Britain third in the Top Ten Obesity League

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Corin
Posts: 132
Joined: Mon 18 Aug, 2003 21.14
Location: Cents, Letzeubuerg

Great Britain (England, Wales, Scotland) is at position number 3 in the top ten league of obese nations, with almost one quarter of the population being obese.

According to

<http://www.nzherald.co.NZ/section/story ... D=10358429>

Country................Obese percentage of population:

United States.........30.6
Mexico.................24.2
Britain................23.0
Slovak Republic......22.4
Greece................21.9
Australia...............21.7
New Zealand.........20.9
Hungary..............18.8
Luxembourg.........18.4
Czech Republic......14.8

(Source: OECD)
Dr Toomath, who is also a spokeswoman for Fight the Obesity Epidemic, blames the rise on the marketing of junk food.

"We are terribly prone to marketing techniques which are unbelievably diverse, and subtle and powerful."

She said products previously consumed only occasionally, such as chips and soft drinks, - " " - were now "locked into culture, as something you eat several times a day".
If the root of the problem is marketing techniques manipulating people to eat bad diets, should legislative action be taken to control the manipulators in order to protect the weak-willed?
Feynman: "String theorists do not make predictions, they make excuses."
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Bail
Posts: 1142
Joined: Fri 15 Aug, 2003 21.41
Location: UK

No. Simple because it's their own fault. Everyone knows it's better to eat an apple then a cake. But cakes taste better so the cake wins.

You also don't see advertsing for healthy things, and "orgnaic" is stupidly overpriced.
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cdd
Posts: 2622
Joined: Fri 15 Aug, 2003 14.05

Depends to what extent. Compulsory rationing on fatty foods would be excessive but a ban on advertising unhealthy food would be OK in my opinion.

Eating fat foods has a huge external cost on society in the form of surplus use of the NHS, and so reasonable measures to curb this in my view would be appropriate.
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Fireboy
Posts: 294
Joined: Tue 10 Feb, 2004 18.35
Location: Tyneside

Bail wrote:No. Simple because it's their own fault. Everyone knows it's better to eat an apple then a cake. But cakes taste better so the cake wins.

You also don't see advertsing for healthy things, and "orgnaic" is stupidly overpriced.
Organic is around 15-20% more, but well worth it for the taste.
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