main
side
curve
  1. In Memory of LAJ_FETT: Please share your remembrances and condolences HERE

The Four Horsemen of the Fatpocalypse

Discussion in 'Archive: Your Jedi Council Community' started by Jabbadabbado, Feb 7, 2012.

  1. Jabbadabbado

    Jabbadabbado Manager Emeritus star 7 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Mar 19, 1999
    Making children fat is as unhealthy for them as raping them. Or worse.
     
  2. VadersLaMent

    VadersLaMent Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Apr 3, 2002
    I might not buy you that drink after all. Whoa.
     
  3. Jabbadabbado

    Jabbadabbado Manager Emeritus star 7 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Mar 19, 1999
    I'm just looking at the health consequences of childhood obesity and comparing it with the health consequences of sexual abuse and it seems like sexual abuse is the Healthy Choice (TM). I'm being purely objective here.
     
  4. SithLordDarthRichie

    SithLordDarthRichie CR Emeritus: London star 9

    Registered:
    Oct 3, 2003
    Rape is force, no-one is forcing kids to be unhealthy.
     
  5. Mortimer_Snerd

    Mortimer_Snerd Jedi Grand Master star 6

    Registered:
    Mar 14, 2004
    I agree with every word of this post. The fact of the matter is that processed foods are cheaper and easier to get than fresh produce and raw ingredients, in terms of groceries. I'd love to feed the kids nothing but free range, grass-fed meat and organic produce, but I can't afford to. The government needs to help reverse this phenomenon. They can start by cutting corn subsidies. I start by reading ingredient and nutrition fact labels and I do the best I can.

    My sons' mother seems almost hell-bent on making sure the boys grow up to be fat and stupid, and it's more than a little infuriating. When they're with me they do NOT eat fast food or watch television. I try to make sure they eat well-balanced meals and have a hand in preparing them as well. It's a start, but it really is an uphill battle.

     
  6. Jabbadabbado

    Jabbadabbado Manager Emeritus star 7 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Mar 19, 1999
    So, SithLordDarthRichie, why do you think it is that more and more children over the last thirty years are suddenly deciding that they want to get fat?

    The thing is, political ideology is no match for reality. Reality wins every time in the long run. Kids are getting fat because as a society we are making them fat. Parents are failing at the job of keeping their kids healthy in greater and greater numbers every year, just as they are failing at the job of keeping themselves healthy. Why do you think that is? Do you think that it might have something to do with the fact that McDonald's is far better at its job than parents are on average at theirs, and that this WILL ALWAYS be the case, absent change. Not for every parent, because some of us are smart and well educated with plenty of financial resources, but on average.
     
  7. SithLordDarthRichie

    SithLordDarthRichie CR Emeritus: London star 9

    Registered:
    Oct 3, 2003
    Because kids are weak-willed and bow easily to peer pressure (if all their friends go they want to go). They need guidance from adults, unfortunately if the adults have a similar diet they don't see the problem with letting kids do the same thing.

    I said to a friend of mine who is younger than me and has 2 two kids that he should not feed them what he eats himself. He should feed them what they need and what is good for them. It is this lack of education that harms children and that is what should be tackled/

    I never get this excuse about good food being too expensive. I could go to a supermarket and buy lots of healthy food for £5 easily enough. I have a vast bowl of apples in my kitchen which is topped up every week with many new bags, because bags of apples are cheap to buy. The reason people don't buy it is because they don't like it, they don't like it because they were not exposed to it enough when they were younger. It's harder as an adult or teenager to grow into liking stuff.


    I'm not against discouraging people from consuming unhealthy things or from censoring them from exposure to it. But punishing a business for making money (the entire purpose of its existence) is wrong. Change the culture and businesses will adapt their marketing, don't blame them for exploiting the current culture.
     
  8. Jabbadabbado

    Jabbadabbado Manager Emeritus star 7 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Mar 19, 1999
    We get to decide as a society what forms of making money are socially acceptable and what forms aren't. And we have created a dependence on a service economy that is engineered toward producing fat people and on making them fat as young as possible so that they overeat for a lifetime. The health consequences and the consequences for our national productivity as a whole are negative. By giving food companies free reign to exploit children and the ignorance of stupid adults we are hurting our culture, damaging our global competitiveness, undermining our future. Why? Because Capitalism Is Good. But I've just proved that it isn't always.
     
  9. Darth Guy

    Darth Guy Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Aug 16, 2002
    Pizza sauce is a vegetable and that commie Michelle Obama isn't going to tell me otherwise.
     
  10. Jedi_Keiran_Halcyon

    Jedi_Keiran_Halcyon Jedi Knight star 6

    Registered:
    Dec 17, 2000
    We could also start taking greater advantage of contraceptive and abortion options, so we don't have too many people to feed with what healthy food we're able to produce on our finite planet.
     
  11. New_York_Jedi

    New_York_Jedi Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    Mar 16, 2002
    Oh no, don't get Jabbadabbado started on population.
     
  12. Jabbadabbado

    Jabbadabbado Manager Emeritus star 7 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Mar 19, 1999
  13. tom

    tom Chosen One star 8

    Registered:
    Mar 14, 2004
    i actually agree with a lot of what you're saying jabba, but i also think that if we really want people to stop poisoning themselves, be it with alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, or horrible fatty foods that we would need a much broader focus than childhood obesity. the entire culture needs to be changed, and i think it's a tad naive to think that would happen with advertising restrictions and some new taxes.
     
  14. SithLordDarthRichie

    SithLordDarthRichie CR Emeritus: London star 9

    Registered:
    Oct 3, 2003
    I absolutely agree we need to reduce the human population, by a lot. But we rightly fought wars against guys like Hitler who committed mass genocide, so if we can't do that and nature can't kill enough of us fast enough we are rather stuck if we go on increasing.


    Continued government control and regulation over everything is not the way to go, you get Communism or Fascism if you do that not to mention economic frailty. The state is not there to tell us how to run our lives (it certainly isn't there to force us to adhere to what it deems to be in our interests), it is there to enforce the rules and let us get on with it.

    I am for censorship for the good of the masses, nothing more.
     
  15. mrsvos

    mrsvos Jedi Grand Master star 5

    Registered:
    Nov 18, 2005
    dude
    wut?
     
  16. Raven

    Raven Administrator Emeritus star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Oct 5, 1998

    I wouldn't go so far as to compare it to child pornography, but I wouldn't say it's too far off to compare it to cocaine. Really though, there's no direct comparisons. A child has no real choice about what he or she is eating, and those regular trips to McDonald's build up an addiction.

    Alcoholics are generally unable to drink casually. If you're an alcoholic, it's dangerous to say "I can have just this one drink." A cocaine addict who goes back for an occasional hit will tend to fully relapse. For virtually every type of addiction, discretion is the better part of valor. Being fat, facing food addiction, doesn't work that way. The fact is that you need to eat. Every single day. It's like telling an alcoholic "You need to have three drinks a day; any more or less would be unhealthy."

    And the western world is designed to make things hard for food addicts. They're peckish, and oh look, the Golden Arches. Oh hey, Burger King, and Whoppers are $2 each today. Oh hey, a coworker brought in cookies. And free cake in the cafeteria at work. And a friend is making a run to Starbucks, want anything? In the supermarket, and on the way to plain oatmeal and flax seed there's some flavored oat bars dipped in chocolate and they're in a hurry and that's just so much more convenient. They go home, and their roommate has opened a big bag of chips, want some? Oh, the family wants to have dinner - steak and Caesar salad and stuff baked potatoes with sour cream and cheese, looks delicious! Etc, etc, etc.

    The "fatties" can't afford to lapse even a little. If and when they do, things tend to spiral rapidly down. And even without lapsing, calories go further for people who've been overweight. A 2,000 calorie diet might be fine for weight maintenance of a skinny person, but a formerly fat person getting them same amount of incoming calories and the same amount of exercise might put on weight.

     
  17. Jabbadabbado

    Jabbadabbado Manager Emeritus star 7 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Mar 19, 1999
    Once you're fat you're basically screwed for life, barring extraordinary circumstances or highly invasive surgery, or both. Making children fat is criminal misconduct, a form of abuse. If you had to choose between making your child fat or delivering him/her up to the local public school or place of worship for repeated sexual abuse, you would really want to weigh your options carefully.
     
  18. Ostrich_Stapler

    Ostrich_Stapler Jedi Master star 5

    Registered:
    Jul 9, 2004
    I don't think I've ever met an overweight person that told me "I really wish I'd been raped as a child instead..."
     
  19. Jabbadabbado

    Jabbadabbado Manager Emeritus star 7 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Mar 19, 1999
    You should try asking a 350 lb 40 year-old woman who was fattened up as a child and is now going blind from diabetic retinopathy while also slowly dying of liver failure and heart disease. Being blindfolded and fed spoonfuls of a teacher's semen is probably better for a child's health than a steady diet of McDonald's.
     
  20. Ostrich_Stapler

    Ostrich_Stapler Jedi Master star 5

    Registered:
    Jul 9, 2004
    Oh yeah, I totally forgot that that's exactly what happens to all people who eat McDonald's, ever.


    And what can you mean by "we've tried leaving it up to the parents and it hasn't worked"? This spike in obesity has only happened in recent decades. Meanwhile the government has been around for hundreds of years and hasn't done **** to regulate people's diets that whole time. And yet you think increased government regulation is the way to return things to the way they were back when we had less government regulation? There is zero logical basis for this correlation.
     
  21. Jabbadabbado

    Jabbadabbado Manager Emeritus star 7 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Mar 19, 1999
    Oh yeah, I totally forgot that that's exactly what happens to all people who eat McDonald's, ever.

    Ignorant comment. It's probably only 20% or so.

    The rise of obesity in America corresponds almost exactly with the rise of the fast food restaurant industry and the pervasiveness of fast food/junk food marketing to children.

    One more regulation: create a fast food exclusion zone of at least a mile around all K-12 schools.

    Unchecked capitalism is raping children of their health for life.

    Aside: have you ever been on a Carnival cruise? I'm surprised boats don't tip over on their sides solely from the weight of all the fat Americans on board.

    National Estimated Cost of Obesity

    The medical care costs of obesity in the United States are staggering. In 2008 dollars, these costs totaled about $147 billion (Finkelstein, 2009).

    One of the reasons "Obamacare" became a necessity in the United States was because McDonald's has made so many Americans fat. The costs of obesity is an externality of them doing business that McDonald's is foisting on taxpayers.
     
  22. Eeth-my-Koth

    Eeth-my-Koth Jedi Grand Master star 9

    Registered:
    May 25, 2001
    I hate fat people as much as the next person.
    But I hate dumb people even more.
    Guess which category you fit into Jabbadabbadumb. :)
     
  23. Jabbadabbado

    Jabbadabbado Manager Emeritus star 7 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Mar 19, 1999
    Good one!

    I think it really is hatred of fat people that makes it so hard to do anything about the catastrophic obesity epidemic. Some people actually think it's ok for McDonald's to prey on children and the obese. I almost have to admire the amorality and meanness of spirit that makes opinions like that possible.

    It's a vicious cycle. The poorer and dumber and fatter you are in rural America, the more likely you are to vote Republican and thus ratify all the policies and practices that have helped make so many rural Americans poor and dumb and fat. Overeating and voting Republican are basically two sides of the same self-loathing coin.
     
  24. epic

    epic Ex Mod star 8 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Jul 4, 1999
    i wasn't really talking about snacking healthily. obviously snacking on healthy stuff is going to be... healthy. i was talking more about people who have their 3 meals per day PLUS a few morning bisquits with their coffee (creamy, milky latte perhaps), the chocolate bar or two in the afternoon, the unnecessary dessert after dinner, the packet of crisps before going to bed.

    snacking like that = fat ppl
     
  25. Darth-Lando

    Darth-Lando Jedi Grand Master star 6

    Registered:
    Aug 12, 2002
    George Lucas fed McDonald's to my childhood.