posted with the same comment I just made on irc

[baratron]

ARGH
http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/2007/10/government-forecasts.html
ARGH
ARGh
this is OUR FUCKING GOVERNMENT producing this shit
ARGH

The BMI is a crock of shit at the best of times (how can you trust any measure that rolls fat, muscle and bone together as if it's the same thing?), and in children...? And as for the "fat police" monitoring who can eat what... words fail me.

ARGH!

Comments

[johnckirk.livejournal.com]

I think you'd like the novel "Fat", by Rob Grant (one of the Red Dwarf writers). The basic premise is that the government has set up camps to help people lose weight, and each person who goes to the camp is given a special swipe card; you earn points for doing exercise, and then you can spend those points on food. The camps are basically optional, except that obese unemployed people would lose their benefits if they didn't go along. Looking at the article you linked to, the "near future" of the novel suddenly seems a lot nearer...

[lizw.livejournal.com]

Good grief, that's appalling. We need to get this Government out as soon as possible.

[rhialto.livejournal.com]

Whatever one can say about that report (which I obviously don't know anything about), it *is* a fact that obesity is much more prevalent in the UK than in, say, the Netherlands. And that *is* a problem.
(It is getting worse here too, btw)
As an illustration, a friend of mine said to me that he always feels rather fat at home (in the NL) but when he is in the UK he feels almost thin. Or words to that effect.