daughter, my son reached deep into his inner demon and pulled out quite possibly the worst behaviour that the inside of the headmasters office has ever seen. He spread crumbs far and wide (from a biscuit off the tea-tray he’d launched himself at), squeezed his juice box across the polished table and pulled himself back and forwards across the floor like the member of a crack commando team. He climbed on the window seats, threw cushions on the floor and very nearly pulled down the curtains – 4 times. He struggled when I picked him up, pulled at me when I put him down and slithered to the ground when I put him back in his seat. The entire time he screeched and shrieked and laughed like a nutter possessed.

It was pretty toe-curling stuff, as any parent could well imagine.

There we were, talking about school reports and untapped potential and trying to give a good impression. And there was  my little monster – who would also be eligible to go there in a years time – bouncing off the walls like Tiger on a mixture of crack cocaine and speed.

The only saving grace in this whole embarrassing ordeal was that the headmaster knew better than to judge the entire family based off of the actions of its smallest member. As well as being a parent,  he was also my old English teacher – the teacher who had in fact inspired me to start writing in the first place, many light years ago.

Should this worrying tale of holiday woe begin to put off any parent thinking of taking a break, then fear not, it does have a happy ending.

After the episode at the school, sugar was abruptly cut out of his diet (which was unfortunate for him as this happened before Christmas). Within days he started to ease off his high and calm down again – apparently it takes at least 2 weeks for somebody to go cold turkey where the sweet stuff is involved. Now back in Perth, my son is already back to his old self, and get this, better than before. His manners are perfect, he’s calm and controllable and best of all, he’s eating vegetables faster than I can get them on his plate.

Not that I’d ever recommend killing your child’s routine and dragging them round the world to help knock them into shape, but on this occasion, it seems to have done the job.

Incidentally, the same also seems to be true of Charlie. He went into the kennels as a naughty, barking, escape artist, and come out a changed dog. He is now well-behaved, quiet and far more obedient than the 2 year-old Spoodle that went in. He didn’t even make a run for it the other day, when I accidently opened the garage door without shutting him inside first.

Now, if my daughter had gone in the same direction as my son and the dog, I could have said I had a hat trick on my hands. Unfortunately the excellent behaviour she showed when away (which was enough to get her offered a place at the school) has worn off some, and been replaced with the somewhat emotional and pouting little girl of before.

Still, can’t win them all, and 2 out of 3 ain’t bad.

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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.

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An email from President Obama

This morning, as I do every morning, I sat at my desk, opened my email and waited to see what tripe flowed into my inbox.

I was expecting the usual of course. A chance to buy some alarming looking apparatus to improve my love life. An invitation to view photos of some ‘designer watches’ or my future mail order bride. Perhaps a heart wrenching story that I had to pass onto 10 of my closest friends within 5 seconds, or risk being struck by a falling meteorite the moment I set foot outside my front door. Even an email from a long lost Nigerian relative, letting me know that I was but only a set of bank details away from inheriting my rightful fortune.

Any of these would have been right about the norm. But this morning threw up something a little bit unexpected.

An email from the most powerful man on the planet – President Barack Obama himself.

Yes, I did do a little bit of a double take I have to say, especially when I realised the email address was legit and he wasn’t trying to sell me little blue pills – with worldwide shipping and a discount programme.

Obviously I know the President didn’t actually sent it from his own Blackberry, as he wondered through the hallowed halls of the White House. And yes, I accept that it wasn’t written specifically to me, but hey, his name is in my inbox and that’s good enough for me.

So why did I deserve the honour? Probably something to do with the email I sent him, asking what he and his administration intended to do about the growing problem of childhood obesity. A problem which, I believe, stems in part from the many fast food companies who market their products directly at the young.

The companies who use cheap plastic toys as a lure, in order to put a colourful box full of salt, sugar and trans fats in the hands of hungry young children. The sort of companies who are, for all intents and purposes, aiding and abetting those parents who slowly murder their kids everyday with an unhealthy diet.

Hopefully such an intelligent and forward thinking man, with 2 young daughters of his own, will acknowledge the issue and give it the attention that it deserves.

And now that The President is in my address book, I will certainly be keeping an eye on any new health care reforms he passes, and hope that at some point he finds a way to put some form of media gagging order on those who profit off the greed and ignorance of the young.

I’ll give him 6 months, and if I don’t see anything happening, I guess I’ll be forced to drop him another line..

For those who might be thinking that I imagined my email, here it is.

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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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McDonald’s Saves the Day

Australia, a country renowned for it’s love of sports and outdoor lifestyle has just been named the ‘Fattest Nation in the World’. Oh what a proud moment in history that is, let’s bring out a double cheese burger and chuck it on the barbie to celebrate.

What on earth has happened to this world and it’s waistline, and who is really to blame? Is it the companies who make the junk food, the media who promote it or the consumer who thinks if they buy a meal that’s ‘Happy’ then they must be onto a good thing.

At a time when the world seems to be sinking into financial hardship, ‘cheaper than chips’ food is even more appealing to those who are forced to budget and tighten their belts. Of course not eating the junk food would help considerably with the tightening, but that’s neither here nor there.

Still not to fear. McDonald’s (the all American hero) is one company that has ever so kindly stepped up to the plate and is fighting the good fight to ensure that the world doesn’t go hungry, and it seems that the public is incredibly grateful.

Grateful enough that in the UK alone, McDonald’s, the countries largest low wage employer, has recently created 4000 new jobs in their 1,200 outlets. Jobs evidently needed to keep up with the demand of the 2 million new customers who are flocking in through their doors every month, to fill up on a menu that seems to get cheaper by the week.

Now I have to say, that with the world media so heavily focused on the growing problem of obesity, and a staggering 58% of the world’s population predicted to be obese by 2030,  I just don’t get it.

Why are so many people still refusing to grasp the simple fact that it is not called ‘junk’ food for nothing?

The definition of junk according to my (Websters) dictionary is ‘discarded useless objects, rubbish, trash, any narcotic drug, such as heroin’. How very appetising. No wait, let’s wrap that in shiny paper and stick it in a box with a big smiley face on. OK, that looks much better. Now it’s good enough to eat.

Yes of course there is no denying that a ‘Value meal’ may be cheaper than buying all the fresh ingredients you need to cook a meal. Yes of course it is undoubtedly quicker to queue up and have your food thrown together for you than it is to stand in your kitchen at the end of a day and make it yourself. Yes of course kids will love it and therefore the threat of enduring yet another argument over how long it takes them to eat their dinner is significantly reduced.

So yes, yes, yes. I get that it can be a quicker, easier, cheaper and less stressful option all around. But that doesn’t mean it’s a better option. Cutting straight across a crowded road might be quicker than walking an extra 50 yards to the nearest flashing green man, but it doesn’t mean you will get to the other side in one piece. Several flattened pieces perhaps. Or, if you are in Singapore, with a fine for Jay walking.

The simple fact of the matter is that if you consume your body weight in Big Macs and McNuggets every month then the likelihood is you will get fat, you will get sick and you will die… years before your name ever comes up on the Grim Reaper’s call sheet.

Surely no food is worth gaining weight or dying over? I reckon if every McDonald’s had a pair of scales at the counter and you had to climb on them to place your order, it might make a whole heap of people think twice before stepping through the door and in turn, cut down the queuing time for those ‘Super Size’ fanatics who really don’t care.

Of course I know from experience the occasional burger might be nice. Or more to the point the idea of a burger might be nice – when you are out, hungry enough to eat the furry contents of your glove box and too far from your own fridge to make it through till the next meal. The reality of it is very different if I  remember rightly (since cutting red meat out my diet I haven’t been back). You go in through those doors starving and full of hope that it’s just what you feel like and come out 15 minutes later feeling bloated, greasy and in need of a colonic irrigation.

Now I know that it may seem like I have a real axe to grind with McDonald’s (or those who eat it), but that’s not the case at all. All fast food places are as bad as each other and wherever you go, the menu is nothing more than a recipe for any number of chronic medical conditions.

When it comes to the kids, these places are especially bad news. Nearly every possible combination of children’s meals in all these fast food joints are too high in calories, exceeding 430 calories – an amount that is one-third of what the National Institute of Medicine recommends children ages 4 through 8 should consume in a day. Incidentally Subways is the healthiest of them all and apparently the only one that doesn’t offer soft drinks with kids meals.

It seems crazy that some parents are OK with their kids filling up on empty calories and nothing else. If they were asked to make their child neck a bottle of vodka and chain smoke a packet of B&H for their tea would they agree? So why would they let some clown called Ronald help pour a load of saturated fat down their throat instead.

The reason why McDonald’s bugs me the most is because they base all of their promotion and advertising around families, suggesting that it is the perfect place to take your 2.4 kids for a nice meal out. Hey, who needs a Sunday Roast in a nice country pub when you can sit on a plastic bench, get ketchup all over your shoes and leave stinking of chip fat instead

McDonald’s spends over $2 billion a year on advertising – a large chunk of which would be used to target young kids. Their marketing encourages the use of ‘pester power’, the bain of every parent’s life. They know that if you stick a small plastic piece of nothing in a box, link it with the latest product, film or event then those little McNugget loving consumers will come a running.

And when chunky little Jo Junior hankers after the complete set of McAction ‘limited edition’ toys that come with his Happy Meal, then the rest of the family will invariably also come along to chow down at the Temple of McDoom. So what you have is the whole family now eating a load of cr*p just so they can get their hands on something that won’t even make it out of the backseat of the car. Clever marketing it maybe, but should companies be allowed to lead little lambs in for the slaughter like this?

I know for a fact this marketing works. The other day on the walk home from school, my daughter asked out of the blue if I would take her to McDonald’s. Obviously my eyebrows disappeared into my hairline and she had more chance of growing a second head, but I still asked her why she wanted to go. It turns out that it wasn’t for the food or even the play centre (the ones they put in to trap parents and get them to buy more food). No, it was because she desperately wanted some beanie thing that McDonald’s have brought out in honour of the Olympics. Sadly my daughter won’t be getting one, but seeing as she had forgotten she had even asked by the time we got home, I don’t think it will stick in her childhood memories and scar her for life.

Talking of the Olympics, there’s another really clever marketing campaign.  Who else could possibly be more suited to help promote the world’s most famous sporting event than one of the world’s leading sponsors of obesity. Strikes me as a bit of an odd partnership that one, much the same as if you held a sex convention in a nunnery or an AA meeting in a pub. But then, as every company knows, you should never underestimate the power of positive association.

Of course fighting McDonald’s cause along the fatty highway and creating a positive link between health and the McHeart Attack are some of the world’s most celebrated Olympians. Namely the 8 time gold medal winner Michael Phelps and the world’s fastest man, Usain Bolt.

Phelps, who once again has put Flipper to shame with his speed in the water, has talked about how he consumes a massive 12,000 calories a day, including foods from his favourite eatery – McDonald’s. Bolt, who makes slow motion look fast has revealed that he doesn’t eat breakfast and fills up instead on nuggets before hitting the track.

Oh yeah. Bang goes any hope of parents using these athletes and the extraordinary feats that they have achieved to motivate our children into eating well. I personally think Phelps should get back in the water and keep his eating habits to himself. If the average person took a leaf out of his book and thought that consuming this much food would help them win a gold (and we know there is always going to be someone dumb enough to try it), then Greenpeace would have to be called to dredge them off the nearest sandbank.

Despite their claims that they care and are working to help stamp out obesity, McDonald’s are only there to feed those who come knocking. Of course they are, that’s the nature of what they do. Their policy is not to restrict portion sizes and dispense nutritional advice with ketchup. Many light years ago my husband did a stint at a McDonald’s. After a few weeks on the job he was fired. Not because he stole fries or dropped a gherkin slice on the floor, but because he asked one very overweight ‘little’ boy, when he came up for his third Big Mac, “Don’t you think you might have already had one too many?” Straight talking is obviously not a trait they look for in their employees.

Please McDonald’s, enough with the celebrity endorsements and sponsoring of sports. Just start making the food a tad healthier and then maybe, just maybe, the obesity trend will be brought under control and in 50 years time there will still be enough space left on this planet for all of the people to squeeze in.

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