Assuming at least adequate nutrition, "skinny" people live healthier and longer than "fat" people and the free market rewards this fact most visibly in the form of celebrities. There is simply not an honest assessment of the situation, just denial, blame and finger-pointing.

There is a problem, but one that only parents can do something about. If the Guardian were serious about this they'd tell parents to teach their kids better eating habits.

This post is illogical, and, well, stupid.

It's true that people are getting fatter on the whole, and that this may have public health consequences.

It's also true that a significant number of girls and young women have a psychological disorder which causes them to starve themselves, and many of them die of starvation.

These facts are in no way contradictory, and it is in no way self-contradictory to express concern about both of them.

Embarassing post.

Its a great opportunity for real hands on social engineering using the most up to date technology... Surely the new carbon refinery could be tweaked to make it suitable for liposuction refining of the recidivist fat kids to produce basic fatty oils with which to forcibly medicate the thin ones!!!

With the extreme Nannylike approach of goverment I'm almost afraid to post this in case I give them ideas!

With it being Remembrance Sunday this post on the "alarm" caused by mere bad eating habits... considering what those of the war went through, really brings home just how secure our current lifestyle is to allow such idiocy in the midst of safety and plenty. And how much good sense is being hidden by ideological stupidity and deviousness.

Jake, the only thing embarrassing and a tad stupid is that you don't 'get' David's point... it is not about people being too fat or too thin, but the fact that Guardianistas always look to the STATE to fix everything. "If only we coukd just plan society better "

Uncle Joe, Chairman Mao and Papa Pol Pot had the right idea. Citified folks get fat and lazy, not to mention politically obstreperous. What is to be done (asked V.I. Lenin)? And the Oracle replied: send 'em back to the farm. Make 'em grow their own food, take it all away to make some entirely fantastical 5 year targets, then look away as the miracle of weight loss takes place. Our socialist forbears had the secret to a lean, mean state. If only we have the gumption to follow in their footsteps!

Anything that gets a Grauniadista's knickers in a twist (or preferably their colon, but then as they're all full of shit anyhow that's a redundant comment) gets my thumbs up!

Assuming this is actually a problem, what is the solution then?

It's all well and good to say its not a government thing, but unless you are completely divorced from the society you live in this sounds like ignoring the fire in your neighbours house because its nothing to do with you.

Dave: Treating the fact my neighbour might be over or under weight as being a problem of the same nature as his house (and therefore possibly my house) catching on fire is absurd. Unless being too fat or too thin is contageous, I fail to see why I should be all too concerned. I could not care less.

Perry,

Well, I like to at least be concerned about the welfare of my neighbours - in case I need their help at some stage, but that's a side issue.

However, there is a general problem. If something is prevelent in the society in which you live and, regardless of how libertarian you are, are economically dependant on, then large scale health issues will eventually start to impact on you.

Ignoring the "ideal" libertarian world view for a moment, given that obesity goes incur larger health care costs and I'm paying part of that health cost, the people spending that part of MY money damn well ought to do it right.

We could argue that they shouldn't be spending it, but thats a completely different thread.

As I refuse to accept that I can legitimatly be 'billed' for other people's health problems, I decline to allow such concerns to legitimise the use of my resources to interfere in how the hell other people choose to eat!

As I refuse to accept that I can legitimatly be 'billed' for other people's health problems

Looking at this critically, currently and for the forseeable future you are billed, legitimatly or otherwise, for other peoples health care.

Even if that were to change, unless you are entirely self sufficient, your personal wealth, success and so forth are so intermixed with the general health and wealth of the rest of us that a serious public health issue will affect you anyway.

Hey, if we were talking about a massive aids epidemic (limits life expectancy, increases demands on general medical services blah blah) would you be as sanguine?

That is wrong on so many levels I hardly know where to start. By that logic there is nothing another person does that I do not have an 'interest' in and therefore a claim to a have a say... so far, so democratic... which is why I am so indifferent/hostile to modern democracies... yet your sentiments, whilst quite logical and coherent, are pretty much the most perfect expression of the collective trumping the several I can imagine. Yet if I am a free agent, I can take steps to minimise (or even profit from) the unwise actions of others. If it is indeed an epidemic of obesity, I will start buying shares in Weight Watchers and Private Healthcare providers. The notion that politics (force) is the only 'solution' or that the actions of others 'affecting me anyway' is bad for me is where I must disagree.

The notion that politics (force) is the only 'solution' or that the actions of others 'affecting me anyway' is bad for me is where I must disagree.

I'm not arguing it is the only solution. Just that frankly, in this case, I'm not sure what the answer is, only that it presents a massive problem which left to the individuals will soon impact.

Ha! You've (a collective "you've") got to get over the quaint, old-fashioned notion that people who sicken and die young cost the system more than those who live a long time, then sicken and die.

Everybody dies. The vast majority who do are expensively sick for some period of time first. A smaller proportion draw a pension for a variable period of time before their final illness. The latter cost the system, on average, a good deal more than the former. There's absolutely no evidence that people who take care of themselves are more likely to die of something cheap.

Ergo, if you live in a state that provides health care, smokers and drinkers and lard-asses and risk-takers of all stripes are less of a burden on your pocketbook. They aren't a problem at all. You owe 'em one for clearing out early.

I mean, if we're going to do socialist math with people's health care...

S.Weasel.

If you go to the letters page for NewScientist you can find a socialist who sounds like she want wants to make us all drop dead ASAP.

Scary, if she takes an "interest" in my health, I'll be taking an interest in hers.

BTW I think the fundamental underpining tenet of libertarianism is "LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE" (unless I ask)

Well, in the UK we *are* already paying for each others health care, so in that regard its an issue.

However, healthcare is just one part of this. The other parts are relatively obvious.

No, the other parts aren't obvious to me at all.

I can kinda, sorta see how you might have a right to stick your nose in somebody else's lifestyle if you're having to pay for it. If that's not your problem, though, then I honestly don't see how somebody else's dietary choices are any of your business at all.

S. Weasel,

It is none of his business but he wants to make it his business.

The moral panic about food/weight is being geared up as the next left campaign. It is obvious from some of the reactions above. I think I have hit a rich seam. I intend to keep digging.

Sorry, Snide, I think it's not only "statist" responses to these problems that David is mocking, but the very existence of concern about them. His sneering references to "foodophobia" and the "moral concern about food/weight" make this pretty clear.

What's the point of juxtaposing articles about obesity and anorexia, if not to suggest that the two somehow contradict each other, and hence that we, by being concerned about both, we are being alarmist?

If Dave were just saying "anorexia and obesity are grave social problems but the state can't really do anything to stop them" I'd be with him. But that's not how I read it, not at all.

I asked David Carr what me meant, and Snide is quite correct as to what the thrust of the article was.

And the way I see it, these are not 'social' problems, they are personal problems and perhaps even opportunities for others who wish to profit from assisting people deal with them.

This post is illogical, and, well, stupid.

It's true that people are getting fatter on the whole, and that this may have public health consequences.

It's also true that a significant number of girls and young women have a psychological disorder which causes them to starve themselves, and many of them die of starvation.

These facts are in no way contradictory, and it is in no way self-contradictory to express concern about both of them.

Embarassing post.

Perhaps where the two meet is the possibility that eating disorders arise from neurosis. What is the origin point of neurosis? The individual not having a rational sense of self and their place in the world. Not saying that the State is the cause of all neurosis (there is plenty coming from media sources), but having a population convinced that their worth and viability emanates from the outside in, versus the inside out, a notion certainly encouraged by the State, doesn't help.

Don't worry sure here's a little gem that could be sold to change everyone's dietary and excercise habits: FULL BODYSCAN

Get one of these and you'll know exactly what to do... heck - someday you might even HAVE to get one. Wouldn't a holographic representation of it look great on a new ID card! ;)

"anorexia and obesity are grave social problems but the state can't really do anything to stop them"

Actually that's not too far from my position.

The problem is, that if nothing is done these have the potential to escalate into problems which (a) I am going to be paying for and (b) will start to impact negatively on the economy and hence my ability to make money to live.

As long as those conditions apply, which frankly, is as long as we work a capitalist economic system (which, baring some kind of Singularity event is easily the best way of running economies bar none) then you can't just say that things are "somebody elses problem".

I wish you could, I really do.

But I don't believe that you can. That's where Libertarian ideals seem to drift off into cloud cuckoo land.

We have to make Libertarian systems work within the confines of the society we find we are living in. If we can do that, then we might be able to move forward.

The comments from Dave reminded me of a documentary I watched on satellite TV over the weekend. An Indian-born doctor travelled to the States to explore his thesis that people can get fat by being infected with a certain kind of virus. Now this guy was a rational fellow, concerned not to over-stretch his ideas. But I was struck by how, when certain overweight folk were informed of this theory, they almost cried with joy because it meant they could BLAME SOMEONE ELSE for their obesity, rather than through the rather more arduous process of going to a gym, cease eating like a rhino, etc. Another telling example of how we all try to dump responsibility on to others, or some collective entity.

"having a population convinced that their worth and viability emanates from the outside in, versus the inside out, a notion certainly encouraged by the State, doesn't help. "

Ah darn that evil state... just imagine, if it wasn't there, we'd all be independent thinkers & good people.

Or perhaps this is utopian thinking no different from the socialist idea that human greed & acquisitiveness can somehow be suppressed; you're believing human beings are "perfectible" in your terms, & believing that our fudamentally tribal nature, in which identity is established through some compromise between others' and our own perceptions of ourselves, can somehow be "improved" towards emotional self-sufficiency. I'm not buying the idea that at some point in the future, everyone will think for themselves. Too much stacked evidence of sheep-like behaviour, even among those of 'independent' minds, against it.

a-t: Oh that old canard. Speaking for myself I am a minarchist not an anarchist, because I see the need for a small 'nightwatchman' state. I think a small state is better precisely because I do not believe in the perfectibility of mankind, hence I see that it is madness to place one section of mankind in a position of great regulatory political power over another.

Perry, that I can respect... I just wasn't sure about the implication that human beings' tendency to define themselves with respect to society comes from (or is strengthened by) government, & would be seriously reduced in absence of big government. Don't get me wrong, I definitely believe people should be more independent-minded, & I can also see a strong case for smaller government... I'm just not sure the two would go hand-in-hand.

A_t: I agree that is certainly a vexed question for which there is no simple answer. It will come as no surprise to you that my broad conclusion is that civil society is greatly weakened when state is greatly expanded... there is probably a point at which this process becomes pronounced, and a point at which it becomes more or less irreversible, i.e. when you have a 'total regulatory state' (i.e. extended civil society simply collapses and regresses to only pre-extended structures, i.e. the family and maybe the village or highly local community) as virtually all interaction becomes violence-based political action.

Of course for followers of Rousseau (such as Marx), that is not a bug, it is a feature.

In the absence of an intrusive regulatory state, there will still be mechanisms for preventing chaos, which is really the essence of what civil society actually is... a network of social interactions and mores that both enables and constrains interactions. I do not want to live is chaos any more than I want to live in a regulatory dystopia, which is why I describe myself as a 'social individualist'. We do not exist in atomised isolation from each other but that does not preclude us from being free agents with several interests either.