Five-ton ambulances answer 999 calls by supersized patients – Independent Online Edition > Health Medical — Let’s place the blame where it belongs — on the food supply. There is a toxic fat-producing aspect whether it’s Soy Oil (never actually tested for safety it mimics estrogen), corn sweetener (made by a chemical process), hormones in the food (steers were growing udders in the 1970’s when this practice was out-of-control) or who knows what. I’m always amazed at how people routinely ate huge steaks slathered in butter after WWII and the population didn’t get as fat as it does today during the health food promotions.
Britain’s obesity epidemic is forcing the NHS to introduce specially adapted ambulances for overweight patients.
Nearly a quarter of hospitals have brought in vehicles which have strengthened stretchers, hoists and suspension, new figures show. More than a third of those surveyed said they were planning to introduce the ambulances, so they could cope with call-outs from the obese.
The NHS spends an estimated £7bn every year on obesity- or bariatric-related disorders. People are classified as obese when their body mass index (BMI) goes over 30. Nearly a quarter of British adults are now overweight, which has created huge problems for ambulance crews.
In Suffolk, for example, St John Ambulance brought in vehicles with wider ramps and a strengthened floor after a call-out to a patient weighing nearly 65 stone. It took more than 30 people, as well as members of the Fire Brigade, to get him to hospital.
Keith Hotchkiss, St John’s transport co-ordinator, said the bariatric ambulances, which cost up to £90,000 each, were vital because they relieved the burden on other emergency vehicles responding to 999 calls.
Some things to note:
I have a copy of the massive 1920 cookbook, the Epicurean by Charles Anhofer. In the 1200 page book there are numerous menus from the most famous NYC restaurant of the time, Delmonicos. This place — which is nothing more than an steakhouse nowadays — was an astonishing gourmet restaurant catering to the world’s rich and famous. In the book are countless menus for various occasions. Many date back to the Civil war era. There is no way I could even eat one of these meals since there was so much food served. It’s actually astonishing, when you study it, how much food Americans used to eat years back without turning into a nation of fatties. I suppose some of this can be attributed to chopping wood and walking more, but in cities such as London they have always walked and still walk a lot and never chopped wood in the first place. Yet they need the 5 ton ambulances now more than ever.
What changed?
TV remote control
(lack of physical labor)
Whew! and I almost thought it might be my fault I am overweight.
Dumbass doctors telling me to eat better and exercise more; I guess I just wait until industry fix food supply.
Can someone plz pass the butter and the salt too.
The vast majority of Londoners back in the 19th century were lucky to make enough in a year to eat once like the rich did in that period.
It was still a mainly starch, whatever odd bit of flesh you could get and broth for most meals. The non-well-to-do also worked hard in manufacturing, hauling and other menial jobs. Try being a teamster for a day when you had no electrical winches, platforms or what not and then had to deal with the carts, trams and horses. Not as easy as today.
So although the rich got fat, hence the term fat rich, the middle and lower classes seldom did.
Jump a hundred years. And now the is more food than ever due to better argiculture, more imports and a taste for what the rich ate most of the time. Couple that with increased portion sizes and you less activity and you get an heavy population.
It is that way all across Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and The US. And now its showing up in China, Japan and parts of the Middle East as well. The human is made to feast when supplies are plentiful, its wired in. With more food and higher caloric food introduced into our diets it is like manna from heaven and the brain wired to feast will overeat these calorie laden foods until we are FAT.
Its human nature. We have only ourselves to blame.
Cursor_
I expect that the Delmonicos recipes from the 1920s were for meals people didn’t eat everyday. High fructose corn syrup and trans fats could be part of the answer. But, I think that the biggest reason is simply the frequency with which we stuff our faces today. It’s not the odd expensive night out that does it, or at least not for a statistically significant percentage of the population. It’s the regular meals at McDs and others where each meal has a full day’s supply of calories.
If Brits need 5-ton ambulances, I hate to think what we must need in the American South. MI-26 Medivac helicopters?
Well, MS, when you’re not talking about religion you make much more sense. It’s the combination of density and frequency, add to the almost complete lack of need to move around to have a complete day. I have coworkers in Europe who eat very well (and chain-smoke too) but they have only one meal per day. They scarf down beer at night and drink water or wine fairly steadily. And they’re thin as rails.
It all stems from our parents, or the post-depression generation, who stressed the food pyramid, cleaning your plate and having 3 squares a day. Remember the admonishments? “They are children starving in China”. This probably made perfect sense to them, but today it seems a non-sequitur. So I haven’t used any of this on my own children. They eat when they’re hungry, so while they could make better choices, they don’t eat that often. And they’re all thin so far.
I go with Scott on this one. The rapid rise in obesity, especially among Americans, came about with the increased use of corn sweeteners and fast food.
There’s no such thing as oversized people… just undersized vehicles…
I’ll raise you
The cheapest foods available have lots of starches, sugars and grease. Fruits, vegetables, and high quality proteins are healthier and more expensive. 100 years ago, the poor were thin; now (at least in the US) they are more likely to be overweight than their more prosperous counterparts.
And don’t forget that chronic wasting diseases like tuberculosis were common until the mid-twentieth century. That affected the “average weight” too.
Also, portion sizes just keep increasing.
“Supersize” fries and 1-liter cups simply didn’t exist. even 20 years ago. Well, actually there was a “supersize” fries back then, but that size is now called “medium”.
And 10-15 years before that, “small fries” was just enough to fill an ashtray.
The standard size Coke bottle was 6 1/2 fluid ounces, not 20 fluid ounces as today. The largest available size soft drink from vending machines was 12-oz cans.
No “king-size” candy bars, either.
And also, when people were feeling restless between meals, they reached for a cigarette instead of a bag of chips.
For those of you who live in England, as I do, or who have access to BBC4 there is a program currently running title, “Edwardian Supersize Me”
http://tinyurl.com/336kxc
Here is a article from the TimesOnLine
http://tinyurl.com/2jor57
The program follows a couple as they live, dress, exercise, eat and drink like an Edwardian of means You get to find out what it did to his girth, his arteries, his inner organs, his digestion, his mood, his very soul.
It’s a wonder anyone on this diet would live to 45.
The standard size Coke bottle was 6 1/2 fluid ounces, not 20 fluid ounces as today. The largest available size soft drink from vending machines was 12-oz cans.
Reminds me of the old Pepsi-Cola jingle (circa the 1940’s):
Pepsi-cola hits the spot
Eight (later 12) full ounces, that’s a lot.
J/P=?
So I guess hormones pumped into the food has nothing to do with it.
While government solutions tend to have fairly nasty side affects, imagine if Henry Ford’s great triumph was reversed. Impose a nigh-on-crippling carbon tax, and make a personal automobile a luxury again. People would walk more, and bike more. Good for the environment, and good for the people. Of course, then real food would become exponentially more expensive – the farmers couldn’t afford tractors, and shipping costs would skyrocket … still – someone tell me why the average family needs two or three cars. In even a small city, walking, biking, public transit will handle just about anyone’s transportation needs, and even in rural areas you can make it work with a single vehicle. Imagine though, cities with 60% less cars.
Mum and Dad were raised in England on the lard roast diet and stayed trim and vigorous their entire lives.
I love that the stupid inline ad service thinks that “Soy Oil” will be a popular click through given the context.
And suet. And suet.
And when you’re finished with that, a little more suet.
#19. have you ever eaten suet, on white bread? How about cold tripe with white vinegar? And black pudding, which is a sausage made of bread crumbs soaked in pigs blood? And don’t get me started on the English incantations on offal (lambs fry and steamed brains) and novelty uses of beer. My friends, in New Zealand, were too frightened to look in my school lunch box.
#6 has a very good point about the 3 squares a day and cleaning your plate. I’m still in my late 20’s so I don’t know where that bull shit came from. A pudgy friend of mine asks me how I stay in good shape. I tell him that I don’t eat 3 to 6 different things at every meal. Just 2 or sometimes 1. He grew up on a farm and thinks that people need to have a side of everything with every meal. Just like good ol’ ma and pa did.
Does that include suet?
#21, that’s baloney
it’s all the processing and additives that goes into stuff like, well, bologna
edwinrogers –
I’ve never eaten suet (I haven’t seen it in grocers here), but I’ve eaten lard on white bread, it’s quite tasty. And I’m quite fond of black pudding (you can get that in Irish restaurants around here) and other blood sausages. But I am NOT a typical American in this regard.
Blame it on any thing you want, but the responsibilty lies directly with YOU. My parents are both overweight, my genetic disposition was predisposed to that. I made a decision early on that it wouldnt happen to me. And it hasnt, because I wont let it. Like any bad habit, you can control it if you want to.
#25 Mark
That’s heresy, preaching self control is a choice!
Yes excessive food makes you fat. Just as important, self control can make you thin, as #25 Mark points out.
In America we don’t believe in self control, it is all about blaming others.
There is a balance between self control and government regulation. Sometime I think we rely on too much on government regulation and sometimes I think we don’t have enough.
People don’t kill, guns do!
People don’t misuse trampolines and get hurt, trampolines hurt people! Let’s ban trampolines!
Kids don’t drown in pools, pools drown kids!
People don’t misuse firecrackers, firecracker hurt people! Let’s ban firecrackers!
People don’t make the right choice and get hurt not wearing seat belts, not wearing seat belts hurts people! Let’s enforce seatbelt usage!
I could go on.
I am of the mind set that fat is a choice, just like soo many other things are, like drug use. But then again, we have a drug war to fight!
I kinda enjoy being overweight, I stay warmer in the wintertime (live in Minnesota). It is a sumbitch during the summer though.
#2 Dumbass doctors telling me to eat better and exercise more; I guess I just wait until industry fix food supply.
Goodness I hate these kind of smug sanctimonious moralizing snide comments about fat people.
There is a reason why 95% of dieters fail and it’s not because fat people are weaker-willed and morally inferior to skinny people.
it’s not the food it’s the lack of exercise….if you worked/exercised enough to burn the calories they wouldn’t accumulate as fat….I think it would be interesting to coorelate TV watch time to the rise in the fat index or whatever it’s called just to see….
#5, Comment by Rob — 4/22/2007 @ 10:06 am
Rob, thanks for the link !
[Two 10,000shp (7460kW) ZMKB Progress D-136 turboshafts driving an eight blade main rotor and five blade tail rotor]
20K HP?? That just might be able to pick up the woman I saw whilst grocery shopping yesterday. Talk about a grease fire.
[totally oft topic]
#25, mark, (or SmartAlix)
Heard any great USB surround headphones lately? Just curious, since B&W speakers rule, and they don’t make ‘phones.
http://www.physorg.com/news96431288.html
30,
Sennheiser is the brand for no-holds-barred headphones. Great stuff.
(/non-sequitur)