What was it the Dreadful Arnott said about tobacco being a unique product? That those who claimed that anti-tobacco tactics would spread like a cancer to other products as the puritans scanned for their next target were indulging in a logical fallacy, wasn’t that it? There is no slippery slope.
Oh.
New guidelines from the National Obesity Forum suggest using “harder hitting” anti-obesity campaigns, akin to anti-tobacco campaigns, in the UK. The debate about whether to treat obesity like smoking is one that has played out in the US, with researchers still searching for the most effective way to improve health outcomes.
As former smoker, Dan Gilmore realised the power of stark works and images in changing his behaviour.
“Somewhere along the line, people said, ‘Would you please go outside and smoke,’ or, ‘I’ve got an allergy to smoking.’ You started to feel societal pressure,” says Gilmore, president emeritus of the Hastings Institute, a centre devoted to bioethics and public policy.
The in-your-face smoking campaigns of the past, he says, effectively convinced people both that their actions bothered others and posed grave danger to themselves.
When it comes to obesity, he says, “the public has not as thoroughly been terrorised.”
But he’s yet to find the right balance of “light stigma” to help motivate people without alienating them.
That slope just became black ice. And don’t you just love the fact that you haven’t been terrorised enough? How kind of them not to terrorise us enough, how magnanimous. So how do you feel about being stigmatised and motivated by Prof Glimore and his terrorist cell?
The problem with ‘hard-hitting’ campaigns is that they hit some harder than others. There’s no harm done if susceptible individuals are put off smoking for life, but when it comes to food, it’s a different matter:
Official statistics show more than 6,500 children and teenagers treated in hospital in 2010/11 for conditions such as anorexia, compared with 1,718, in 2007/8. (Telegraph, December 2013)
Given that primary school children are constantly subjected to what amounts to evangelical preaching on the revealed truth of 5-a-day and the ‘eatwell plate’ and exhorted to cast out the unholy trinity of salt, sugar and fat, it’s likely that some of these cases, at least, can be laid at the door of over-zealous heath educators.
Meanwhile, the less amenable are as likely to rebel against the unceasing clamour of healthy eating doctrine and make a point of eating the ‘wrong’ things, just as many teenagers smoke simply because it is frowned upon.
Yes, that. too. But puritans aren’t interested in side-effects. What they are concerned about is the possibility that people are having unapproved enjoyment.
“…As former smoker, Dan Gilmore…”
And there’s none more puritanical than the reformed born-again abstaining zealot. God, they’re so smug & superior.
It makes me want to catch ’em sunbathing – when I have a steamroller…
Amusingly, I have recently put on a small amount of weight and so my BMI has risen. I am now only a whisker away from being classified as obese by these loons. If you saw me you would know just how ridiculous this is. One question that occurred to me, is it cheaper overall for the government to employ someone doing a fake job, than it is to have them out of work and on benefits? If that was so it would explain a lot.
The point about all these ‘health’ campaigns is that none of them are really about ‘health’. They are about prejudice, bigotry, ideology, puritanism and hate. And money, of course. Too many ‘health professionals’ have their snouts deeply embedded in the publicly funded trough, and know that unless they continue to ramp up the hyperbole that that trough will run dry. Hence all the patently ridiculous press releases about how smoking causes every illness known to man, and that we are suffering an ‘obesity epidemic’, and how introducing minimum alcohol pricing will ‘save’ countless millions of lives,
All pure, unadulterated bullshit of course, but as long as their mates in the media (who naturally love a good doom’n’gloom story) continue to publish this garbage verbatim, our clueless political masters will continue their knee-jerk reactions, which as usual involves petty, spiteful legislation.
Precisely.
I agree with everything you said, but I would add that I think there is also the element these days that it is possible to carve out a nice little government funded career being part of one of these “pressure groups” with a nice mortgage, pension and nice little bonus structure to boot. All that is required is to make a load of noise and convince the media and the Government that “something has to be done”.
I think there is also an element in the modern internet age that thse people like to think they can exert some influence over the world and other people. It gives them a sense of power and enrichment. In the old days you have to work hard to become an elected MP but these people can just conjur up a cause, splat it over the internet and start collecting paychecks.
Our society has become too accomodating of a new few noisy, bigoted, interfering busybodies. We need to tell them to get stuffed.
John, I work in public health in England and I wish I could tell the public exactly what goes on. I’m at the lower end of the payscale and therefore provide the admin support for some of these people in the teams of ‘pressure groups’ for obesity, smoking, drinking, vaccination, screening etc.
I’ve had enough of biting my tongue and hiding my face so that my incredulous expression isn’t noticed at meetings. I’m currently looking for alternative employment outside of this arena so that I no longer have to support the ‘little hitler’ managers and directors who have no concept of the term ‘public funding’ and who blindly follow the latest ‘sound bite’ from the pharmaceutical companies, in the hope that will be noticed by the man at the top (or woman if you want me to be PC) and gain promotion / yet another salary increase.