The latest target of the health freaks is the vending machine in hospital waiting rooms in a dire piece from the BBC.
Whenever I visit hospitals, I am always struck by how the efforts of the dedicated healthcare professionals who work in them are being undermined by what is happening in the waiting areas.
All too often, these waiting areas have vending machines that are filled with high-calorie foods and drinks such as chocolate bars, crisps and sugary drinks.
To which I would say; so what? When you are stuck in a waiting room a snack might be appropriate and a quick sugar hit is just dandy. It’s not as if we only eat this stuff, it is just a snack to tide us over. That is the whole point of the things.
But because these foods are a cause of obesity, they are part of the reason many of the people will have ended up in hospital in the first place.
Oh, fer cryin’ out loud… They do not cause obesity. People taking in more energy than they expend causes obesity. I eat crisps and chocolate from time to time, and I am far from obese. This is because I use up the energy I consume.
There is strong scientific evidence that excess body fat is a risk factor for cancer, as well as other non-communicable diseases such as heart disease and diabetes.
Yes, well, maybe so, but the occasional Mars bar from a vending machine isn’t going to kill us, is it?
And yet hospital vending machines are selling products that are a cause of obesity at the same time as the health professionals working there are trying to cope with its consequences.
No, they are not! People get fat because they eat more than they burn off. Crisps and chocolate may not form a balanced diet eaten in exclusion to all else, but they do not cause obesity. Stuffing your face – with any type of food, frankly – while moribund all day, watching Jeremy Kyle or some such televised crap, will do the job nicely. The occasional packet of crisps or a Mars bar from a vending machine will not. So, those professionals are not dealing with the consequences of the vending machine outside in the hallway. What hysterical nonsense.
That is why hospitals should put an end to vending machines that sell high calorie foods and drinks.
Didn’t see that coming, did you?
It is true that on its own this would be unlikely to have a serious impact on obesity levels.
You would have to spend a lot of time in hospital waiting rooms for the contents of the vending machines to make much of a difference to your weight.
Which is why they are not remotely a problem. See, problem solved, because there wasn’t one in the first place.
But rather, the fact that hospital vending machines are filled with these kinds of foods and drinks is a symptom of how little meaningful focus there is on the obesity crisis.
Because it is up to the individual to manage his or her own health – including things like diet and exercise. And, should they end up with an ailment as a direct result of their lifestyle, they are merely using up some of the national insurance contributions they have paid into the system for their universal health care. Doctors, therefore, should shut up and heal the sick, not pass judgment on their lifestyles and not seek to ban something that actually does no harm whatsoever.
Across society, big changes are needed if we are to address obesity and the preventable cases of cancer and other diseases that result from it.
The changes that we need are supported by common sense.
Ah, yes, common sense. Here’s a common sense suggestion. What about allowing ourselves to manage our own lives as we see fit and to live or die by the consequences of our choices and actions?
There is no great mystery about what needs to happen.
We’ve already been told that, haven’t we?
This would not only mean the end of the kind of culture where the sale of unhealthy foods and drinks in hospital waiting rooms is seen as acceptable.
I find it perfectly acceptable and will continue to do so. Because you don’t, it doesn’t mean that we should all fall into line, does it? Most of us are perfectly capable of managing our diets without emptying the vending machine in the hospital waiting room. What I find unacceptable are these constant shrill demands to treat us all like recalcitrant children.
It could also mean fewer people end up in those waiting rooms in the first place.
And a nice little logical fallacy to round the article off.
The author of this dire garbage is a doctor. Well, whodathunkit? Or maybe you had already guessed.
Nothing new except previously there were WRVS tea bars selling all the same stuff.
I expect these have been replaced on “elf and safety grounds, the WRVS deciding it not worth their while to get the insurance and make the risk assessment needed to do what they had been doing safely and successfully for years.
Er, as someone who has recently spent a fair amount of time in waiting areas of hospitals as a non-obese non-patient (accompanying nil-by-mouth patient), what exactly am I being protected from here? Apart from over-priced snack machines…
P T Barnum,
you are being protected from yourself.
Let them. Some bright spark will set up a hot dog stall just outside, where you have to be to smoke, and make a mint. The vending machines are usually run by thirs parties who stock as sales dictate. They will soon give up. Myself, I always have snacks in the car, for the kids :), and I have a sweet tooth, or to be honest all of my teeth are sweet.
So, how many years will it be before the only food you can buy is some sort of government approved tasteless, grey gruel, containing just the nutrients needed to perform work as mindless drones for our masters?
TT – quite so. The P T Barnums of this world cannot be trusted by nanny not to scoff all the nice sweeties, so nanny must make sure he doesn’t get the opportunity. 😈
The biggest cause of overweight/obesity in the USA is the govt.
In 1998 it reset the BMI definition and, overnight, created about 30 million more overweight/obese people.
Are foods the cause? NOOOO!
Is govt the cause? Yes!!
Gary K.
My I draw the attention of esteemed reader to the finely crafted froot-loopery of this website –
http://www.alsosalt.com/
“Your sodium free or low sodium diet can now have flavor again. AlsoSalt gives you the salty taste without the adverse effect on your health. Plus, it has the added dietary benefit of two nutrients, potassium and lysine, that are essential for good health. It is completely natural.”
(I’m not sure how long a human can survive on a ‘sodium free …diet’?)
Not long, I suspect.
The World Cancer Research Fund is the scientific equivalent of the Moonies. They have an expert panel of nutritionists who unsurprisingly claim that vast numbers of cancers are nutrition /exercise /lifestyle related. The exact percentage seems to vary depending on who they are trying to convince. In a recent BBC article it was 25% which is incredible but last year they got up to 33% when trying to persuade people to change their wills in favour of WCRF through local newspaper letter pages. The fact that they have insufficient evidence to back their extraordinary claims and are unethical does not seem to prevent them being published. Admittedly this is an opinion piece on the BBC but I personally wouldn’t give them the Web space.
You can often expect to wait for 4 hours in A&E. You get hungry, you get thirsty, not everybody has the forethought to make healthy sandwiches whilst bleeding prior to going to the hospital.
Recently I had to attend an out patients. The waiting time was hours, the waiting room was incredibly hot.
The policy was, NO EATING OR DRINKING for anyone. Why? Because if there was one patient with nil by mouth waiting it would be unfair to eat or drink whilst he/she couldn’t.
What utter bollocks.
Ah, obviously my current status as a non-obese non-patient is mere chance, a fortuitous and temporary arrangement of the planets governing my choices. I am, therefore, ‘grateful’ that these quangos are there so pro-actively gobbing off to ensure I don’t one day succumb and scoff the contents of an entire snack machine and thereby become, in one mad moment, an obese patient.
I wonder.
What would these supposed medical professionals (They aren’t) say about me?
I drink at least 15 pints of beer a week (usually only two-or-three at a time) do NO sport, like plenty of meat in my diet, am aged 65, and still take the same-size trousers I did when I was 35 (In old-fahioned: 34″ waist 31″ I-leg)
What they don’t know is that I do exercise, gently (allotment) and dance (Morris) – I’m sure I’m at risk of something – probably living to 110 if lucky!
It’s another tyrrany of the (supposedly) benevolent, as warned of by C.S. Lewis.
I’m afraid Greg, that you do not exist.
You see, they think that not smoking, not drinking, not eating meat makes you fit. It doesn’t. Exercise makes you fit.
I do all of the above and I’m fast approaching 60. But I love cycling and walking and that they simply don’t understand.
If I ever get seriously ill, I might just top myself. Not sure I could cope with hospital food or the attitudes there.
OFF TOPIC, but important.
I have also posted this lower down on the M/C “hi-vis” controversy …
Firstly, a friend who rides a BIG Triumph (and who drives a Fire Engine at work) refuses to wear a hi-vis any more.
He claims too many drivers USE them to deliberately cut up M’cyclists.
There’s another problem:
WHAT hi-vis?
Different European countries have different designs proposed, so if you drove across Europe – you’d need a different hi-vis for each country (!!)
Furthermore there’s another equally loopy proposal coming along regarding RESTRICTION OF MAINTENANCE.
See HERE:
http://raedwald.blogspot.com/2011/09/eu-and-art-of-motorcycle-maintenance.html
Really scary stuff, and totally potty.
They should replace the food vending machines with cigarette vending machines – it’s well known that smokers are less prone to obesity than non-smokers. Job done.
I see plenty of very fat people working in hospitals….