Op-Ed: The Great Obesity Hoax

The National Obesity Forum is warning of a catastrophe for Britain unless urgent action is taken to tackle the problem now, but they would say that, wouldn't they?

A news report can be found here, but let's look behind the manipulated statistics churned out by the National Obesity Forum and similar bodies. Is there really an epidemic of overweight and saturated fat in Britain? The simple answer is no. At one time, certainly as recently as the 1960s if not later, the word obesity meant grotesquely fat, not a few pounds overweight. Added to that, there are broadly speaking three types of build: ectomorph, endomorph and mesomorph. If you are an ectomorph, you are one of those lucky people who can eat to his or her heart's content and not gain weight, and when you do put it on, you can take it off very fast. An endomorph has a slow metabolism, so tends to put on the pounds faster. While it is true that obesity - being chronically overweight - has nothing to recommend it, it remains to be seen if, as the National Obesity Forum predicts, it will lead either to most of us dropping dead from diabetes or cancer, or to our financial ruin as the National Health Service struggles to hold back a tsunami of degenerative diseases. Earlier this week, there was good news on the cancer front when dramatic median survival rates were reported for some types of cancers. Although the propaganda associated with the obesity hoax is nowhere near as pernicious as that related to passive smoking, the fact remains that people are living longer than ever before; indeed average life expectancy was reported to have risen only last month. While Aubrey de Grey may find 78.2 and 82.3 years for men and women respectively disappointing, most of us have long come to terms with the fact that one day the Grim Reaper will come for us all.