Author Topic: UK government may start offering financial rewards for becoming healthier  (Read 27120 times)

This is a massive can of worms and much like the discussions about monetary theory and printing money there is increasing evidence that we are not simple metabolic machines where calories in equals work done +/_ fat stored.  there is a book "Burn" by an evolutionary biologist called Poztner and 2 podcast discussions with Sean of Science of Ultra on the topic. https://www.scienceofultra.com/podcasts/134 and https://www.scienceofultra.com/podcasts/145.

he makes the point that being significantly overweight in your 40s from being a normal weight in your 20s is a less than 1% mismatch in your daily calories over time.

I am not sure I understand it enough to explain it quickly but the concepts are fascinating.  I have just started reading the book.

Jaded

  • The Codfather
  • Formerly known as Jaded
Is there a correlation between car use and obesity?
It is simpler than it looks.

Davef

This is a massive can of worms and much like the discussions about monetary theory and printing money there is increasing evidence that we are not simple metabolic machines where calories in equals work done +/_ fat stored.  there is a book "Burn" by an evolutionary biologist called Poztner and 2 podcast discussions with Sean of Science of Ultra on the topic. https://www.scienceofultra.com/podcasts/134 and https://www.scienceofultra.com/podcasts/145.

he makes the point that being significantly overweight in your 40s from being a normal weight in your 20s is a less than 1% mismatch in your daily calories over time.

I am not sure I understand it enough to explain it quickly but the concepts are fascinating.  I have just started reading the book.
1 digestive biscuit a day is 3kg per year, 30kg per decade.

This is a massive can of worms and much like the discussions about monetary theory and printing money there is increasing evidence that we are not simple metabolic machines where calories in equals work done +/_ fat stored.  there is a book "Burn" by an evolutionary biologist called Poztner and 2 podcast discussions with Sean of Science of Ultra on the topic. https://www.scienceofultra.com/podcasts/134 and https://www.scienceofultra.com/podcasts/145.

he makes the point that being significantly overweight in your 40s from being a normal weight in your 20s is a less than 1% mismatch in your daily calories over time.

I am not sure I understand it enough to explain it quickly but the concepts are fascinating.  I have just started reading the book.
1 digestive biscuit a day is 3kg per year, 30kg per decade.
Or maybe the 40yos just burn less. How many 40yo people are more active than they were at 20? (this board may not be representative of the population :) )
I cycled/walked everywhere, played (team) sport (yes, I guess I'm the one person in this forum who liked some of them, though I never got on with rugby) and ate and drank what I liked. Then I got married, had a kid, some significant health issues, and from my mid 30s onwards, 3 or 4 hours of exercise a week has been about the upper limit I could fit in. I'm not obese, but I'm 13kg heavier than I was 20 years ago, and in the last year I've had to cut calories back significantly (the easiest for me has been on booze) because I have (yet another) injury that restricts me.

Edit to say that the local leisure centres have been closed since March last year, I doubt the council is going to be able to find the cash to re-open them when allowed. :(

ian

Is there a correlation between car use and obesity?

Yes. But car-use is correlated with broader lifestyle changes, more sedentary occupations, and the ready availability of highly calorific manufactured foods. These all conflate. Go back two generations to my grandparents, fast food was the local chippy (which you walked to) and was a special treat, there weren't any drive-thrus, they cooked (not well), and my gran went to shops every day with her little shopping trolley, even in her nineties. They had biscuits and snacks but they were firmly treats. Even in my childhood, if I was hungry, you waited for dinner time and there was none of that modern negotiation, as a kid you ate what was served, no matter how foul. If you didn't, you stayed hungry. I watch parents with kids now, bribing their kids to eat stuff. Oh Olivia won't eat vegetables. There's been an attitude swing in our relationship with food.

It's a valid point that you can't exercise away a bad diet and people will respond differently to food (and this will change over time, I could eat a kilogram bag of biscuits when I was ten, I couldn't now). You have to run a long way to burn off a Mars bar (probably about an hour on the bike). But exercise and activity certainly helps control weight and prevent the gain in the first place, and of course, it has a huge impact on cardiovascular fitness. Healthy, fit people generally live longer, and more importantly, those additional years have a good quality of life. It's also a valid point that the little things add up.

One of the changes is, of course, getting people invested and involved in their health. It's proactive and has to start young, it's too late if you turn up at GP at 45 because you have high blood pressure and the early signs of diabetes. It's very difficult at that point to address the issues.

There's so many societal changes all wrapped in there though. Go back 2 generations, and there were 3 TV channels, a woman's place was in the home, you could tell your kids to go out and play and come back at tea-time, computers needed a room (each) etc.

Jaded

  • The Codfather
  • Formerly known as Jaded
If 1 biscuit a day makes you fat, then 1 walk a day can do the opposite.

How do you get people to see that driving to the Stupormarket to save time and money damages you, your family, your bank balance, those that live on the route, the local economy, the local community, the economy of where you drive to, and probably some more too.

As long as voters drive and are fed the 'your choice' mantra, car manufacturers are allowed to peddle myths when it comes to car ownership and use, the government gets a chunk of cash from motoring, then things aren't going to change.
It is simpler than it looks.

Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
Not all PE teachers are bad.
Some teachers of any subject are bad but the mantra that "Those who can, do, those who can't, teach" is bullshit. I have a vague impression that the general standard of teachers has improved since I was at school. There might be a variation by subject, but at the level where it really matters for building habits (primary), teachers aren't subject specialist anyway.

I asked the boy (16) what he thought of PE at school, he said "meh". (direct quote!) Neither encouraging nor offputting, could be enjoyable when it didn't rain. Main comment was the school needs new buses! (another way of looking at this would be they shouldn't have to have a half hour bus trip for PE)
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

How do you get people to see that driving to the Stupormarket to save time and money damages you, your family, your bank balance, those that live on the route, the local economy, the local community, the economy of where you drive to, and probably some more too.
I don't know where you live, but there's a Sainsbury, Tesco, Waitrose, Iceland and Co-Op about a mile from my house. I'm guessing the nearest butcher and greengrocer are 3 miles away (no direct bus route), and I have no idea where the nearest bakery is. The "local economy" (aside from the "stupormarkets") is mostly bookmakers, estate agents, cafes/takeaways and charity shops (plus the odd randomly located corner shop, hair place, and chemist).
You can't tell people to make fresh food and tell them that they should buy their ingredients from the Spar.
Likewise - we can't expect people to leave for work at 8 and get back home after 6 and make good fresh nutritious food every day. I'm sure there are some people who do, and good on them, but for most it's just too much.
The structure of our society has eroded, leaving us with a whole series of bad choices.

ian

There's so many societal changes all wrapped in there though. Go back 2 generations, and there were 3 TV channels, a woman's place was in the home, you could tell your kids to go out and play and come back at tea-time, computers needed a room (each) etc.

It's true, and I don't mean to suggest we go back in time, but those are the sorts of changes that got us to where we are, in no small words, an epidemic of obesity that will have far more impact than Covid. As kids we were thrown out of the house after tea in all weathers, and let roam. Of course, in another of the changes, we had places to roam. Those are now crappy housing estates full of cars and children who aren't allowed to roam but must be driven to activities.

There's no magic change. Certainly focusing on community, encouraging people to shop and do things locally, take a chance on not using the car for every single thing would be beneficial, not just for individuals, but also local businesses. That alone involves changes in planning, but is doable without vast investment, but requires joined-up thinking and leadership. It's a lot better than simply telling people to go to the gym or learn to cook.

On the subject of choice: it's is a lie, but most people don't question it. Supermarkets don't really offer choice, they offer different varieties of the same things (ironically, supermarkets killed choice); driving your children across town to the school you've selected doesn't improve their educational outcome (investing in the local school, on the other hand). Etc.

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
I asked the boy (16) what he thought of PE at school, he said "meh". (direct quote!) Neither encouraging nor offputting, could be enjoyable when it didn't rain. Main comment was the school needs new buses! (another way of looking at this would be they shouldn't have to have a half hour bus trip for PE)

Wait, what?

Presumably they've sold off the playing fields.  But that does suggest a substantial increase in the amount of time allocated for PE since I was at school.

ian

Our main PE activity was faking excuse notes. By the time we got to about fourteen, the general view from the teacher was that we could fuck off and be crap at sport on someone else's watch. More cynically, I think he preferred his boys younger.

Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
I asked the boy (16) what he thought of PE at school, he said "meh". (direct quote!) Neither encouraging nor offputting, could be enjoyable when it didn't rain. Main comment was the school needs new buses! (another way of looking at this would be they shouldn't have to have a half hour bus trip for PE)

Wait, what?

Presumably they've sold off the playing fields.  But that does suggest a substantial increase in the amount of time allocated for PE since I was at school.
Two hours once a week. Take away an hour's bus time and a bit of changing time and there probably wasn't much running around or getting cold time left.

The playing fields were built on as the school expanded. They've maintained a small playing field for playtimes along with a "MUGA" (concrete sports area), an indoor gym and even an astroturf pitch, at vast expense, which was never used. But still for some reason they bussed 30 minutes each way for PE. By the way, there's no PE and Games split nowadays.

Final snippet, you can see this school (which he's left) masquerading as an American high school in the Alex Ryder series being filmed for (Netflix? Amazon Prime? someone... ).
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

It's a regular sight in many towns and cities to see crocodiles of schoolchildren or bus loads of them shuffling between school campuses and distant playing fields.

Thst's a huge chunk of lesson time wasted and it's time taken out of PE.

But still for some reason they bussed 30 minutes each way for PE.

How far away is it? Perhaps they could walk and get some exerc... never mind.

ian

We used to get bussed to the local pool (which wasn't that local – there was a closer one, but that was in Derbyshire so a different authority and still the next town over) in a coach so asthmatic that, on the return trip, which involved a hill, we all had to get out and walk to the top before getting back on the coach.

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
We used to get bussed to the local pool (which wasn't that local – there was a closer one, but that was in Derbyshire so a different authority and still the next town over) in a coach so asthmatic that, on the return trip, which involved a hill, we all had to get out and walk to the top before getting back on the coach.

At least they let you back on.  Barakta will be along in a minute with tales of the Bollock Bus (which was basically the same thing, but with a Stockport Bus Driver™ at the wheel).

ian

At least the school had decent playing fields (and still, if google is to be believed, still does) - they sold a chunk off for a Morrisons but, tbh, it was excess to requirements. Actually, it was two sites (an upper and lower school), and they both had plenty of playing fields but they knocked the lower school down (rumour has it they didn't tell the kids) about twenty years ago. It still there as scrubby rubble with playing fields attached (a bit of a shame, it was a proper old Victorian school building, the kind of thing that would fetch bazillions if converted into flats in London-ish). Actually, there's a couple of primary schools, I presume those fields belong to them. But plenty anyway, which is a pleasant surprise, but possibly no one wants to live in the East Midlands.

Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
But still for some reason they bussed 30 minutes each way for PE.

How far away is it? Perhaps they could walk and get some exerc... never mind.
Lol! Actually there's loads that could be said about this particular school playing field saga (ongoing legal case with surrounding residents) but it's more relevant to the "crap management of schools" thread that we could probably magic up.
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

barakta

  • Bastard lovechild of Yomiko Readman and Johnny 5
We used to get bussed to the local pool (which wasn't that local – there was a closer one, but that was in Derbyshire so a different authority and still the next town over) in a coach so asthmatic that, on the return trip, which involved a hill, we all had to get out and walk to the top before getting back on the coach.

At least they let you back on.  Barakta will be along in a minute with tales of the Bollock Bus (which was basically the same thing, but with a Stockport Bus Driver™ at the wheel).

Nah, it wasn't the Bollock (Bullocks) bus which abandoned us, that was the poshest of our council provided school buses and was only a single decker.

It was the ancient Greater Manchester Public Transport GMPT orange double deckers which were sacrificed for school transport that couldn't get up the hill - especially not with standing both downstairs and upstairs in contravention of the standing number rules. The trick was to know they'd sneakily change the route to the left and not directly up/over the hill as usual so they'd not abandon you.

Mum used to get into fights with the school cos they'd cram us on beyond the legitimate standing capacity which she felt was dangerous and created conditions where "standing" pupils just happened to be able to do pileons.

I don't miss the school fucking buses.

Saw a queue of cars back out into the road from a drive through McDs today.  I was walking on the open Heathland opposite. Something else I noted was that the bins on the Heath have the McDs M on them.  So even if out on the Heath, getting exercise, you are getting a conscious or subconscious message to visit McDs.

Went to a secondary school reunion , oh probably 20 years ago now. They’d built all over the school playing fields.

ian

Saw a queue of cars back out into the road from a drive through McDs today.  I was walking on the open Heathland opposite. Something else I noted was that the bins on the Heath have the McDs M on them.  So even if out on the Heath, getting exercise, you are getting a conscious or subconscious message to visit McDs.

That's probably a perfect picture of the problem.

Jaded

  • The Codfather
  • Formerly known as Jaded
Saw a queue of cars back out into the road from a drive through McDs today.  I was walking on the open Heathland opposite. Something else I noted was that the bins on the Heath have the McDs M on them.  So even if out on the Heath, getting exercise, you are getting a conscious or subconscious message to visit McDs.

Ah yes, raising money for cash-strapped councils through "Commercialisation". It's perfect, what could possibly be wrong with that!
It is simpler than it looks.

ian

I'd also make them responsible for the costs of their litter. And not through sponsored bins. It's probably a matter of time till they sponsor a cardiovascular unit.