Let Them Eat Cake

What happens to a public health crisis when you can vaccinate against obesity?

If you’ve ever visited Hampstead in London you’ve probably been to the Holly Bush Pub.

Just up the from the tube station. On the way to the north end of the Heath. Nestled in one of the most picturesque and charming corners of London. It is a genuinely lovely spot.

Tourists love to take walking tours around these quintessentially Dickensian streets, and then popping in to the pub for an authentically overpriced pint of ye olde fashioned London lager.

These days Hampstead is one the poshest parts of the capital. So if you want the genuine Dickensian experience, the grime, poverty, grubby destitution, petty crime, hopelessness and squalor, I’d suggest you save yourself a tube fare, and hang around outside Sainsbury's on Tottenham Court Road for twenty minutes instead.

Pro tip: Take hand sanitiser.

I used to live a stone’s throw from The Holly Bush. If, around the Millennium, after spending a pleasant evening in the pub, you’d headed unsteadily back down to catch the Northern Line, you’d have walked past my little flat.

And more excitingly, you would have also walked past celebrity chef, and purveyor of racist rice, Jamie Oliver’s house. (Or as he would no doubt have called it in his 100% authentic mockney accent, his ‘gaff’) Because he used to live right on the corner, with his front door, opening straight onto the street. Less than fifty yards from the pub.

Jamie and I left Hampstead about the same time. But for very different reasons. I moved down the hill to Camden because I couldn’t afford to buy anything in Hampstead that was large enough for starting a family. Jamie left, as legend has it, because drunk people kept knocking on his door every night at closing time, and demanding he make them a bacon sandwich.

Which is at that the same time both unforgivably rude. And undeniably hilarious.

Jamie Oliver is back in the news. Back in 2019 his Jamie’s Italian chain of restaurants collapsed into administration, with debts of £85m. (Holy Cannoli! That’s a lot of unsold cannoli!) But great news, he’s bounced back with a multi million selling book, and new restaurants in Dubai and India. After a few tough years things are finally looking up for Jamie.  So much so that he’s just paid himself £7m.

Maybe I’m being uncharitable here. But perhaps if food scold, and anti cheap nosh campaigner, Jamie really wanted to make a genuinely positive contribution to other people’s lives, he’d maybe start a tiny bit closer to home. And instead of organising cringe making protests against Buy One Get One Free offers, and demonising Turkey Twizzlers (RIP), he might want to begin by paying back the creditors who were left out of pocket when his restuarant chain collapsed. After all, some suppliers were reportedly left with unpaid bills of over £200,000.

But what do I know? That’s not how business works and maybe he is already doing that on the quiet. If he is, I apologise. It wouldn’t surprise me. Jamie Oliver is a Good Guy.

He’s on a mission to save us from ourselves. To help us make ‘healthy choices’, so that together, we can tackle the ‘Obesity Crisis.’

Of course these days we have a Cost of Living Crisis. A Climate Apocalypse. A capital city full of air so poisonous it kills 4000 people a year. (It doesn’t.) And even the desperately hyped up return of COVID 2.0 . So the Obesity Crisis has had to take a specially reinforced back seat of late.

But rest assured, like Lizzo stuck in a bath tub, the Obesity Crisis is going nowhere.

Because if there is one thing our elites love more than telling us what we’re allowed to look at on the internet, what we’re allowed to vote for in referendums, what words we are allowed to read in books , and who we’re allowed to refer to as men and women, it’s telling us what we should eat.

What is it about fat people that makes the elites assume they have the right to lecture them about their lifestyles?

After all, we’re not allowed to make moral judgments about other groups who might, at first blush, seem even more worthy of a little light censure. Like say, shoplifters. But hey it’s not their fault, they were probably driven by desperate hunger and Evil Tory Cuts to steal that bottle of Hennessy. Also something about greedy supermarkets-so it’s a victimless crime.

Or looters.- Who it turns out aren’t really nicking a 50 inch flat screen TV at all. But are in fact oppressed peoples embarking on a wholly justifiable form of instant Social Justice.

And even some terrorists, and the terrorist adjacent, get a pass these days. Especially those vulnerable teens, who were led astray by the seductive siren call of social media, and practically forced into joining a murderous death cult of their own free will. One which burned women to death in metal cages. Bloody Tik-Tok!!!

So what is it about the obese that makes it ok for some people (only some people, not you, when you do it you’re ‘fat shaming’ you bigot) to be so judgemental?

Of course the elites claim, sometimes in good faith I admit, that they’re not being judgy at all. They’re just concerned with the nation’s health.

And when I say ‘the nation’ I mean of course people who the elites consider their inferiors. People like you and me. (Well me definitely.) And most specifically the regular people, who make up what we loosely used to call, the working class.

There’s an unmistakable whiff of snobbery about this issue. In some ways the ‘Obesity Crisis’ might be better understood as less a calamity caused by so many of us being overweight, and more a catastrophe resulting from regular people not doing what they are told by the university educated Guardian reading, Radio 4 listening, middle classes.

Think of it like Brexit. But for Ready Meals.

This patronising attitude can clearly be seen in the solutions the elites offer.

For instance, we’re constantly told that education is the key. Which obviously carries the implication that those most in need of guidance, are the ‘uneducated’.

Health campaigners seem to believe that if only the lower orders could be made to understand, through idiot proof traffic light labelling, or constant scolding, exactly what it is they are eating, they would recoil in disgust. And from that moment on, make only ‘healthy choices’, as opposed to the ‘wrong choices’.

It’s quite the assumption, and really is predicated on the idea that regular people are phenomenally stupid.

Even with our calamitous education system, which can’t stop the actual schools collapsing, let alone teach most kids the Three Rs effectively, I’d hazard that most people understand that the nutritional value of most (though not all) salads, outweigh the health benefits of eating takeaway pizza.

The government has spent millions of pounds of public money on an overflowing smorgasbord of anti obesity measures, including forcing supermarkets to move sweets away the tills, and mandating that restaurants put calorie counts on their menus. Plus sugar taxes, and advertising bans.

But nothing has worked. (Of course the only lesson the health lobby has learned is; Do it more. Do it harder.)

They’ve even spent a fortune on the roll out (roly poly out) of a weight loss app that actually makes people fatter. Whoops!

And the number of fat people continues to grow. Of course we are no longer allowed to call them fat people. Instead they must now be referred to as ‘people who are living with obesity’.

As if obesity was some kind of giant, lazy, coke guzzling, sofa hogging, flat mate. Which in a way, it is. (Note to the busybodies at NHS England. There’s an idea for another pointless multi million pound advertising campaign right there. You’re welcome! )

(I was checking this online and discovered I wasn’t even up date saying that. We shouldn’t refer to fat people as ‘living with obesity’ either. Apparently ‘obesity’ is stigmatising. The correct term, which I will be using from now on is ‘chronic appetite deregulation’. Which ironically, is a bit of a mouthful )

What the elites can never seem to accept is that the targets of their enlightened beneficence already understand the basics of healthy eating.

It’s not that they don’t ‘get it’, they simply don’t want to eat the same things as you. They have different tastes. They often just prefer foods you dismiss as low status. Get over it.

One group, which considers itself superior and enlightened, is attempting to impose its culture and values onto another group, which it considers uneducated and inferior. For their own good. Wait a minute. I thought we had a name for that. Oh yeah. ‘Colonialism’. And it was about the worst thing you could do.

But of course this is different.

I guess.

But never mind all that, say the elites, the doctors, the celebrity chefs, the civil servants, the charities, the NGOs and Chris Van Tulleken from Operation Ouch! Obesity is a big problem, and like the people who suffer from it, it’s only getting bigger.

Something must be done!

Especially since obesity has a detrimental effect, not just on the sufferers themselves, but also on ‘our NHS’.

And we’re talking some very big numbers here.

The NHS is currently spending a whoppingly ginormously huge £6bn a year on obesity related issues. Which by any measure is….Hang on.

£6bn? Is that it?

Now maybe I’m going out on a limb here. But when you consider that the much respected Kings Fund estimates that next year’s NHS budget will be £184bn. Then 3% of that, doesn’t actually sound that much.

I mean it’s definitely not nothing. But we’re spending £100bn on a railway we don’t need and no one wants. We give away £12bn a year in the Overseas Aid, which we can’t afford, so we borrow, and then distribute to countries like India. Which has just landed on the Moon. (I know it’s a cliché at this point, but soz, they keep sending it, we’ll keep bringing it up.)

While the OBR predicts the government budget for 2023-24 will be £1189bn.

And apparently Net Zero by 2050 could easily cost us £1 trillion .

And that’s not some nutjob outlier claiming that, it’s sad faced ex chancellor, Phillip Hammond. (OK. A bit of a nutjob)

We’re told obesity is by far the most pressing health issue facing our society today. Yet we’re managing to deal with it for just £6bn a year? Compared with the £450bn we spent on the last one. That sounds like a pretty good deal to me.

Sure. I’m being a bit facetious here. But only a little bit. Forgive me.

But let’s stick with the NHS a moment.

Our continued reluctance to eat what we are told allows our bosses to reframe, at least in part, the problems of our disintegrating Health Service as an egregious misallocation of resources. A misallocation which is our fault.

We would be able to treat your nan’s cancer, but fat people right? Whaddya gonna do?

But obese people aren’t really the reason the NHS is collapsing.

I’d argue the ongoing failures of the NHS are, at heart, inevitable. No matter how much of our GDP we pump into it. A centralised socialist system, with all its vested interests, inbuilt inefficiencies, and power structures which can only ever favour the provider over the patient, will never be able to deliver adequate medical care in the 21st century. (If you are interested, I wrote about it here.)

The problems are largely institutional. They are certainly not the result of an otherwise well functioning system being forced to treat the wrong kind of patient.

There is also a weird sanctimony at play.

Obese people are forever being spoken about in terms of the ‘burden’ they put on the NHS. But like in the examples above, we don’t make veiled moral judgements about other patient groups.

We don’t claim that treating gay men for Monkey Pox or HIV puts an ‘unfair’ strain on the NHS. And why should we? Any more than we should question the amount of money we spend a year on IVF treatment. We don’t consider treating broken legged skiers as a ‘drain on resources.’

We don’t suggest denying treatment to motorcyclists like me, on the grounds that our broken fibula is the result of our own recklessness. The same goes for weekend footballers. Silly Dads who fall off skateboards. DIY ‘experts’ who it turns out, aren’t.  And you know, drug addicts.

Sometimes I wonder if this is really a ‘crisis’ at all.

Sure there are some super obese people around, but for the most part there doesn’t seem to be an ‘emergency’. It’s just that lots of people are just a bit, you know, fat. And it doesn’t seem to bother them much. It’s pretty normal. Most people aren’t grossly overweight, just carrying a few extra pounds.

Does everything really need fixing?

Here’s a mad suggestion. A real outlier. Better strap yourself in.

Maybe people should be allowed to eat what they want.

Sure, they should be made aware of the health implications of being very overweight. But otherwise left alone.

As I’ve pointed out elsewhere. Fat people pay taxes too.

Yet make this suggestion in polite company and you’ll get treated with all the consideration and understanding afforded an autistic teenager who’s just pointed out that a police officer looks like her own lesbian nana.

Look. I don’t know. As I expect is pretty obvious, I’m conflicted.

And I’m clearly not the only one who finds all this confusing. Because there is a double standard, a cognitive dissonance, at the centre of this issue.

Is being fat actually a problem? A drain on our health service. A blight on our society ?

Or, is it a boon? A wonderful expression of body positivity? A declaration of our true individual identity that is only to be lauded (larded) and celebrated?

A poster of a hot woman in a bikini declaring she is ‘beach body ready’ is banned for being a sexist and offensive. But a magazine cover showing a clearly obese woman under the headline ‘Healthy’, is held up as a shining example of diversity and acceptance.

As a society we seem to want it both ways. To have our cake and eat it.

And of course then there is a fresh new elephant in the room.

Semaglutide, also known by the names Ozempic and Wegovy. The new wonder weight loss drug beloved of celebrities. I’m sure you’ve heard about it.

The drug is essentially an appetite suppresser. It promises to help most users lose up to 15% of their body weight. Which is actually a lot. There’s a big difference between weighing 80kg (176lb) and weighing 68kg (150lb).

Semaglutide has already been approved to treat obesity on the NHS. Great. Can’t we just fix the Obesity Crisis that way?

I know a few people who have tried Ozempic. Some look pretty good on it. While others end up looking like the White Walkers from Game of Thrones. Gaunt, hollowed out, and prematurely aged.

Semaglutide certainly makes you lose weight. But it definitely doesn’t make you look healthy, and I thought that was the whole point.

And then there are the side effects which include nausea, diarrhoea, constipation and even pancreatic cancer.

Which seems quite a high price to pay to squeeze into a pair of 28 inch waist Levi’s. (No it isn’t? Fair enough.)

So it’s no magic wand.

But that’s not what people want to hear. What they want to hear is that we can now get vaccinated against obesity.

Now I’m no puritan. If you can vaccinate your way out of being overweight, great. But let’s remember what happened the last time a Western society tried something like that. (No, not COVID.  I’m not going down that particular rabbit hole. At least not today.)

I’m talking about when America tried to vaccinate the sadness and pain away, with drugs like Prozac and Zoloft, and Oxycoton and Fentanyl. It ended up with more misery and agony than its people could have ever imagined. And a genuine health care catastrophe that might never get fixed.

Now I’m not saying Semaglutide is the same as those drugs. It’s clearly not. I’m just suggesting that things don’t always go according to plan when you try medicalising away your problems. And with a supposed two thirds of us already overweight , we are essentially talking about medicalising almost our entire society. Is that really what we want?

We can’t even deliver the health service we have now. Let alone adding another level of never ending. (Because it never ends) medical care.

And then again, maybe I am a puritan. (I told you I’m conflicted) Because like the users themselves, I’m left feeling a tiny bit queasy. There’s a little voice in the back of my head asking,

Hey is self discipline, and personal responsibility no longer a ‘thing’?

We are encouraged to blame ‘the obesity crisis’ on everything but over eating.

Yes. Poverty. The food industry. Anxiety. Modern life. Processed foods. ‘Ultra ’ processed foods. Loneliness. All play their part. And fair enough. They genuinely do. But ultimately, you put too much stuff in your mouth, you get fat.

If we abnegate responsibility for our own basic fitness to our government, to a monthly injection, do we also relinquish the right to make other basic decisions about our bodies?

Like what vaccines to put into them. How much alcohol we drink. When we are allowed to have, and not have, kids. And coming full circle. What we are allowed to eat.

It’s mission creep. We are potentially ceding huge amounts of responsibility over our own lives, on the promise of an easy ride.

Eat as much as you like. Don’t worry. It’s all good. We have inoculated you against the consequences of your own actions.

Do what thou wilt. That shall be the whole of the law.

Like Pinocchio on Pleasure Island. I can’t help but imagine us, free from responsibility, drunk on fun and biscuits, looking around and suddenly realising, we’ve all turned into donkeys.

But am I just being a Luddite? Like someone steadfast and righteous, standing against the introduction of penicillin? Or like a Jehovah’s Witness, refusing a life giving blood transfusion?

If the State genuinely wants people to lose weight then maybe it should just say that. Be upfront. No more mixed messages. Say clearly; obese people are costing the NHS billions of pounds a year and we can’t afford it. It’s time for some tough love. So lose some weight Chubsters.

But of course they won’t do that. They’d say they don’t ever want to stigmatise people.

But that’s nonsense.

It’s exactly what they did during the COVID lockdowns.

Remember those ‘look me in the eyes’ billboards? The ‘don’t kill Granny’ speeches? What was that if it wasn’t stigmatising? We know now that the main point of masks was to signal conformity and shame the non compliant.

There’s clearly no squeamishness on the part of the government when it comes to telling us how to live our lives.

Look, maybe I’ve become too cynical. And I’m seeing malign motives when there are none.

And I’m wary of turning into a Contrarian NPC. (If you follow just one link in this article. I urge you to make it this one).

But if the last few years have taught us anything, it’s to not take any aspect of these government promoted ‘emergencies’ at (pie) face value.

So perhaps all this talk about an ‘obesity pandemic’ is a genuinely benign attempt to encourage us all to become healthier.

Or maybe it’s about creating another unsolvable ‘crisis’,  just like COVID, and Climate Change and the rest, which can be exploited to justify taking away more of our power, freedoms and money.

We must surely ask. Is it really the government’s job to tell grown up adults what to eat?

Perhaps the real glutton in this story is the ever more censorious and interventionist State. Always greedy for more control over every tiny aspect of our lives.

And like a true glutton it is never satisfied. Unchecked, and over indulged, it has become a huge dysfunctional bureaucracy, growing ever more corpulent, its arteries clogged, swallowing up more and more of our liberties, but no longer able to complete even the smallest tasks, like fix a pot hole, or send back a passport. Let alone mend our economy, control our borders, police our cities, or ironically, provide us with a viable health service.

Bedridden, immobile and useless. Ever expanding, bloated and ineffectual. Never satiated. Always hungry. Greedily sucking up more and more of our time, opportunities and resources.

Maybe it’s the busybody State, rather than its people, which could really do with slimming down a bit.

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Thanks for reading Low Status Opinions. I know this one is a bit of a Whopper, so I won’t keep you here.

If you enjoyed this article, please do consider sharing it, and perhaps subscribing. It’s free and it really helps me out.

The Obesity Crisis is a surprisingly divisive issue, so I’d love to know what you think, especially about the prospect of putting half the country on Semaglutide.

As ever I’ll try to respond in kind to all good faith comments.

That’s it for this one. Thanks again. See you next time.