I think the thing that needs to be addressed more is the issue with carbs, most people know about controlling their calories, but not many seem to know about where they're getting those calories from. Plenty of people will go for a pasta salad from Tesco/Sainsbury's/wherever if they're getting lunch on the go, not realising they're full of carbs, and salt too.

Another issue with fatties is the exercise they're doing. I go to gym 3 or 4 times a week, 5 or 6 when I'm off college, and see plenty of people walking on treadmills, slowly, or on a bike on resistance level 1. Yeah it's better than nothing but you have to think how do they not see that they could be doing a lot more? Most of them barely work up a sweat.

I think on the marketing side of things, it's all just balls really, and most people see that. People just still go for foods that are cheap, easy, and/or what they're used to.

an important word there, college, maybe some of the "fatties" (as you so generously call them) actually work for a living and have families at home and can only manage 1 or 2 times a week. Why not come back in 30 years and tell us how your work/life balance is going?



Yes, because if you're overweight the best thing to do is pound on a treadmill and stress your already overworked joints a bit more, maybe you have the advantage of not being a "fatty", and since when did everyone sweat the same amount, I used to teach an hour of body pump/attack and not sweat much at all, I have a friend who sweats profuseley when he eats a hot curry, is that process making him fit?

Now, I am not saying you are wrong that some people think that just going to the gym (as in even just attending) is going to make a difference, but it's not as simple as you appear to suggest. It's a bit like friends I have who "play golf" and whenever I go with them (which is rare) they will spend more time in the club house/bar than they do on the course, they're crap at golf, but great at socialising.

We need to be careful here.
Food labelling shows the fat and carb content by weight, even though fat contains approximately double the calories of carbs.
It is very easy to read an ingredients list and forget that, although the product contains 10g of carbs and only 6g of fat, the fat is actually providing more calories than the carbs.

WHO recommendations about carb and fat intake are couched in terms of percentage of calories NOT by percentage of weight, so why are our ingredients lists not listed in the same way?

I agree with your earlier comment about traffic light labelling, it is actually worse than useless as it doesn't give you any idea of your total intake of anything ... or of your total balance in your diet.

People could always take responsibility and read the "calories per x" on the packaging?

Of course they could (If they can understand the labelling) but it doesn't seem to be working does it?

One of the reasons that I always hated aerobics was because I could never work up a sweat that way. In other words, it never felt as though it was doing anything. Well, that and it being boring. Same reason I loved playing football as a child, but hated getting sent around to the girls' playground to play skipping or other such nonsense, so usually ended up in the small mixed-gender playground where I'd play marbles with the boys. Competitively. I had some corking dobbers.

When I was at college (well, polytechnic) I used to be in the gym regularly or be playing badminton or table tennis most nights.

Badminton I loved. What I lacked in grace on a court I made up for in sheer bloody-minded competitiveness. But then I'm almost absurdly competitive – even with myself.

I used to enjoy the gym – or at least, I used to enjoy the gym I went to regularly in Lancaster (after work, three or four nights a week when I wasn't in rehearsals). It was a real bodybuilding gym – absolutely none of that having-to-wear-the-right-gear stuff. People would spot for each other readily, swap tips and just generally behave with some respect for what they were doing.

Never did find a gym like that down here; always found them slightly intimidatory and posy, plus it's actually irritating being patronised by some child who looks at me and thus assumes that I haven't a clue how to to handle any weights machines.

When I first moved down, in 1988, I was living with my parents in Reading and commuting into London every day for work. Which is exactly the sort of thing that you've mentioned here. I actually invested in some weights (proper ones – not those pink rubber-coated jobs) and tried my damnedest to keep it up, but I had no more energy for that than I did for my (at the time) non-existant social life.

From an entirely personal perspective, I think that what didn't help me was the realisation of just how much work and drastic dieting it took just to stay a pound or so above the level the doctor insisted I should be below (if that makes any sense). And that goes back to bad advice and my own lack of understanding of what I was doing to myself, based on the extremely simplistic, and very much mainstream, diet advice of the era.

And later, working in a stressful situation, where I'd finish work at 8pm or later, sometimes at a point of nearly tearing my hair out (if the entire computer system had crashed just minutes before deadline, for instance), also mitigated against the gym etc. I still used to swim in the mornings at that stage, but that wasn't helped when they closed the baths.

And thanks for your comment about the use of "fatties" too. I'm not 'offended' by it, but it does reek of 'look at me and how perfect I am'. Which sort of goes back to what I was saying about patronising people in gyms.

As we've touched on, I think ingredients lists are abysmal – and Big Graeme also asked why manufacturers seem so reluctant to make packaging clear.

As I mentioned earlier, I was looking at just one ingredients list for a single product the other day – a 'breakfast biscuit' that is clearly being marketed as healthy.

They're full of "creamy live yogurt" according to the packets, which suggests both luxury and something completely natural and healthy, on the basis that yogurt is viewed as a generally healthy product, while "creamy" suggests luxury.

A pack contains two biscuits. Each biscuit contains 119 kcals, which is "6% GDA" (guideline daily amounts) the packet proclaims. So if you're watching the old cals, that sounds pretty darned good.

The biscuits are "made with 5 wholegrains" – now we all know that "wholegrains" are nutritional nirvana, so what could be better?

And according to the packet, they are "rich in cereals" with "no colours or preservatives:; they're "made with a blend of 5 wholegrains", they'e a "source of fibre", a "source of calcium and vitamin E", and you can "enjoy as part of a balanced breakfast" ( the "balanced breakfast" incidentally, is a latte and a banana. Not any old coffee, note, but a latte. So very much one you'll buy from a chain).

The list of ingredients is a follows (the commas in the percentage figures are those of Nabisco/Kraft).

"Ingredients: wheat flour 31,4%, wholegrain cereals 23,9% (wholegrain wheat flour, oat flakes, wholegrain barley flour, wholegrain rye flour, wholegrain spelt flour), sugar, vegetable oil, wheat starch, dextrose, yogurt powder 3,0%, whey powder, raising agents (sodium hydrogen carbonate, disodium diphosphate, ammonium hydrogen carbonate), vitamins and minerals mixture (vitamin B1, vitamin E, vitamin B3, iron, magnesium, calcium), flavouring, skimmed milk powder, emulsifier (soya lecithin), salt, acidity regulator (citric acid)."

This is sneaky. By listing all the grains individually, it could be read as that being five ingredients before sugar. But sugar is the third largest ingredient. And then, in sixth, is dextrose. Or bloody corn syrup, a favourite of food processors and something that is increasingly believed to be one of the biggest single problems.

And there's loads of other stuff in there that most of us will never have heard of. Someone told me that sodium hydrogen carbonate is baking soda – well why not list it in a form that more people will readily understand it? And if that's there as a raising agent, why are two others, with equally chemical names, needed too?

Thankyou, on some things (quite a few as we know) we agree.




Indeed, when I was working 9-5 roughly next door to the gym I was in there most nights, but when it became a 45 minute journey to get there (or even longer once I worked in Birmingham and lived in Mansfield) it became more of a chore than a pleasure, a chore I was paying over £30 a month to use very infrequently.



That's why I packed in teaching (fitness classes), as soon as the big chains got hold of the industry it became a fashion parade rather than an actual fitness industry, now Nuffied, Virgin and DW employ drones, they aren't fitness instructors (many aren't even qualified). I recetly looked at what it takes to become a "Personal Trainer", I did more in my 'A' level Sport Sceince and Exercise To Music study, and that was to teach aerobics in the late 90's.




In fairness to the cal train, I'd may have used the same language at his time in life, now I know many "fatties" who are actually medically overweight (I hate the phrase "clinically obese", if you've got an eating disorder they don't call you "clinically thin"), as far as I am concerned the most important health anyone can have is mental, and if having a few chunks of chocolate and a glass of wine helps with that after a difficult day then "crack on" I say, everything in moderation.

Weight/Health/Fitness and Diet are all very personal things, myself I have a very difficult relationship woth food, I have been spoilt, which means I rarely find anyone else cooks to my "standard", it's not that it isn't good, it isn't "how I would have done it", drives my o/h crazy.

back on topic
Wouldn't, without being rude, a sugar tax effectively be a "tax on the poorest"?

The supposed benefits of live yoghurt are that it adds to the gut flora ... how a creamy live yoghurt remains alive after being powdered, mixed and baked is beyond me.

Also, if that list is unedited cut-and-paste (which I trust it is), the percentages are only given for the perceived "healthy" ingredients, no mention of percentage for sugar.

That supposedly healthy breakfast biscuit's ingredients includes flour and cereals amounting to 55.3%.
I have just googled another product (not advertised as a heathy breakfast biscuit) and it contains 70% flour and cereals ...

Wheat Flour (54%), Vegetable Oil, Wholemeal (16%), Sugar, Cultured Skimmed Milk, Partially Inverted Sugar Syrup, Raising Agents (Sodium Bicarbonate, Tartaric Acid, Malic Acid), Salt.

It's the list for McVities Digestives.

Hang on, you are getting into the figures and percentages and missing the big picture, when did biscuits for breakfast become OK?