There’s something about health that brings out the petty tyrants who think it is their duty to lecture, hector and bully others into compliance. So it is with Steve Miller.
A weight loss expert has sparked fury after claiming severely obese people should be refused junk food at fast food restaurants.
Steve Miller, who presented Sky One’s slimming series Fat Families, appeared on Good Morning Britain today with London-based journalist Ateh Jewel where he claimed we need to adopt a ‘tough love’ approach to obesity in Britain.
Speaking from his home in the West Midlands, the author who set up his Hypnotherapy Weight Loss programme in 2002 after losing 4st himself, claimed we need to ‘be cruel to be kind’ when it comes to serving unhealthy food.
No, we don’t. It is a personal responsibility. His role is to advise and nothing more. It is not his place or anyone else’s for that matter to force people to comply and food outlets are private businesses whose role is to serve those people who want to buy their products, not to engage in proxy as food fascists.
Why is it that these kind of discussions always bring out the authoritarians who want to use force to implement their ideas on others? We appear to have an infestation of such creatures.
The notion that eating fat makes you fat has been discredited. Over reliance on carbohydrates is the problem. Following the dietary advice of people like him will make you fat.
^This. 100%
It wasn’t until I started ignoring the bullshit advice of both my GP and NHS dieticians and cut out ALL carbohydrates (excluding fibre) from my diet that I stopped gaining weight and started losing it quite rapidly. It’s not just the quacks like the guy in the article that are the problem, it is that the whole system is established upon a flawed model which fails >95% of those seeking its advice. The only medical practitioner whose advice is worth following (i.e. it actually explains the reason behind the NHS’s failing model) is Canadian nephrologist Dr. Jason Fung in his book “The Obesity Code”. Since I started following a ketogenic / intermittent fasting approach based upon that I’ve never looked back and my obesity is a thing of the past.
Refusing service clearly isn’t on, but there’s certainly some ignorance of personal responsibility beyond a certain point.
Overeating beyond a certain point has costs on local and global society, yet we now have to consider ‘fatphobia’. Not that anyone has an irrational fear of landwhales of course.
Alcoholics, drug addicts and all manner of those that participate in inconsiderate and antisocial behaviour are routinely shamed for this. The effects of overeating may be less obvious but they’re there.
Type 2 diabetes is chronic and can last decades and isn’t cheap to treat. People should just take a look in the mirror sometimes and take stock. I did, and it was easy enough to sort out even if it did take some time. Didn’t put it on overnight though either.
Generally those who lead unhealthy lifestyles die younger and whilst costing some amount in healthcare to treat the symptoms of their personal choices, usually have lower lifetime costs as these are heavily loaded onto intensive old age care.
Re type 2 diabetes, the UK NHS provision for this is woeful (and cheap), leaving those affected without the ability to effectively manage their condition. This is in contrast to type 1 patients who are catered for pretty well these days.
“?Type 2 diabetes is chronic and can last decades and isn’t cheap to treat.”
Actually it is very cheap to treat. Limit your intake of carbohydrates and take a moderate amount of exercise, that’s it.
When you looked in the mirror, Wtf, did you see a sanctimonious, meddlesome individual looking back?
“yet we now have to consider ‘fatphobia’.”
It always amuses me how the media can switch seamlessly from ‘obesity crisis’ to ‘body positivity, often in the same breath. (and also anorexia/bulimia)
Mind if if I exhale my cigarette smoke in your face?
LR – this is in reply to our exchange in comments a couple of days ago. Sorry for the delay and being OT.
You said: “The CDC says differntly.”
So it does – it contradicts its own reports and data. There’s just one problem with the report that you linked to, which is found in the timeline. It says –
‘On February 4, 2020, CDC shipped SARS-CoV-2 to the BEI Resources Repository.’
Which obviously means that covid was isolated, characterized and distributed by 4/2/2020.
Now we move to this report, “CDC 2019-Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) Real-Time RT-PCR Diagnostic Panel.” On page 43, under the heading “Performance Characteristics”, you will find the following statement –
“Since no quantified virus isolates of the 2019-nCoV are currently available, assays [diagnostic tests] designed for detection of the 2019-nCoV RNA were tested with characterized stocks of in vitro transcribed full length RNA…”
The date of this report is July 13, 2020.
https://www.fda.gov/media/134922/download
Which obviously means that the virus which the CDC had supposedly isolated, characterized and distributed on the 4th Feb didn’t happen since it had still not been isolated by July. It hasn’t happened anywhere else either to date. That’s why the Irish government can’t answer Gemma O’ Doherty’s FOI.
You said: “The problem with claiming that Covid doesn’t exist is that you are then left having to explain the increase in winter deaths over the past eighteen months – not just here but across the world.”
I would suggest you have a listen to Ivor Cummins, he’s explained this many times in the last year, working on the official data across many countries. In Ireland for example, he finds little to no difference in the number of deaths, to the 2017/18 winter season and this information is similar across the globe. In other words, there has been no increase in deaths and flu has been rebranded.
But Ivor can explain it better than I can. This video is a live debate, so the first 30 minutes are dead, but you may find a few interesting factoids in there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WiS5W2S_oo
You said: “The other problem is that it undermines our argument as people will just write us off as tinfoil hatters.”
We wear tinfoil hats, they wear face rags and visors – so which conspiracy theory are you referring to, ours or theirs?
Hey kid, if you go into Maccas for me, I’ll go into the offie for you.
https://twitter.com/rosellacottage/status/1387326570528972802
Here’s what 6 months on my calorie deficit diet will achieve for any fat old bloke carrying 5-10 stone too much body fat.
I would have to interfere for that to be true, so not even slightly. I certainly don’t think that taxation or denial are the right way ahead, it has to be personal choice. So no, not meddling.
I just think you have to have some responsibility towards your own health. If you trust government to do this, we’re back to ‘it’s for you own good’, which never works well for the rest of us. Government overreach is I think what most of us are griping about.
A huge amount goes on treating T2. It’s mostly avoidable through simple diet changes. The University of Newcastle did some research on it recently, and found that it was reversible, at least in the medium term.
It might be cheap on an individual basis, but obesity health issues last for years,and even ignoring T2, the costs are huge and not just healthcare costs, indirect costs aren’t trivial either.
I’ve had experience of eating disorders close up, and the levels of obesity to which I refer are clearly due to some form of mental disorder. The hiding or food, secret eating (in a case I can think of it was around £300 a month on McDonald’s in addition to the food budget).
I don’t honestly know the answer, because let’s face it, alcohol taxation doesn’t seem to have made too much difference wrt alcohol abuse, and denial hasn’t done a great deal for drug abuse.
I do however know that actively encouraging obesity, and this is happening, is not likely to end well. An awful lot of very risky and unhealthy behaviour is currently at least tolerated, if not actively approved of.
But maybe that’s not the case everywhere. Some Western nations have little issue with this problem, even those that favour carbohydrates. Maybe that’s where we should be looking, not all cultures are equal.
It has to be free choice, there’s no other way. If they start restricting dietary offerings to citizens on the basis of behaviour it’s that slippery slope again.
If the government took any notice of this idiot then, going by the discredited BMI, over 50% of professional rugby players would not be allowed to buy a burger.
Steve Miller should be band. What a Joker
You beat me to it! Must start reading LR earlier.