Some questions?

“Key measures include a new learn to swim programme for adults” So if you are fat and can already swim, what happens?

“There are also moves to open up more walk routes across the country ” So why are fat people not walking on the millions of miles of exisiting footpaths, bridleways and open access land?

Honestly *tut*

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Peter: I accept that peoples geberally body size may be due to a genetic predisposition. I’m lucky, I can eat anything and not put weight on, mind you I do exercise, have been struggling through the snow covered moors if Derbyshire today.
However, the bottom line is, its a simple matter of calaories in v calories out. So id you do have a genetic predisposition to be “efficent” at gaining weight, you need t eat less than the the person who isn’t so efficient at converting calories to fat stores.

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Some people may have drawn inferences from my comment about fat people and their lack of hill walking.

I now wish to rectify the faux pas I made after some research I have just undertaken. Clearly fat people are smarter than me, taking the lower risk of obesity related illness.

Every year 100,000 people reach the summit of Ben Nevis with only 5 dieing. Of course every avoidable death is a tragedy. But I estimate that it is 4 miles to the summit, so that is 4x2x100,000 = 800,000miles and 5 deaths means 1 death per 160,000miles.

Now compare that to driving from Dft figures:
In recent years, on average 3,000 people have been killed on our roads with 500 billion vehicle kms per year. So that’s (a billion does have 9 zero’s doesn’t it?) 800 billion miles which gives a fatality rate of 1 death per 266 million miles.

Therefore, statistically, you are 1,666 times more likely to be killed walking on Ben Nevis that driving from Fort William to the Information Centre at the start of the track up Ben Nevis!!

Walking is clearly more dangerous than I had previously believed. So will we see speed restrictions? Enforcement? Cameras? And will the 24hour Three Peaks Challenge be out-lawed?

In fact I am so shocked at what your post has led me to discover, in future, when I drive to the office, I’m going to call a taxi to take me from the car park to the office.

In fact I will drive for every little journey and Mr Polar Bear will just have to learn to like getting his paws wet, and Al Gore can stick his carbon trading offsets up the exhaust of his new Audi A6 Diesel.

It is clear that more people are killed taking exercise than sitting on the couch!!

So just who are the smart ones here?

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simply revert benefits to food tokens and only let the buy the diet version, its a simple sad fact that the rich arent fat, its not about lack of food its about quality of food, cooking skills and such, lets get the dole lot out hunting to earn their food tokens

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Lucy, Brizzie,

Obviously neither of you watched the excellent Horizon programme last week ‘Why don’t thin people get fat?’
In an experiment they fed a number of thin people, none of whom did a great deal of exercise, a huge number of calories over a number of weeks. Alhough they did gain some weight, it wasn’t much, in some cases hardly any. Once they returned to their previous diets, none of which were especially puritanical, they returned to their previous weight.
The programme conclusively showed that it isn’t as anything like as simple as ‘calories in, calories out’ – it’s far more to do with what your body does with those calories. It also seems that your body s built-in marker of what it considers it’s ‘correct’ weight, and will vary it’s metabolic rate to maintain that weight no matter how much you eat or diet.

So it becomes clear that it’s actually very diffcult for some overweight people to lose weight – they’re battling against their own genes.

Some overweight people may eat badly and be lazy – not all are – but those that aren’t must continue to suffer the prejudices of people like yourselves and the Shropshire Star.

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