Fat is a class issue – and TV is to blame!
The massive TV, at least a 48- incher, suspended on an hydraulic arm, swung out and almost followed us around the room, Big Brother style. I was filming a documentary about obesity – and it came as no surprise to myself nor the producers to find that the obese family whose story we were telling, were almost obsessive TV viewers. Its one of the first things they told us when we go to their little house in Blackpool – that their social life revolved around the telly – their idea of a great night was to snuggle down in front of Corrie or Eastenders with supper just an arm’s reach away. Lots and lots of food, and snacks and fizzy drinks with a beer or two thrown in. Now comes a report that states the blinkingly obvious – from university researchers in the States – that spending less time in front of the TV is a HUGE factor in weight loss. They fitted electronic lock-out devices to half of their group of obese people trying to lose weight. Those whose tellies cut out after a few hours ended up burning, on average, 244 more calories than they consumed each day! Those who watched TV whenever they wanted, put on weight. When I started my career with breakfast TV, our aim was to encourage more and more families to have TV in their kitchens, as well as their sitting rooms, so they could watch while they ate their cornflakes. It worked – and nowadays the average family has multiple TVs throughout the house – even in the bathroom and toddler’s bedrooms. Now its a plague we have to stop. Too much telly is fracturing our family life, isolating our teenagers and making us fat! Perhaps a TV tax? Another study shows that obesity is becoming a class disease. This is something the experts have been warning for some time – and which I mentioned in my book, “War On Fat”. Professor Jimmy Bell, who leads the “Fat Team” at London’s Hammersmith Hospital and Imperial College, comes from Chile, where he says obesity is very much class divided. A few years ago, fat happened to anyone, and cut right across class and socio-economic lines. Then, he said, the rich fixed their fat problems, through surgery, joining health clubs, changing dietary habits and doing the things that only money can buy. The poor cannot immediately buy healthier food nor join the nearest gym or healthspa. It just isn’t easy. Now Chile, he told me, is a land of poor fat, and rich skinny people and he sees the same thing happening here in the UK. Which brings me back to that living room with the huge TV. If I’d told that young couple from Blackpool that they should get out more – to a health club, or take up tennis or change their supermarket to buy healthy, green and organic, they would have rightly told me to get off my high horse and live in the real world – which, for them, comprises their overstuffed sofa in front of the plasma screen TV, and a cool tinny with pizza and crisps on the coffee table. After a long day at work, a tiring journey on the train, a quick trip to the supermarket and fetching the baby from the childminder, an evening’s XFactor is a cheap night in, even if its bad for us on so many levels! Until we make it easy, fun and free for people to take a healthier option, obesity will become the disease of the sink estates and inner cities where people have got enough to worry about already. |
