The body politic has no business telling us how we should be eating

THERE is one alleged problem, nay crisis, featured prominently in both the Fine Gael and Labour manifestos but there is no mention in the Programme for Government.

And a good it is thing too. Not only are the claims of an obesity epidemic often wildly exaggerated, but the science linking weight to unfavourable mortality outcomes is also frequently non-existent or distorted.

Campaigners are very fond of telling us blithely that the estimated number of overweight children in Ireland has trebled in the last decade. More than 300,000 children are now overweight or obese, don’t you know?

One recent study carried out in Co Mayo has gained a great deal of traction in the media. It measured the prevalence of obesity in 3,500 children. Overall, 27% were classified as overweight or obese. More girls than boys are affected, it found.

But what do these terms mean? It is as if there were universally accepted definitions of “overweight” and of “obese” when there are not. The idea that children weighing over a certain amount are fat or obese has no scientific foundation, as the dividing line between fat and normal is purely arbitrary, representing nothing more than a public health bureaucrat’s notion of where normal ends and fat begins.

The entire idea of fat children is largely a cultural construct, not a scientific one. A hundred years ago, today’s penchant for thin children would have been considered a shocking instance of child neglect.

There is furthermore no compelling evidence that an overweight child of six, seven or eight years of age will become an overweight adult. For a whole host of reasons — from normal changes in hormones and body make-up through to personal lifestyle changes made while growing up — chubby kids can become slim adults and vice versa.

Still, there is no doubt that our apparently ever-expanding waistlines are still regarded as one of the key health issue of our times. The figures are certainly dramatic. Our average weights have indeed shot up.

But this does not, despite the scaremongering of much of the medical profession, mean that we’re all about to drop like bloated flies. In fact, there is little difference in rates of illness and mortality for people in the “normal”, “overweight” and “mildly obese” categories.

Indeed, the whole problem of obesity is greatly exaggerated. True, a small proportion of the population is so fat that it can become a serious impediment both to their mobility and their general health.

But for the vast majority of people, however, from those at the bottom end of the “normal” weight range through to those categorised as mildly obese, body weight make little or no practical difference to their lives or life expectancies. Defining the majority of the population as “overweight” — and, by definition, ill — is absurd and has no basis in evidence.

After decades of being told to eat less and move more, we have become fatter than ever. We could, therefore, use a little humility from the medical establishment in admitting that their advice has utterly failed. Then we could at last have a sensible debate about how we can deal with obesity once and for all, freed from endless moralising about the failings of the fat.

A persistent moan from health campaigners and watchdogs has been that personal behaviour has changed little despite the panic about obesity. We are not all calling by the gym on our way to work. Nor are very many of us eating all the fruit and vegetables we are told to. Annoyingly for the health establishment, though, we are living longer than ever in spite of our supposedly bad behaviour.

Despite decades of failure from exhorting the overweight to eat less and exercise more — in the vast majority of cases, an utterly useless prescription that works, at best, only for a short time — the medical establishment would rather we believed that we lack willpower, that we are lazy, rather than admit that its ideas were wrong.

For at least the past 10 years, there has been veritable hysteria. Obesity is a life-threatening disease we have been told. TV programmes like You Are What You Eat have taken great joy in reducing people to blubbering wrecks as the so-called expert informs them (or their loved ones) that their weight is going to kill them — a message reinforced by countless magazine articles and news items which ram home the message that skinny is good, fat is bad.

We have watched, we have secretly enjoyed (usually working-class) porkers made to feel guilty, and then we have carried on pretty much as before — and been none the worse for doing so. We know intuitively that carrying a few extra pounds is not a death sentence.

In response, the health fascists have become ever more shrill in their demands. Obese, or not obese? That is their question. Some believe that calling overweight people “fat” rather than “obese” is more likely to encourage them to get trim. Others, however, prefer the medical term “obese”, believing that it communicates to overweight people the (alleged) seriousness of their condition.

But what about the more basic questions: is it really the place of doctors and health officials to tell people what to eat or how much we should weigh? Who are they to label us fat or obese anyway?

If people don’t know they’re fat, it’s not necessarily because they are in denial – it might just be that they’re not fat. Obesity, as defined in terms of body mass index by the medical profession, certainly doesn’t match what the rest of society understands as fat or obese.

So, regardless of whether the officially approved label is “fat” or “obese”, it doesn’t necessarily follow that you can “take responsibility” (a favourite phrase of theirs) and lose weight in any lasting way. Moreover, given the low health risks attached to mild obesity, there is no particular reason why you should want to.

There is little mystery behind our expanding waistlines. Once upon a time, you had your meals at fixed times. They were fairly formal occasions whether you called it “luncheon” or “dinner”, “tea” or “supper”.

Now, few bother with meals at set times except in conditions of exceptional formality. Instead, we have become a nation of all-day munchers, who cannot tolerate the discomfort of waiting for lunch as we were taught to do in childhood.

Instead, we graze all say, nibbling snacks at the faintest rumblings of hunger. And we encourage our children to do the same. What government can do to make us return to our old habit of three square meals a day, I am not quite sure — and neither, it seems, is the Government.

Certainly, trying to replicate the smoking ban would be foolish. The evidence from the Canadian province of Quebec and from Sweden, both of which have imposed advertising bans on foods to children, is that there have not been significant reductions in childhood obesity or any marked differences in obesity rates.

It would be better if politicians just stopped talking about the shape of our bodies altogether. It’s just none of their business. We are more than capable of working out what is best for us all on our own.