Fat Bomb!

So recently there have been a couple of reports about which parts of the country contain the fattest people.

However, there seems to be a big gap in the psyhcology of why people are fat or obese or overweight or chubby or festively plump or whatever you might like to call it.

A lot of attention is put into people not eating healthily- which of course is the biggest reason. Yet as with knife crime, politicians and commentators seem to miss the reason for this. The given excuse is that people cannot control themselves, are weak willed and are addidicted to things like chocolate. Just look at what the Conservatives have recently said:

“Tell people that biology and the environment causes obesity and they are offered the one thing we have to avoid: an excuse… As it is, people who see more fat people around them may themselves be more likely to gain weight. ” Andrew Lansley http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7583669.stm

In my humble opinion, the key area that people are forgetting when it comes to fat people (and other issues including knife crime) is income inequality.

Think about the £2 chicken fiasco last year. These chickens are obviously pumped with so much more fat than organic and free range chickens because of the way they are bought up- yet they are so much cheaper than organic and free range. So when it comes to your weekly shop, if your budget is tight and you have a family to feed, which chicken are you likely to buy?

This is the same with processed food and ready meals- both of which contain more fat and salt than the same meals created from the ingredients in your own home (consider that chicken in ready meals are normally the basic standard chickens- the same kind as the £2 chickens). However, buying the individual ingredients is a lot more expensive than buying the finished product to stick in the microwave.

Now, there is a slight tinge of laziness concerning the second example, but ultimately if you have little money, it makes economic sense to buy the ready meal.

Yet politicians don’t seem to be picking up on this as one of the major causes of obesity. Instead we are all obviously just lazy and use any excuse going to get fat!

Now there are a lot of obese people who are not poor. Instead these people are just images of the past, where the majority of fat people were the affluent (like this gentleman http://www.ukdigitalradio.com/freemag/images/Jon%20Gaunt.jpg).

However, there does still seem to have been some social mobility with obesity, and now it is one of the key symbols (sterotypes) of being poor.

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On a simular note, in his latest column, Dominic Lawson has pointed out that the latest report on where the most obese parts of the country are (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7584191.stm) was funded by Roche, a company that sell anti-obesity drugs. http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/dominic-lawson/dominic-lawson-dont-believe-obesity-figures-ndash-theyre-spun-for-a-purpose-912216.html Interesting…

I love this guy…

… Dennis Kucinich.

He is a Member of the US House of Presentatives from Ohio. He ran for the Democratic Presidential Nomination in 2004 and 2008, but was sadly brushed aside to the world’s loss.

I first became aware of Kucinich when i did a test to find out which Presidental Candidate i was most like- it turned out that every answer i gave fitted Kucinichs’ policies perfectly.

He is one of the only politicians in America with the guts to attempt bring about impeachment upon George W. Bush, yet it fails everytime as other Democrats are afraid of what would happen to them politically if they support the articles.

Anyway, while the spotlight at the Democratic Convention was being hogged by Hilary Clinton on tuesday, Kucinich came up with perhaps one of the most uplifting and hopefully one of the most important political speechs of recent times. It may not had been intellectually heavy, it may not had been groundbreaking, it may had not had contained revolutionary policies, but Kucinich shows, as he always has, how messed up America is under the Republicans, and he delivers it in a way Americans would recognise- as a preacherman!

Here’s the video:

Here is the transcript of his speech:

“It’s Election Day 2008. We Democrats are giving America a wake-up call. Wake up, America. In 2001, the oil companies, the war contractors and the neo-con artists seized the economy and have added 4 trillion dollars of unproductive spending to the national debt. We now pay four times more for defense, three times more for gasoline and home heating oil and twice what we paid for health care.

Millions of Americans have lost their jobs, their homes, their health care, their pensions. Trillions of dollars for an unnecessary war paid with borrowed money. Tens of billions of dollars in cash and weapons disappeared into thin air, at the cost of the lives of our troops and innocent Iraqis, while all the president’s oilmen are maneuvering to grab Iraq’s oil.

Borrowed money to bomb bridges in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. No money to rebuild bridges in America. Money to start a hot war with Iran. Now we have another cold war with Russia, while the American economy has become a game of Russian roulette.

If there was an Olympics for misleading, mismanaging and misappropriating, this administration would take the gold. World records for violations of national and international laws. They want another four-year term to continue to alienate our allies, spend our children’s inheritance and hollow out our economy.

We can’t afford another Republican administration. Wake up, America. The insurance companies took over health care. Wake up, America. The pharmaceutical companies took over drug pricing.

Wake up, America. The speculators took over Wall Street. Wake up, America. They want to take your Social Security. Wake up, America. Multinational corporations took over our trade policies, factories are closing, good paying jobs lost.

Wake up, America. We went into Iraq for oil. The oil companies want more. War against Iran will mean $10-a-gallon gasoline. The oil administration wants to drill more, into your wallet. Wake up, America. Weapons contractors want more. An Iran war will cost 5 to 10 trillion dollars.

This administration can tap our phones. They can’t tap our creative spirit. They can open our mail. They can’t open economic opportunities. They can track our every move. They lost track of the economy while the cost of food, gasoline and electricity skyrockets. They skillfully played our post-9/11 fears and allowed the few to profit at the expense of the many. Every day we get the color orange, while the oil companies, the insurance companies, the speculators, the war contractors get the color green.

Wake up, America. This is not a call for you to take a new direction from right to left. This is call for you to go from down to up. Up with the rights of workers. Up with wages. Up with fair trade. Up with creating millions of good paying jobs, rebuilding our bridges, ports and water systems. Up with creating millions of sustainable energy jobs to lower the cost of energy, lower carbon emissions and protect the environment.

Up with health care for all. Up with education for all. Up with home ownership. Up with guaranteed retirement benefits. Up with peace. Up with prosperity. Up with the Democratic Party. Up with Obama-Biden.

Wake up, America. Wake up, America. Wake up, America.”

Kucinich is a magical and perhaps a slightly unconventional speech maker. Here is another video i found of him:

He also has a British wife.

Kucinich is the kind of politician we need in the UK, instead of ‘dull old not a socialist’ Brown and ’seen it before, eh Tony?’ Cameron. America are lucky they have Kucinich, and with his recent performance at the Democratic Convention, there is no doubt that he would had been able to capture the hearts and minds of the American population if he had secured the Democratic nomination.

Let’s ship him over to Britain and let him run this country!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Kucinich