The perfect diet : ripping off the obese
There is no group of people more abused and more likely to be ripped off by cynical businessmen than the obese. Softened up by a perpetually patronising media which portrays them as second class citizens – always remember that fat people are stupid – they are targeted and abused by the advertising industry. I was reminded today why we do not see drug reps when one managed to get as far as our front desk and left the usual collection of crappy branded biros and washing powder adverts. I have never prescribed sibutramine and this advert reinforces my resolve. There is much coverage today about the new finding that “artificial sweeteners make you fat.” Maybe, though I doubt it. The more likely explanation is that fat people use artificial sweeteners. When the after-dinner coffee arrives it is always the fattest person at the dinner table who produces that little dispenser of carcinogenic white tablets. “I’m on a diet, you know”. No, you didn’t know because that statement is not compatible with the Creme Brulee (challenge : is it possible to get more calories in a smaller place?) he/she has just had at the end of a hearty meal which was washed down with a vat of wine.
There is no quick fix for obesity despite the multi-billion pound industry that pretends there is. We need to start treating fat people as normal, intelligent human beings. Some of them (if they ask, New Labour please note) may need help and support but they do not need patronising. I particularly hate the cereal manufactures who try to invest a cardboard box of sugar-sodden cereal with health giving properties. “Be good to your heart.” “Healthy start” and so on. A large bowel of
may contain the correct daily requirement of niacin (or whatever the currently trendy vitamin is) but, sprinkled with yet more sugar and topped up with a third of a pint of full fat milk, it has more calories than a traditional English breakfast.“Chocky-minty-sugar-oaty-apline-sludge”
Sole purpose of staying in a hotelBacon, egg, sausage, tomato, beans and fried bread (sole purpose of staying in a hotel) is a more pleasant way to do it. I think I will start an advertising campaign. But I shall do so honestly. I shall call it “Heart Fucker”. So here goes.
“Start your day with a plate of old English ‘Heart Fucker' - and live your short life to the full.At least, then, we all know where we are.
Labels: cereals, obesity, patronising, sibutramine
32 Comments:
Here here Dr C, about time someone took a stand against these companys.
Dr C,
I've noticed you are including more anglo-saxon in your blogs. Are you getting angrier or is Dr Rant ghost writing them?
Keep it up
Xavier
No, no, I'm still independent. Dr Rant and the DK are of course influential as always. But as I said on Haloscan, this is not really a swear word, merely a post watershed way of describing a full English breakfast
John
Dr John Crippen
That heart fucker breakfast looks great - are you taking orders and can you deliver?
Of the few things I miss about Blighty, the 'full cooked breakfast' is high on the list. Last time I was there, we leapt off the plane at Heathrow, shot up the A1(M) to our hotel, ran in panting, only to be told that 'breakfast ended 5 minutes ago'. I was inconsolable.
If there's an aspect of health-related advertising in the US that really troubles me, it's the commercials for major surgery (LapBand, stomach-stapling,ASF) for weight loss. No doubt a patient can't even get close to the surgery without a serious discussion of the implications but still - it bothers me. And there's very little advertising that bothers me.
Recent research seems to suggest that mild overweight has very few negative health outcomes and may even offer some limited benefits. So a lot of this segment of healthcare is catering as much to vanity as it is to any serious health issues - despite the frenzied squawking of the ever-present Comstocking nannies whose greatest pleasure these days seems to be in telling people what not to eat. When every other vice and debauchery known to man's posterity has now been agreed to be normal, healthy and altogether unremarkable, I suppose that food is all they have left. But (coming back to the point, and there is one) you cannot legislate man's vanities, no matter how hard you try.
llater,
llamas
Oh, yum, yum, yum... thr only time I ever eat a breakfast like that (and you can skip thr beans, add potsto scones and black pudding) is when I stay in aa hotel.
Fortunately I do this less than once a year!
Dr C,
A quick question. I recall being told once that sugars have the effect of making the small intestines more 'porous' to long chain molecules like lipids. Is this so? Ergo, packing 'Healthy' options' ready meals with starch (Which breaks down into sugars in the gut) makes them anything but?
Dear Doc
This post has just caused me to burst out laughing.
I'm not sure I'll be able to eat an English breakfast with a straight face again.
Thanks :]
Very true Dr C,
PCTs are also wasting a shed load of cash on crap anti-obesity strategies that have really minimal and crap evidence behind them,
many businesses are milking the PCTs by peddling their useless diets and vouchers,
while people with genuine medical pathology are not allowed to be treated as they find their diagnoses are no longer 'treated' in good old Stalin's gulag-like NHS!
Ah how I love your blog and so true too!
Here's the thing, there's very little money in telling people the truth about weight loss. I was a fatso for about 24 of my 34 years so far on earth. I did hypnotherapy and learned not to eat so much. It cost me £10 for a CD. That's not going to make much money for the pharmas now is it?
But would it be so bad for govt to allow GPs to try such methods? If people actually actively seek help? You are allowed to prescribe nicotine patches, with obesity it's a thinking patch that's needed IMHO.
Oh and I make it a personal quest never to eat anything masquerading as 'food' which I cannot identify as being based on a particular animal or plant. If you can't look at something and work out the three main ingredients - or the first ingredient contains the word 'whipped' it's probably not something you want to ingest.
Agree with you about portrayal of fat people in the media. In disaster films, fat people generally do not make it past the first five minutes of the film; Towering Inferno, Jurassic Park, Jaws and Poseidian all kill off the fatty. Dr Who, much to my disappointment, killed off the two fatties (although it was at the end, so I suppose that's progress) in their Christmas special. I wish they would have a film where all the thin people got blown up and the fatties finished off the baddies. We live in hope..
"A large bowel of
“Chocky-minty-sugar-oaty-apline-sludge”
Sounds even more vile after it's been digested.
Ah Dr C. I must correct you on the composition of a heart fucker. First you take two slices of white bread, smear with lovely salted butter, add a liberal splodge of tomato ketchup. Once the base has been prepared you add some fried bacon and one soft fried egg. If the fat in the sandwich doesn't give you a heart attack the stress of keeping your clothing clean will. But what a way to go.
"Recent research seems to suggest that mild overweight has very few negative health outcomes and may even offer some limited benefits."
I don't know about that, as nice as it sounds. Research to date has actually found that lifespan can be dramatically increased by cutting daily calorie intake by 40-50%. This research has, as you can imagine, not been particularly popular with people nor a big money spinner for anyone and so a lot of people haven't heard about it. It sounds a bit crap to me too-a LONG life of not eating much. Bluh.
However even mildly overweight people have an increased risk of coronary artery disease, stroke, various cancers including ovarian, breast, endometrial, colorectal etc, and recently high sugar intake has been implicated in pancreatic cancer development. Unfortunately it is still better to be lean. Better to get there with diet and exercise though-liposuction and surgery do nothing for your arteries!
yea when arriving at heathrow after a long spell abroad i used to ask taxi man to take me straight to little chef and have an olympic breakfast
prefer fruit these days
Roche under spotlight over diet pills case
By Andrew Jack
Published: February 11 2008 22:00 | Last updated: February 11 2008 22:54
Roche, the Swiss pharmaceuticals company, financially backed and sold large quantities of its prescription slimming medicine to the operator of a chain of private UK diet clinics in spite of suspicions at one stage that the pills were being sold illegally.
The case provides insights into the marketing practices of a pharmaceutical company selling a leading drug in the slimming aid sector.
EDITOR’S CHOICE
Large Roche orders aroused suspicions - Feb-11Researchers hail new MS drug - Jan-30Analysis: The ethics of offshoring clinical trials - Jan-28Measures to limit drug marketing questioned - Jan-18Call for rethink over drug assessments - Jan-10Push for 10% drug price cut - Jan-07Although he is neither doctor nor pharmacist, Robin Huxley was sold Xenical by Roche’s UK subsidiary over a long period, even after its own undercover operations showed he was prescribing the drug himself and raised concerns that he was selling it on in the “grey market”.
Roche said it had no reason to suspect Mr Huxley was not a pharmacist, or that he was not legally qualified to sell the drug.
The revelations, contained in internal company documents submitted to an employment tribunal for unfair dismissal brought by Roche’s former UK head of regulatory affairs, show that the company also agreed to pay Mr Huxley £55,000 to help “support” the purchase of another diet clinic after he explained it would increase sales of Xenical under his management.
UK law tightly restricts who can sell and prescribe medicines, while the pharmaceutical industry’s code of practice forbids the provision of financial incentives to boost prescriptions.
Mr Huxley, also known as Rob Harrison, was investigated by the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency and pleaded guilty in December to violations of the 1968 Medicines Act restricting the wholesale dealing and sale of prescription drugs. He is due for sentencing this month.
Roche said it was the “victim of criminal activity” and added: “There has never been any suggestion by the MHRA of any wrongdoing by Roche in relation to this case.” It says it no longer sells the medicine directly to private slimming clinics.
A report written by one of the company’s staff posing as a new client in May 2003 describes how Mr Huxley personally sold him Xenical. “To a lay person he would have passed as a doctor,” he wrote. Roche staff later said they were satisfied by their audits and approved continued supplies of the drug at a discount to the NHS price.
Another document describing the “private clinic funding proposal” says Mr Huxley requested the company’s help “in supporting the purchase of particular clinics”, adding that he believed “this undoubtedly makes switching to Xenical easier”.
Roche said it was “standard commercial practice” to monitor a new market. After several visits it was “satisfied that the clinics were being run properly and the demand for our medicine was genuine . . . We were concerned about the volume of Xenical being used and had no reason to suspect that the staff running the clinic were not genuine.”
Roche said it paid the first £20,000 of a £55,000 grant to Mr Huxley. But it had no ownership stake and the money was “for sponsorship and set-up of [a clinic] which we believed to be . . . legitimate,” it added. “The funding was unrestricted and in no way linked to the prescribing of Xenical.”
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
hello again dr crippen! if I were you I'd get a patent on the heartfucker breakfast before those evil globalization kings with a mascot clown called ronald get wind of it! Just wondering where you stand on hospital food? It took us two years of petitioning but we now gave fresh fruit available, my appeal for wholemeal or even plain brown bread is ongoing, for now its acute coronary syndrome on a plate in the morning, otherwise known as white bread and butter
An edible breakfast of any kind would have been great during my last stay in hospital. Instead, I got soggy toast. Now, is it difficult to make toast? No, not unless you're a caterer in the NHS. Then it really does seem to be rocket science.
I am not fat, by the way, and tend to stay the same weight whatever, but I certainly lost several pounds over the few days I was in there.
Dr Jane Doe wrote:
'"Recent research seems to suggest that mild overweight has very few negative health outcomes and may even offer some limited benefits."
I don't know about that, as nice as it sounds. '
Then I suggest you start looking at eg
http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/
where you will find plenty of hard-scientific evidence that shows that mild overweight has very few negative health outcomes and may even offer some limited benefits. The 'obesity paradox' articles are a good place to start.
I in turn would love to see evidence for the contention that lidesapn can be 'dramatically increased' by cutting daily calorie intake by 40-50% - or any greater part of the population than the minority who are quite seriously overweight. After all, what this suggests is that a person who has a noraml calorie intake of 2000-2500 kcal per day will live dramatically longer on 1000-1250 kcal per day. I have an awfully hard time stomaching that. The US Instituite of Medicine tables for daily calorie requirements to maintain health shows these figures to be adequate only for very young children.
Reagrdless of that, most of the hoopla about weight, overweight and obesity is just that - hoopla. It's a mixture of four things, to wit
- human vanity and whatver the current body-image fad may be
- the insatiable Comstockery of nannies, both public and private, to control and demonize behaviours of which they disapprove on moral grounds
- the desire of government-run healthcare systems to reduce costs (although, of course, since we are talking about government action, they have it 100% wrong, since research shows that thin non-smokers cost healthcare systems the most over their lifetimes), and
- the desire of commercial interests to make money by catering to/pandering to all 3 forces above.
llater,
llamas
Good Lord - I'm working on a laptop. I didn't realize just how lousy my typing is on these little tiny Chiclet keys. I will try and do better.
llater,
llamas
Doctor...
With reference to your "Heartfucker":
I am having doubts about your abilities as a scientist and professional.
I have long been an anthusiastic consumer of breakfasts of this type but (a) I'm not overweight, and (b) my heart is just about the only part of me that isn't fucked! :-) :-)
Dr C,
http://ferretfancier.blogspot.com/2008/02/milking-fat.html
where's the evidence?
its all good fun... until you lose your legs to diabetes
A shedload of cereal with skimmed milk is the true Heart Fucker
Lose the (very tasty) fried bread and the farties, and there's nowt wrong with the TBB, or Traditional British Breakfast
http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.0040076&ct=1
Above is a link to one of the studies done on caloric restriction and increased lifespan. Note that this is not in the context of malnutrition.
Dr. Jane Doe.
Dr Jane Doe originally wrote:
"Research to date has actually found that lifespan can be dramatically increased by cutting daily calorie intake by 40-50%."
and then provided this link to a research paper.
In a nutshell, that research paper says
- not cutting daily calorie intake by "40-50%", but rather by "up to 25%", and with exercise, has shown
- not "that lifespan can be dramatically increased", but that certain markers which suggest increased lifespan can be promoted, which may increase lifespan by an unknown amount, by means of a mechanism not clearly understood
- in people who were overweight to start with.
- over a limited period of time.
In other words, a big old ball of maybe nothing - which stands in sharp contrast to the definitive claim originally made.
I'm not a medical doctor - are you sure you are?
llater,
llamas
Sorry, the original study that I was referring to was done on rats, involved caloric restriction of varying degrees up to 50% (the longets lived group). It was two years ago that I last read it and cannot remember whcih journal it came from. that link I posted was less than ideal, but you get the idea. No need for hostility! I'm one of the not so skinnies myself, I understand completely.
Dr. Jane Doe
I'm from Japan.
Glad to meet you.
Please link to this site.
Keep it up please.
Very Good article , this article make some interesting points.
Tactical Flashlights
r c helicopter
video game
Tactical Flashlight
Overweight teenagers have a higher risk of growing into overweight adults, with an increased chance of developing type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, metabolic syndrome, arthritis, sleep apnea and non-alcohol fatty liver disease. http://www.phentermine-effects.com
Weight loss truths keeps you updated with latest information on weight loss tips, exercises, books and diets apart from enhancing your acumen with in-depth knowledge of traditional weight loss stuff and issues.For more information visit http://www.weight-loss-truths.com
Well if it wasn't for me, neither the MHRA or ABPI would have known about Robin Huxley, Stephen Pownall and Dr John Firth( GP) in their greed for money with the slimming clinics !!!
The sad thing is....Only Robin Huxley was imprisoned!!!
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home