Many years ago I read a short story about a man who successfully summoned a genie, and on being offered the traditional wish said he wished to lose weight. “Certainly,” said the genie, and in a matter of seconds the lucky fellow was glued to the ceiling, having become lighter than air.
The point of this story is, of course, that what the man really wanted was not to lose weight, but to lose fat. Euphemism can be dangerous when making wishes.
But here we have our friendly local government, taking up the urgent task of persuading us that most of us are too fat. Or as they prefer to put it, launching a three-year action plan on Weight Management.
This involves an Inter-departmental Weight Management Working Group (I am not making this up) which will open proceedings with a year-long campaign to raise awareness. The group will monitor, encourage, “foster a social environment to support weight management” and “enhance collaboration between Chinese and Western medicine”. I feel thinner already.
This is a serious matter for some people. Being very fat – or as the medical types prefer to put it obese – is bad for your health. On the other hand there is nothing so amusing as a solemn government preparing to tread on a banana skin.
Having conspicuously failed to persuade most of the population to vote, our leaders are now going to persuade many of us to stop eating? We missed out on the Matterhorn; let’s try Everest.
Behind all this is a survey, part of a series regularly conducted by the local Department of Health. The ensuing report announced that some 32 per cent of the population were obese and another 20 per cent were overweight.
I have two quarrels with this survey. One is that it defies common sense. If half the population was seriously overweight you would see this on a daily basis. Wandering through shopping malls or MTR stations half the people you see would be fat. Clearly “overweight” is being used in a rather special sense. After all half of us are of above-average weight. That is what the average means.
The other quarrel is with the timing. The survey was conducted in the years 2020-2022. Does that ring a bell? The COVID epidemic was in full swing. Beaches and exercise halls were closed. Gatherings were banned. Hiking in groups was legally hazardous. Entertainment wilted. Eating was the only pleasure left and a lot of us put on weight. I know I did.
To extrapolate this result to a general assessment of the population and base a policy on it is perhaps a bit hazardous?
And is it really necessary to have a government effort to raise awareness? Awareness of weight management is one area where the private sector is extremely active, sometimes dangerously so. We are constantly bombarded with helpful slimming suggestions which involve spending money. Progress in the hunt for slimming aids of all kinds is eagerly reported in the media.
Indeed this constant harping on weight loss is sometimes blamed for serious mental health problems, particularly among young women. Social media sites like Tik Tok and Pinterest are lambasted for their willingness to host images of skeletal victims of the resulting eating disorders.
The problem, surely, is not lack of awareness. People who are seriously overweight are well aware of the medical implications of their condition, and are occasionally reminded of them by doctors and friends. Just as most smokers know the price of their addiction, so do most over-eaters.
We all know that we should avoid the double cheeseburger with fries, eat more veggies and get out for regular walks, if we can manage nothing more strenuous. The problem is in the implementation. And the solution, I suspect, is not for the government to take on the role found in many families of the nagging aunt whose major contribution to conversations is unwanted advice.
May I at least humbly suggest that the Health Department desist from what appeared in one recent publication to be an attempt to get us all to give up booze. True there are a lot of calories in alcoholic drinks. But people have been drinking alcohol for thousands of years and they are unlikely to stop now.
More constructively, in a crime film I watched recently the prime suspect was asked to account for his whereabouts on the night of the murder and produced a porch camera video of him taking the dog out for a walk. “You walk your dog in the rain?” says the detective incredulously. “Sure.” says the suspect. “When you’ve got to go you’ve got to go. He’s a 200 lb dog. You want to clean up after him?”
Keeping a dog gets you out, rain or shine, pounding the pavement or walking the park. It’s good for you. Yet half the population lives in housing owned or managed by the government, where dogs are not allowed. An easy win for the Working Group?
tim's experiment 