Obesity - it's all the NHS' fault!

There's always someone to blame for the obesity epidemic, except that if it's the fatties talking then they will never blame themselves and if it's central government then they will also never blame themselves. For example this overweight fatty thinks the NHS should take more of the blame:

"Yes, we are letting ourselves down by being overweight and it’s my choice what I eat, but if someone makes that big decision to access services, even if they are just a couple of stones overweight, the resources should be there."

Indeed it is your choice, I also agree that the resources should be there, however largely (what a pun) I do not mean NHS resources. This is because much of the money that is being thrown at anti-obesity treatments and resources is a complete waste, as there is no decent evidence that they will do anything to make our fatties less fat. The drugs are rubbish, and as for PCTs handing out slimming vouchers, don't get me started on that.

Most of the problems come from a complete lack of holistic management and policy making from central government. Where are our cheap and excellent communal sports facilities? Where is our excellent school sport and healthy school food? Where are our green open spaces? Where is our excellent public transport that would encourage us to walk a bit more rather than using the car for everything? Where is that cheap subsides and tax free fruit and veg? Where are the fast food grease pits that have been taxed more heavily to make profiting from heart attacks that bit more tricky?

You get the picture. Doctors can at best do very very little to help their fat patients, they can refer the fattest for bariatric surgey which is only a very last resort with significant morbidity and mortality attached, they can prescribe drugs that cost a lot and do sod all, or they can refer patients to services that also do sod all.

Unless people start taking more responsibility for their weight and stop blaming their genes, then we will just carry on getting fatter, by the way if it was all in the genes then we would have all been this fat fifty years ago. Also the government could also do a hell of a lot more to counter this growing problem in all areas of policy making, blaming the NHS and staff is utterly stupid as well as futile. This is a big systematic problem rooted in our rather short termist culture, and untiul we start to address the real underlying causes, this tide of lard will only gather momentum.