Skip to content
Login

A fat lot of good

12:26pm Thursday, 24th August 2006
So yesterday Anne Widdecombe 'slammed' attempts by the government to address obesity. The mainstay of her argument was that the money would be better spent on life-saving drugs.

Of course it would. Which is exactly why government needs to invest in prevention - to save some of the £1 billion that obesity ends up costing the NHS every year. Then we might be able spend a bit more on those drugs, instead of dealing with the effects of obesity year on year.

The only vaguely useful bit of her argument was that people should take responsibility. Which is also true. But as far as i can tell/heard on the radio she had no particular solution about how this might happen in practice. Surely the real debate here - if there is one - is about agency. i.e. how government can 'tackle'  obsity without imposing decisions on individuals about how they live their lives.

Widdecombe, for example, went on Fit Club - an example of an intervention that (a) people opt in to, and (b) is designed to increase people's agency by showing them how to live healthier lives.

Now i'm not sure televised boot-camps with madmen as fitness instructors is the way forward, but finding ways of helping people to choose healthier lives sounds like a good idea to me.

Comments

1
Maybe I'm way off the mark here, but instead of spending billions on "prevention" in the NHS via boot camps, what if the Government introduced the same health warnings and advertising bans on junk food that they've put on cigarettes?  Both are harmful.  Both are addictive.  And both are costing the NHS vast sums of money.  And perhaps the Government could also offer food manufacturers an incentive for creating healthy food?  Bet both would cost less than these Boot Camps.  Look at Widdy, didn't exactly work wonders on her figure did it?
Posted by Muse Creighton  at 5:12pm on Sunday, 27th August 2006

LOGIN to add comments