• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.
Talk about living off the fat of the land.

Pay the obese to lose weight, says study
www.newscientist.com/article/dn16233-pa ... study.html
by Jim Giles

The focus of the next diet fad might be cash rather than carbohydrates. Kevin Volpp of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia found that obese people offered a financial reward for every kilogram shed lost more weight during a 16-week trial than those given standard diet advice.

The drawback? Like other weight-loss methods, many of the participants put the pounds back on once the programme ended. To achieve longer-lasting results the monthly payments, some totalling several hundred dollars, might have to be made for longer periods.

Volpp's results mean that obesity may join the list of social maladies that can be addressed using financial incentives. Previous experiments have shown that smokers and cocaine addicts can be weaned off their habits by paying them to stay drug-free. Incentives have also successfully been used to ensure that parents in developing countries send their children to school.

One of the biggest incentives schemes ever run in a rich nation got underway last year in New York. Over 5000 families are being studied to see if cash incentives can improve the rate at which children receive regular health check ups and adults attend work training courses.

Journal reference: Journal of the American Medical Association, vol 300, p 2631
 
1970s lifestyle 'protects planet'

Getting back to the relatively slim, trim days of the 1970s would help to tackle climate change, researchers say.

The rising numbers of people who are overweight and obese in the UK means the nation uses 19% more food than 40 years ago, a study suggests.

That could equate to an extra 60 mega-tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions a year, the team calculated.

Transport costs of a fatter population were also included in the International Journal of Epidemiology study.

Dr Phil Edwards, study leader and researcher at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said they had set out to calculate what the UK energy consumption would be if the weight of the population was put back a few decades.

A "normal" adult population, where only 3.5% are classed as obese, was compared with a population where 40% are obese.

These populations reflect the proportions of overweight and obese people living in the UK in the 1970s - and what is predicted for the UK in 2010, the researchers said.


In addition to calculating the increased food costs of the heavier population, the team worked out how much additional fuel would be needed for transportation of modern-day UK compared with the 1970s version.

Greenhouse gas emissions from food production and car travel in the fatter population would be between 0.4 to 1 giga-tonnes higher per 1bn people, they estimated.

And people are generally bigger than they were three decades ago.

Between 1994 and 2004, the average male body mass index (BMI) in England increased from 26 to 27.3, with the average female BMI rising from 25.8 to 26.9 which equates to about 3 kg - or half a stone - heavier.

"This is not really just about obese people, the distribution of the whole population is what's important," said Dr Edwards.

"Everybody is getting a bit fatter.
"

"Staying slim is good for health and for the environment.

"We need to be doing a lot more to reverse the global trend towards fatness, and recognise it as a key factor in the battle to reduce emissions and slow climate change."

It is not just a UK issue - in nearly every country in the world, the average BMI is rising.

Professor Alan Maryon-Davis, president of the Faculty of Public Health said shifting the population weight distribution back to that of the 1970s would do quite a lot to help the planet.

"In the 1970s we had bigger portions of vegetables and smaller portions of meat and there's been a shift in the amount of exercise we do.

"All these things are combining to hurt the planet and this is a calculation that deserves a bit more attention," he said.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8004257.stm

It's all true! I was much lighter in the 70s than I am now.... :(
 
The '70s - the decade that saw the peak in smoking among women, the reemergence of malaria and dengue, and the emergence of AIDS. Yeah, let's go back to that lifestyle!

:nonplus:
 
US 'fat game show' under fire
Page last updated at 6:55 BST, Friday, 7 August 2009
By Sima Kotecha
Newsbeat US reporter

An American TV game show for obese people is being criticised for the way it encourages contestants to lose weight.

It's like the talent show Dancing with the Stars but with a difference... all the contestants are overweight.

Dance Your Ass Off challenges obese people to lose weight through intensive dance and diet.

The one who grooves the best, and sheds the most pounds over two months, wins.

The worst person each week is eliminated and sent home.

Alberta Bradley's 34. She's hooked on the show.

She said: "I love it! I watch it on Mondays and you know, for a full-figured woman like myself, some of them don't think they can lose it.

"This show gives them hope and inspiration that they can dance and look better."

But not everyone's a fan. Despite being popular with many Americans, critics say it encourages yo-yo dieting, with the weight likely to go straight back on after the contest ends.

The National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (NAAFA) in the US explained to Newsbeat they'd never endorse a show like this one because they simply don't work.

They said: "Overwhelming data has proven 95% of the time, people who diet for the purpose of losing weight, never reach their goal."

...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/hi/healt ... 000840.stm
 
Obesity Virus

Now, here surely is the greatest piece of unmitigated bullshit ever. Obesity isn,t a VIRUS, it,s about lazy idle buggers who cant be bothered to cook a decent meat and who would rather spend a fortune in the Chippy or McDonalds eating junk food, that and staying home to become couch potatoes watching reality TV, just like to Government want them to (after all they,re paying them are,n,t they). That anyone can believe an article making statement equating obesity to a virus just beggars belief, and having said that I really genuinely sympathise with people who have a medical condition that lead to them being classed as obese.

I await incoming. :x :x :x :D :D
 
Re: Obesity Virus

Tangaroa42 said:
That anyone can believe an article making statement equating obesity to a virus just beggars belief, and having said that I really genuinely sympathise with people who have a medical condition that lead to them being classed as obese.

Does clinical depression qualify?
 
I can probably guess that most obese people have underlying psychological problems that cause them to over eat. So it's not a matter of them just stop eating the wrong food, but more one of getting help for them. Plus treating them as a social pariah isn't going to help, how about a bit of compassion?
 
Or, as I tend to put it, 'go run up a fucking mountain, health-boy'.
 
The two most obese people I've ever known both had the same problem - they grew up in a rural setting, and then they came to the city. Their eating habits were formed in a setting in which they got exercise without noticing it and they needed to refuel constantly - loading hay bales is no light work! - and then they got jobs in real estate appraisal and computer programming, respectively. They lived alone, they'd never learned to cook so they tended to buy TV dinners or pick things up on the way home, they were conditioned to eat high-calorie foods, and they didn't have anybody to help them notice that their weight was creeping up. Then, suddenly, they were so fat they couldn't move across the room without panting, and had serious sleep apnea so they were too tired to change their habits. They weren't lazy and they weren't stupid; they just weren't alert to what their bodies were doing and so didn't catch the problem before it became unmanageable.

A lot of health problems come down to that. It's all very well to say "Well, you should have done this." The problem is - what do they do now? And it's not your business or mine to give them advice, unless asked.
 
The problem is - what do they do now? And it's not your business or mine to give them advice, unless asked

While i don't agree with the way Lizard phrased his advice 'go run up a mountain fatboy (and i think it was said tongue in cheek), i do think that people have every right to give advice if asked for or not. Obesity costs the taxpayer billions every year in Healthcare.

I think the Taxpayer has every right to ask what his money is being spent on and why more is not being done to save money or to put it to better use. And before anyone gets on their high horse i am well aware that there are many medical conditions for obesity but there is way more reasons for it that can be prevented.

If you believe that no one is allowed to give his advice without being asked then you are giving up your right to ask what happens to your tax.
 
Well, I'm in America, so the tax argument is irrelevant to me at the moment.

But even if it weren't - getting in people's faces about their eating habits (or their sleeping around habits, or their smoking habits) on a one-to-one basis is counterproductive. Both of my examples were/are aware of their problems (one is no longer aware of anything, having fallen asleep at the wheel and crashed into a highway divider, so don't think for one moment I don't understand the seriousness of the situation) and were working on them, and both had to field a lot of chipper irrelevant advice from people who didn't have the problem, who made false assumptions about either the cause of the problem or the capacities of the individual; or were plain nutritionally ignorant.

Take a simple dietary change that is effective for me and that a lot of people will hail as the cure for everybody - cut out the sweets. But we have all been trained to eat sweets from infancy. I solve this by eating fruit. I love fruit, so this is effective in the absence of emotional crisis (in which case, sorry, I'm getting my serotonin from chocolate; it's safer than Prozac). My morbidly obese friend doesn't like fruit. It cannot solve his sweet craving because even if he did it, he would get no pleasure. If I nag him for eating a chocolate bar, or preach the gospel of fruit to him, that would make him angry and resentful and perversely increase his desire to eat a chocolate bar, just to show me that I couldn't boss him around. That's the way human beings are.

And take my husband. He has terrible habits, he knows he has terrible habits. Five years ago, his weight was creeping up as a result of those habits. Then he went through a period of wasting and lost 40% of his body mass, so for a time we were focused on keeping his weight up. He got to his proper weight and hovered there for awhile. Now, suddenly, he has ballooned. We've seen weight gain due to those habits in the years before he got sick, and it doesn't act like this. This is not the result of slacking off after a period of eating and exercising properly, because he has been consistent in his behavior. The cause has to be medical. Advice given on any other basis is automatically worthless and annoying.

I think, based on experience and observation, that many health problems in the modern world - obesity, mental and emotional problems, STDs - are exacerbated by a simplistic societal tendency to condemn them as evidence of personal and moral failings while simultaneously acting under the assumption that bad health habits are easier and more fun than good ones. The results of this dichotomy, consisting as it does of two false premises, are inevitably disastrous in ways that could be predicted if we would look at the way people really do behave and not at how we, in our innate superiority, think they ought to behave.

You cannot tell by looking at a person why he is the weight he is. It is not a simple or a single problem. It will not yield to simple or single solutions. And it can only be made worse by condescension, judgment, scolding, and pontificating.[/i]
 
Well said, Peni!

To understand someone, you need to walk a few miles in their shoes.
 
And i would like if you could point out where i mentioned anything about pointing out peoples eating habits to their faces or where i was scolding, standing in judgement or pontificating on anyone about their eating habits.

If you read my post again and properly this time, i said that taxpayers have every right to ask where their money is being spent and why its acceptable for their money to be used to stop people smoking or telling them about the dangers of drink but the same effort is not made about obesity (especially preventable obesity).

Treatment of ailments caused by obesity costs billions every year across the world and to be honest offending some peoples sensibilites, by pointing out the value of excerise and healthy eating to them, is very small price to pay for saving first and foremost the persons life and health and secondly the overworked health services.

And before you have another go at me for being judgemental or pontifcating i will point out that I AM WELL AWARE THAT SOME OBESITY IS CAUSED BY UNDERLYING MEDICAL OR PYSCHIATRIC CONDITIONS I AM TALKING ABOUT PREVENTABLE OBESITY.

Sorry about the capital letters but sometimes its necessary to make yourself clear for fear of being labelled as some sort of inconsiderate Nazi because you dare to suggest that some overweight people could and should do something about their weight.
 
feen5 said:
...

While i don't agree with the way Lizard phrased his advice 'go run up a mountain fatboy (and i think it was said tongue in cheek), i do think that people have every right to give advice if asked for or not. Obesity costs the taxpayer billions every year in Healthcare.

...
What Lizard23 actually wrote was, 'go run up a fucking mountain, health-boy'.

Something quite different. So a bit more close reading all round, I'd say. ;)
 
Since I was talking about getting in people's faces personally, feen, I responded on that basis, thinking we were in the same conversation. Sorry to talk at cross purposes. There's a number of effective things to be done at the organizational level - education, regulating things like high-fructose corn syrup, using realistic standards, etc. - and I am in favor of doing those things; it's this business of snarking at whole classes of people on newsgroups and in person, as if nagging had ever accomplished anything, that I'm against. We all have enough things to correct in our own lives without laying down the law to other people.

It is really hard to point that out to people without indulging in paradox, though. I take it from the fact that my nagging you about nagging drove you to all caps that you concede that point.
 
I've just watched this on iPlayer:
Mischief - Series 4 - 2.

Who Made Me Fat?

Why are we so fat? Is it really all our own stupid fault? Becca Wilcox sets out to find the real culprits behind Britain's obesity epidemic, the secret feeders who make fat profits from ever-expanding waistlines.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0 ... de_Me_Fat/
At first this seems quite a lightweight programme (so to speak!), because it is rather amusing, but it does raise some serious points. (Why are McD, Cadbury, and Coke acceptable as Olympic sponsors? Why are Burger King outlets allowed in NHS hospitals? etc)

Watch it to the end for for full effect, including the snake-tongued responses from the government department spending millions on anti-obesity campaigns... :roll:
 
Too fat to lock up: Bedridden man weighing 43-stone avoids jail for food scam
By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 9:57 AM on 02nd April 2010

A 43-stone man found guilty of scamming restaurants out of food has escaped a jail term - because he is too fat.
Morbidly obese George Jolicur ordered huge meals and ate most of them before complaining about the products and sending them back. He would then refuse to pay.
In one episode he scammed five free milkshakes from a restaurant after consuming an entire drink before complaining that the milk was off.

Jolicur, 38, was finally caught after eating almost £30 worth of jerky in a restaurant before returning the last few pieces, claiming they were mouldy. The shop owner went to police.

Jolicur, of Sandford, in Florida, avoided jail because he is so fat the medical costs of imprisoning him would be too great.

He is now bedridden and could not even attend court to be sentenced. Prosecutors said it would cost thousands in medical fees just to bring him before a judge.
They offered his lawyers a plea deal that in return for avoiding prison he would plead guilty to five charges.
Lawyers for Jolicur accepted the deal and he was fined £800.
Prosecutor Kyan Ware said: 'He's got his prison cell. He's not getting out of that bed.'

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldne ... z0jw30eExS
 
I was visiting my next door neighbour in hospital last week and there was a guy in the bed opposite on the respiratory ward who was too obese to walk... neighbour said he discharged himself against medical advice but he had to get his family to come and wheel him out of the building.

This from today's BBC news:

Obese visit GP more often than smokers, researchers say

Overweight people are more likely to make frequent trips to their GP than smokers or those who are generally unfit, say Dutch researchers.

The findings cannot be explained by overweight people having a higher risk of chronic diseases, such as diabetes, the analysis showed.

Rising rates of obesity means nurses may have to take some of the pressure off doctors, they said.

The research is published in Family Practice.

The team from Maastricht University looked at GP data from almost 4,500 adults.

Participants also filled in a questionnaire designed to find out about their lifestyles, such as their diet, whether they smoked, how much they drank and how much exercise they did.

They expected to find that the most unhealthy or unfit people would visit their GP more often.

But of the lifestyle factors looked at, only body mass index (BMI) was independently associated with frequent visits to the doctor.

The finding was true of both men and women and was not accounted for by higher rates of chronic illness.
Minor complaints

Although the researchers could not conclude from the study why overweight people may visit their GP more often, they speculated they may have more minor complaints, such as sleep problems or musculoskeletal pain.

Study leader Dr Marjan van den Akker said further work was needed to unpick the reasons for frequent attendance.

And she added that GPs would come under increasing pressure as obesity becomes more common and other ways of managing demand may need to be considered.

"The role of the nurse practitioner is already common in diabetic patients, chronic lung disease and the elderly, so it's very feasible that they could take on this role."

Dr David Haslam, a GP and chair of the National Obesity Forum, said the results certainly reflected what he saw in his practice.

"It's good news that they are worried about their health and want checking out but we also know that we have to do more to identify and manage overweight patients.

"Practice nurses are the mainstay of treating these patients because they can spend longer with them and have the opportunity to give lifestyle advice."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-10963427
 
Family of dead 22st woman sues crematorium which couldn't cope with size of coffin
By Mail Foreign Service
Last updated at 2:06 AM on 28th September 2010

The family of an obese woman whose body was 'too fat' to be cremated is suing a French crematorium for discrimination.
Danielle Pelabarrere, who weighed 22st, died of heart attack in Merignac, near Bordeaux on Saturday.
But when her husband Andre booked her coffin into the local crematorium, he was told it was two inches too wide to fit into the incinerator.

He said: 'It is an outrage. She was mocked for her size in life, and now she is being mocked in death.
'She always said she had a horror of being buried, but now her final wishes can not be respected.'

The family also tried crematoriums in neighbouring towns, but none was able to help.
Only Toulouse, 100 miles away, said it had an incinerator large enough to cope with the three-feet wide coffin.
Mr Pelabarrere added: 'We are not a rich family and to take her body all that way is expensive.
'If we have to do that they we will, but we are also demanding compensation from the crematorium for its inability to meet our needs.'

But Merignac crematorium manager Jean-Claude Oruezabal denied disciminating against fat people and large coffins.
He said: "We accept people and coffins of any size in principle, but in this case it just wont fit and there is nothing we can do."

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z10oYU3aMG
 
Very long but thought-provoking article:

Everything you thought you knew about food is WRONG
Fibre's bad for you. Fat's healthy. And five-a-day is a gimmick to make fruit and veg firms rich. Or so claims a remarkable new book...
By Alice Hart-davis
Last updated at 9:10 AM on 1st November 2010

We think we know what to eat: less red meat and more fibre, less saturated fat and more fruit and veg, right? Wrong, according to a controversial new book by obesity researcher and nutritionist Zoe Harcombe.

In The Obesity Epidemic: What Caused It? How Can We Stop It? Harcombe charts her meticulous journey of research into studies that underpin dietary advice — and her myth-busting conclusions are startling.

Myth: The rapid rise in obesity is due to modern lifestyles
According to Zoe Harcombe, the ­obesity epidemic has less to do with our lifestyles than with what we are eating.

‘The key thing that people don’t realise is that throughout history, right until the Seventies, obesity levels never went above 2 per cent of the population in the UK,’ she says. ‘Yet by the turn of the millennium, obesity levels were 25 per cent.
‘What happened? In 1983, the government changed its diet advice. After that, if you look at the graphs, you can see obesity rates taking off like an aeroplane. You might feel it is coincidence, but to me it is blindingly obvious.

‘The older dietary advice was simple; foods based on flour and grains were ­fattening, and sweet foods were most ­fattening of all.
‘Mum and Granny told us to eat liver, eggs, sardines and to put butter on our vegetables. The new advice was “base your meals on starchy foods” — the things that we used to know made us fat (rice, pasta, potatoes and bread). That’s a U-turn.’

etc, etc...

Myth: Food advisory bodies give us sound, impartial advice
The organisations we turn to for advice on food are sponsored by the food industry. The British Dietetic Association (BDA), whose members have a monopoly on delivering Department of Health and NHS dietary advice, is sponsored by Danone, the yoghurt people, and Abbott Nutrition, which manufactures infant ­formula and energy bars.

The British Nutrition Foundation, founded in 1967 to ‘deliver authoritative, evidence-based information on food and nutrition in the context of health and lifestyle’, has among its ‘sustaining members’ British Sugar plc, Cadbury, Coca-Cola, J Sainsbury PLC and Kraft Foods.

‘When the food and drink industry is so actively embracing public health advice, isn’t it time to wonder how healthy that advice can be?’ says Harcombe.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/artic ... WRONG.html
 
rynner2 said:
Myth: The rapid rise in obesity is due to modern lifestyles
According to Zoe Harcombe, the ­obesity epidemic has less to do with our lifestyles than with what we are eating.l
Hmm...I always thought that our diet was part of our lifestyle. I guess it must not be, since this expert says otherwise.

The rest of it is actually not news. Starch isn't good for you, and not many dieticians will recommend you eat lots of it. My dietician advises more protein, more leafy green vegetables, fewer carbohydrates, more exercise, etc...

So nothing new, but I suppose she has a book to sell.
 
Anome_ said:
My dietician advises more protein, more leafy green vegetables, fewer carbohydrates, more exercise, etc...
Yeah, but which book did your dietician get that info from? ;)

Trust none of the bastards, just eat a very varied diet, I reckon.
 
I wouldn't bother with with Zoe Harcombe, only an expert in her own mind and that of lazy journalists. Another Doctor (fake) Gillian McKeith, but without the poo.
 
rynner2 said:
Anome_ said:
My dietician advises more protein, more leafy green vegetables, fewer carbohydrates, more exercise, etc...
Yeah, but which book did your dietician get that info from? ;)

Trust none of the bastards, just eat a very varied diet, I reckon.
Not that one, certainly. Given she's been a professional dietician (with a degree and everything!) for several years, i expect she learned it all a long time ago.
 
Do you think her favourite film is Sleeper?
 
Now here's a great diet! ;)

Nutrition expert loses TWO STONE by eating doughnuts, cakes and crisps for ten weeks
By David Gardner
Last updated at 8:22 AM on 10th November 2010

A professor who went on a ten-week diet based on cream cakes, snacks, sugary cereals and biscuits says he lost nearly two stone.

Mark Haub said that on the ‘convenience store diet’ his ‘bad’ cholesterol also dropped by 20 per cent and his level of triglycerides, a form of fat, by 39 per cent.

Professor Haub – who lost 27lb, going from 14st 5lb to 12st 6lb – teaches human nutrition at Kansas State University in the U.S.
He began his experiment to try to prove to his students that in weight loss, pure calorie counting matters more than the nutritional value of the food.
He cut his usual daily calorie intake from about 2,600 to less than 1,800 by eating one Twinkie deep-fried cake – a mini-sponge cake with cream filling – every three hours instead of meals.
To add variety to the cakes, which are often sold deep-fried, he ate Doritos, Kellogg’s Pops cereal and Oreo biscuits, and had a daily double shot of espresso.

The final third of his daily intake came in the form of a multivitamin pill and a protein shake, along with some kind of vegetable such as a can of green beans.

He could not say whether he considered his diet healthy or unhealthy, but talking about the sweets and snacks that he ate, he said: ‘These foods are consumed by a lot of people.
‘It may be an issue of portion size and moderation rather than total removal. I just think it is unrealistic to expect people to totally drop these foods for vegetables and fruits.’

During the ten-week diet, Mr Haub’s body mass index went from 28.8, which is considered overweight, to a normal 24.9.
His body fat fell from 33.4 per cent to 24.9 per cent.

Before his Twinkie diet, Mr Hub considered himself a healthy eater with a diet including whole grains, fibre, berries and bananas.
‘I wish I could say the outcomes are unhealthy. I wish I could say it's healthy. I'm not confident enough in doing that. That frustrates a lot of people. One side says it's irresponsible. It is unhealthy, but the data doesn't say that,’ he said.

‘It is a great reminder for weight loss that calories count,’ said Dawn Jackson Blatner, a dietitian from Atlanta, Georgia.
‘Is that the bottom line to being healthy? That’s another story.
‘There are things we can’t measure,’ she added, questioning how the body is affected by a lack of fruits and vegetables over the long term.
‘How much does that affect the risk for cancer? We can’t measure how diet changes our health,’ she told CNN.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/artic ... z14sOlp7xV
 
Fat patients 'prompts ambulance fleet revamp'
By Nick Triggle, Health reporter, BBC News

Some patients are getting so fat that ambulance bosses are having to revamp their fleets to cope, the BBC has learned.
Every service in the UK has started buying specialist equipment, data from freedom of information requests show.
This includes wider stretchers, more lifting gear and reinforcing existing vehicles.

Many have also bought specialist "bariatric" ambulances - costing up to £90,000 each - to ferry the most obese.
These are designed so that double-width trolley stretchers for patients up to 50 stone (318kg) can be accommodated. They also tend to include hoists and inflatable lifting cushions.

But the rising rates of obese and overweight patients mean even standard ambulances are having to be stocked with specialist equipment.
While these vehicles cannot take the full-range of kit that a bariatric ambulance can, they can often carry heavy-duty wheelchairs and stretchers as well as the lifting cushions on newer models.
Prices vary depending on how many and what make a trust orders.
Cushions tend to cost about £2,500 and stretchers anywhere between £7,000 to £10,000, while reinforcing an ambulance tail-lift can set a trust back £800 per vehicle.

One ambulance trust - South Central - has spent more than £1m in the last three years to upgrade nearly two thirds of its 180-strong fleet.

West Midlands is another area which has started upgrading its fleet. It has also bought four specialist bariatric ambulances at a combined cost of more than £300,000.
Nigel Wells, an operations manager at the trust said: "It is all about safety for our patients and safety for our crews. We have got a greater number of patients who are larger in size.
"A few years ago - probably only 10 years ago - your average patient was 12 to 13 stone, now that's probably 17 to 18 stone. And we quite regularly see patients around 30 stone in weight and even bigger than that."

Jo Webber, director of the Ambulance Service Network, agreed ambulance bosses had been left with no option.
"The fact is patients are getting larger and larger and ambulances need to be able to respond immediately to what could be life-threatening situations.
"Every service is having to invest money in this. It shows that some of the lifestyle changes we are seeing have a range of costs. It is not just about treating them, but the infrastructure costs as well."

The data obtained by the BBC showed the speed and pace of the approaches vary from place to place.
However, every ambulance trust in England as well as the services in Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland confirmed changes were being made.
For example, the West Midlands, Yorkshire, the North West and Wales already have pools of bariatric ambulances and are well on the way to upgrading the rest of their fleet.

Meanwhile, in London ambulances bosses have been relying on a private service for which they were paying a monthly fee of £5,000 until recently.
But they have now bought two bariatric ambulances and a third is on its way. The rest of the fleet will also be getting specialist equipment in the coming years.

Jonathan Fox, of the Association of Professional Ambulance Personnel, said: "It is becoming increasingly frequent that the size of patients causes problems moving them and that in turn increases the risk of injury to staff. That is why we need this equipment. We are not just talking about those that are really heavy, even patients who are 16, 17 stone can pose difficulties."

Dr Frank Atherton, president of the Association of Directors of Public Health, added: "It is not surprising the NHS is responding this way. It is unfortunate and what we need to do is get better at trying to prevent obesity in the first place."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-12287880
 
Britain's fattest teenager is 40 stone at 17
Britain's fattest teenager now weighs 40 stone at just 17-years-old despite losing 15 stone at a US fat camp.
8:16AM GMT 21 Feb 2011

Georgia Davis said depression over her size only makes her eat more. The 17-year-old now weighs 40st 6lbs.

Speaking to The Sun newspaper Georgia said: "I try not to think about it too much, otherwise I panic and it makes my eating problem worse — but I do know it is serious.
"I've covered over the mirror in my bedroom, but there is one in the bathroom I have to look into each morning when I wash and brush my teeth and it makes me feel so sad.
"Sometimes the sadness makes me eat more, but sometimes I just cry."

Georgia has put on an extra seven stone since she was 15-years-old when she weighed 33 stone.
Despite nine months at a US fat camp, where she lost 15 stone in 2009, she has managed to regain all that weight as well as much more.

Yesterday her true wright was revealed when she stood on a weighbridge designed for industrial materials after being too heavy for traditional scales at her local hospital. :shock:

She said: "I'd been following a programme of healthy eating in the camp where I'd been living in North Carolina, America, and I'd learned to enjoy low-fat foods like salads, bagels, yoghurt and even buffalo meat. "I was really looking forward to trying it all out back home but, when I arrived, my mum said she hadn't had time to prepare any healthy food so we had fish and chips instead. :evil:
"From that moment on, I had a niggling feeling that things weren't going to work out."

Georgia added: "I'd also learned to love exercise in America, using a gym and playing proper sports like tennis and basketball for the first time. But back home, it soon became obvious it wasn't going to be easy.
"The same facilities weren't available here and I couldn't easily afford to join the local gym. I soon found I was becoming much less mobile, just like before."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healt ... at-17.html

This makes me angry. Surely it's child abuse to let a teenager get into this state? Can she not be taken into care?
 
Her mum needs to wake up to the fact that she is to blame.
Unbelievable that a 17 year old got into this state - she must work hard at it, eating all day.
 
rynner2 said:
This makes me angry. Surely it's child abuse to let a teenager get into this state? Can she not be taken into care?


I have a feeling that's this isn't about how a parent 'let' a teenager get to this point, that young womans parents must have worked really hard to make her that way. It's long term neglect if you ask me, I can't imagine that she just ballooned overnight, can you?
 
Back
Top