I'm the last person to be hung up on political correctness, but I just can't believe what I'm reading about Dr Hamish Meldrum, head of the British Medical Association. He believes that overweight and obese people do not need help from their GPs or from medication. They are just plain greedy, and need to eat less and exercise more.
Very helpful. Thank you for that breath-taking statement of the bl**ding obvious. I suppose alcholics are just too thirsty?
I'm sure many overweight people do eat too much. I'm sure they don't all do as much exercise as they should. But I also know that the numbers have escalated out of control in the last twenty years, while successive governments have done nothing of any substance to address the problem. There is a time-bomb of metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes and cardio vascular disease waiting to hit the NHS as a result of the obesity epidemic.
Surely we need every resource capable of helping to defuse this timebomb to be working together within some kind of co-ordinated framework? If the medical profession simply slopes its shoulders and says 'not our problem, mate', where can we expect this leadership and co-ordination to come from? Politicians? Don't hold your breath.
Maybe this is the 'killer' issue that can put nutrition at the heart of our approach to health, rather than the study of the food that we eat and its impact on our bodies being treated as some kind of 'complementary' side show to 'real' medicine.
End of rant.
Best wishes
Graham
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