NHS England boss Simon Stevens said staff must 'get our own act together' before it can lecture the public on cutting down on calories.He's got the ghost of a point there. Of course it would be an outrageous condescending imposition on time-poor, caring professionals. I dislike the way 'lifestyle' picks the same easy targets; drugs, booze, fat bodies, smoking, spot the odd one out.
Why no patronizing lectures about sexual abuse/assault/harassment, bullying? Apart from being unconscionable, these "lifestyles" cost healthcare ££££'s by damaging the health of other people.
And why not press condescending marriage advice? If you can tell people what to eat, you can certainly tell them which partner to choose. The high divorce rate shows the public cannot be trusted to pick their own. Divorce increases the risks of a health problems for years after.
Or how about anger management, for the damage it can do to you and those you take it out on? As a rule, we should subject ourselves to our closest equivalent of whatever we're demanding of others. No smelly stuff about "I am so great here, you aren't". No, everyone who insisting others should engage in a punitive time consuming struggle the wrong way, should at least have to engage with their own nemeses.
Because, healthcare savings!!!
It's always bugged me that fatter medical professionals and those in positions of influence and privilege have for too long refused to exit the delusion that dieting is a sustainable way of life for most people.When they know better. It's one of the things that's enabled fat people's loss of credibility. Fat people not using their credibility to tell the truth leads to it being undermined. If you don't believe in yourself, why would anyone else?
That's what I like so much about old time drug addicts. Despite being trashed to heck by society, they still refused to permit others to overstep the mark in defining them.
That's why everyone wants to be an addict, in spite of the stigma they still attach to (real) addicts.
Why do people always think fat phobia will go round them forever? The detachment of fat people from humanness via the use of the disease metaphor has been so effective. It's like when cattle are stunned. People can't move mentally, until it stings them and breaks through the static.
Let's face it, happily assaulting the public with fat phobia has helped this to now bite them on the arse. I'm both sympathetic and not.
As for the NHS. We've had a lot of lectures about the cheapness of a diet based on fresh produce. Yet institutions from schools to its own great self consistently decide to welcome in commercial food operators for cash. Though it apparently doesn't make much out of it. Long after the 'obesity crisis was invented.
I had no idea why this was the case, till I read what med profs say on it. Turns out, it's a source of sustenance at a stressful time for patients and their visitors. A treat for children going through pain and trauma. A few may not even make it out alive.
As well as something to keep professionals going on long busy shifts or in lieu of their often unedifying canteens.
Eating's emotional.
If this does become a thing, it could spread to other public servants for example politicians and social workers.
Yet another mass long-term weight loss diet experiment on public servants, with attendant side effects could help force some much needed realism in this area.
I can't say its a nice idea, but if people won't stand up for what they know to be real. Then one has to ask how they can object to putting it into action on their own good selves?
It might be best in the long run to have this play out in the face of what could be some official scrutiny this time.
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