Nanny State In Action

I posted on my companion blog, Wolf Health, that Britain faces a nation wide crisis over widening obesity rates. Now we see local councils advocating that the State take control of "dangerously" obese children and remove them from their families.
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This from the Sun:

Dangerously fat kids could be taken from their parents and put into care, council chiefs declared yesterday.

They warned that the worst cases of obesity will be increasingly seen as evidence of "parental neglect."

Social workers will have to step in to offer advice to protect the child's welfare.

In the most extreme cases, children could even be taken away from parents.

. . . The dramatic warning was delivered by the Local Government Association, which represents more than 400 councils in England and Wales.

Around one in four people in England are obese, so overweight that it threatens their health.

But experts fear HALF the population will be affected by 2032.

LGA public health spokesman David Rogers said some councils were already taking actions "where parents are putting children's health in real danger.

"Councils would step in to deal with an under-nourished and neglected child so should a case with a morbidly obese child be different?

. . . "There needs to be a national debate about the extent to which it is acceptable for local authorities to take action in cases where the welfare of children is in real jeopardy."

. . . But Mr Rogers said childhood obesity had now become an issue for every council.

Tough action was needed to protect the health of millions of children. . . .

Read the entire article.

Of all the ways that this problem can be addressed, taking a child from his family seems the absolute worst possible decision. Whether a child grows up fat or slim may be a concern of the state, but it is so patently obvious that there is so much more involved in the family unit that bears on what the child will grow into as to make this draconian policy proposal utterly insane. And even besides that, there are a thousand things the state can do to promote health and weight loss, not the least of which is mandating more physical activities for school age children. It is one thing to use the bully pulpit, another thing entirely to use the police powers of the state against a family.

But, sad to say, I am not surprised that this suggestion should arise in the U.K. As a general rule, the socialist left believes in the superiority of centralized power and that those in power - so long as they are reliably socialist - are in a better position to make decisions effecting individuals than individuals can make for themselves. Socialists also tend to have far less respect for the traditional family unit - as the U.K.'s welfare system among others makes clear. Modern Britain is a true laboratory experiement in socialism and multiculturalism transposed on top of a Western democracy.

Cross posted at Wolf Health.

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Harbingers of the Apocalypse

Look if you dare upon the new four horsewomen of the apocalypse who have been loosed upon the land. They are no mere mortals. Gluttony wears a black bikini and has the power to make us overeat at every turn. Sloth wears the green bikini, and causes us to remain motionless on couches while the mere thought of exercise is pondered only fleetingly and with abhorence. In the red bikini is Heavy Foods, whose wonderous cakes, delectible chocolates and candies overloaded with calories call ever bewitchingly to our ears. And last comes "Does My Ass Look Fat In This." She is the great deceiver who makes us lie to others and ourselves. Her siren song allows us to keep thinking that we can wait til the morrow to begin our diets and her discordant notes cause us to believe the claims of snake oil salesman who offer, for a heavy price, the latest placebo that they tell us will allow us to lose weight even as we settle in to eat the entire breakfast bar at Shoneys. Together they form the four horsewomen of the apolcalypse and their coming together is a harbinger of the end of days due to . . . . global warming? Er, yes, at least according to scientists in Britain who now count obesity as one of the primary causes of global warming.

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This from the Telegraph:

As if they didn’t already have enough problems on their hands fat people are now being blamed for global warming.

Mr Edwards and his colleague Ian Roberts argue that because thinner people eat less and are more likely to walk than rely on cars, a slimmer population would lower demand for fuel and food.

Because 20 percent of greenhouse gas stems from agriculture any reduction in food consumption would help cut emissions.

Edwards and Roberts found that obese people need 1,680 daily calories to sustain normal energy and another 1,280 calories to maintain daily activities, 18 percent more than someone with a healthy body mass index.

At least 400 million adults worldwide are obese. The World Health Organization (WHO) projects by 2015, 2.3 billion adults will be overweight and more than 700 million will be obese.

In their model, the researchers estimate 40 percent of the global population is obese, with a body mass index of 30 or over.

The normal range is usually considered to be 18 to 25, with more than 25 considered overweight and above 30 obese.

"Promotion of a normal distribution of BMI would reduce the global demand for, and thus the price of, food," Edwards and Roberts wrote in the latest edition of The Lancet. . . .

Read the entire article. I wonder how the Goracle is going to take this as he looks as if he has been filling out a lot lately. And let's not even get to Michael Moore and Rob Reiner. If this theory has any validity, than those two alone are likely responsible for the melting of the polar ice sheet.

At any rate, this turn of events marks a major departure from Britain's historically appreciative view of increasing waistlines. One imagines that the works of the great Ben Johnson's will soon fall out of favor. In anticipation of that tragedy, let's look at least one last time at Johnson's famous ode to obesity, composed near four centuries ago:

Hymn to the belly

Oom! room! make room for the bouncing Belly,
First father of sauce and deviser of jelly;
Prime master of arts and the giver of wit,
That found out the excellent engine, the spit,

The plough and the flail, the mill and the hopper,
The hutch and the boulter, the furnace and copper,
The oven, the bavin, the mawkin, the peel,
The hearth and the range, the dog and the wheel.

He, he first invented the hogshead and tun,
The gimlet and vice too, and taught 'em to run;
And since, with the funnel and hippocras bag,
He's made of himself that now he cries swag;

Which shows, though the pleasure be but of four inches,
Yet he is a weasel, the gullet that pinches
Of any delight, and not spares from his back
Whatever to make of the belly a sack.

Hail, hail, plump paunch! O the founder of taste,
For fresh meats or powdered, or pickle or paste!
Devourer of broiled, baked, roasted or sod!
And emptier of cups, be they even or odd!

All which have now made thee so wide i' the waist,
As scarce with no pudding thou art to be laced;
But eating and drinking until thou dost nod,
Thou break'st all thy girdles . . .
. . . . . and break'st forth a god.

From: Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue,
Ben Johnson, 1618.

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