help the obese: s***

Help the obese: s***
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2088-1892406,00.html
fairuse

Christopher Hart
The NHS in east Suffolk has announced that it will no longer perform
hip or knee replacements on people classed as "obese". Never mind
that the definition it uses for obesity - a body mass index of 30 or
higher - is increasingly discredited, and that a much more reliable
way of measuring healthy weight is waist-to-hip ratio. (It should be
0.9 or less in men, and 0.85 or less in women; you can check it on
www.healthstatus.com/calculate/whr ).

A greater objection to this denial of treatment to fatties on account
of their self-inflicted fatness is: where on earth do you stop?

Should NHS dental treatment be denied to women who eat too much
chocolate? Should the hugely expensive course of anti-retroviral drugs
for HIV be denied to promiscuous homosexuals, or sex tourists recently
returned from Pattaya Beach? For that matter, what about women who have
dieted rather than gluttonised all their lives, neglecting their
calcium intake and so risking osteoporosis in later life?

Fatties surely have just as much right to be treated on the NHS as
smokers, binge drinkers, or any other taxpayers. Instead of threatening
plump people's already threatened health by denying them treatment,
how about giving them the new bits they need, while encouraging them to
lose weight with a little gentle, old-fashioned mockery?

Fatties should of course be free to squeeze out of the closet, their
XXXL T-shirts emblazoned with such legends as "Fat and Happy!"
"Out, Stout and Proud!" and so forth. What they cannot demand, I
think, is the right to be free from teasing, either in the playground
or in later life. There is and always will be something innately funny
about fat people. They wobble so much, for one thing.

I was once stranded for 24 hours in Houston, self- proclaimed Fat
Capital of the World, and I have never seen so many enormously fat
people in my life, nor felt such a juvenile but well-nigh irrepressible
urge to laugh out loud. The reason they are all so fat is that they
drive everywhere, and stuff themselves from dawn till long after dusk
with double choc-chip deep fried spicy pepperoni monster pizzas topped
with extra cheddar-style cheese, and gallon bargain-buckets of buffalo
wings on the side. This is not a dignified way to behave.

But laughing at fatties is no longer encouraged in the Land of the Fat
and Home of the Brave. Take their National Association to Advance Fat
Acceptance. Members recently staged a demonstration in New York,
dressed in grass hula skirts, tiaras and flamingo headbands, throwing
beach balls around and dancing the "hokey-pokey fat liberation"
song. They then solemnly stepped onto scales modified with supportive
words like "stunning", "pretty" and "beautiful" instead of
numbers. This is not going to help their condition any more than the
mean-spirited health services in east Suffolk.

Obesity is well on the way to becoming the No 1 cause of death in the
developed world, which in itself is no joke. In a few decades' time
everywhere will look like Houston, or worse still, the Freedom Paradise
resort in Mexico, which boasts reinforced beds, double-width doors, and
dining chairs 26in wide but without arms in case they get stuck to
diners' wider-than-26in bottoms when they stand up.

Cindy Sabo, spokeswoman for the National Association to Advance Fat
Acceptance, has given Freedom Paradise her seal of approval. Placing
herself in the "oversize" category at around 400lb, Sabo recalls
"some terrible experiences with some other tourists" on a recent
holiday in Hawaii. "Especially some people from Asian countries would
walk right up to you on the beach, poke you in the belly and make some
rude joke." What a marvellous image: a crowd of lean little Chinese
people gathered around an enormous American woman, poking and prodding
her delightedly while she lies there in the Hawaiian sand, huffing and
puffing with a self-righteous indignation quite lost on them.

Being overweight is hardly the greatest sin one can commit, pace the
doctors and consultants of east Suffolk. But that doesn't mean
obesity is an entirely neutral "lifestyle option" either. It
isn't a cardinal or mortal sin, but a venal one. But obesity does
betray self-indulgence, a lack of self-control and a habit of mostly
solitary greed.

Despite the protests of fatties that it's their metabolism that is
responsible, or their genes, we all know that those among our friends
who incline to porkiness are almost always the ones who chomp their way
through an entire packet of Chocolate HobNobs when the rest of us make
do with one or two.

A certain mockery, a certain hearty Chaucerian laughter at human
weakness and venality, can have a beneficial purpose; although, like
shame, it is a social mechanism rather out of fashion. It might not
only provoke merriment, but also suggest to its "victims" that
perhaps they ought to consider their ways and be wise; or in modern
parlance, review their lifestyle choices.

Laughing at fat people might be the first step on the road to them
losing weight. And then those sternly Calvinistic medical men of east
Suffolk might not have to bother about fitting them with new knees
anyway.

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