There’s that age old observation that people end up looking like their pets (or perhaps pets end up looking like their owners?). This theory came close to being proven when, reported in The Guardian, 78% of vets attending a European conference on pet weight management agreed with the statement ‘obese pets tend to have obese owners’. The article states [...]
With the Miss England 2009 finals in just a few weeks we wonder if any of the competitors will cause as much outrage as 17 year old Chloe Marshall, the first overweight woman to reach the finals of Miss England, last year. The criticism she received took on such serious moral overtones, she might as well [...]
Last month, at least 124 gyms and leisure clubs in London pledged to donate free access to gym seasons worth up to £3m, enabling thousands of hard up Londoners to sample a range of exercise and thus improve their health. Backed by the government and linked to the MoreActive4Life campaign, the campaign even incorporates the [...]
In Fatville we often glance over enviously at our nearest and dearest neighbours, amazed by their superhuman ability to consumer copious amounts of fat-laden foods without ever seemingly putting on an ounce. The reality is that France, like the US and the UK, is now suffering an obesity crisis of its own. However the launch of the EPODE [...]
The Belgian city of Ghent has declared one meat-free day a week in an attempt to ward off obesity and highlight sustainability issues. This initiative might sound a bit ruddy mental but it’s certainly got us thinking here in Fatville. Sometimes ‘health’ is presented as a pretty black and white issue; you’re either fat [...]
Here in Fatville, we’re not surprised that, according to research conducted by Quorn, the middle classes eat more takeaways than the general population. Although it might be comforting to imagine that being middle class somehow makes one immune to the strangeness of Fatville…the truth is that no demographic is safe from its charms. Whilst [...]
The concept of levying taxes on certain foods is mooted at regular intervals. Back in March, Dr David Walker called for a ‘choco-tax’ in The Telegraph, stating that “chocolate is sneaking under the radar of unhealthy foods. Today in the same newspaper, Dr Tim Lobstein, director of the childhood obesity programme at the International Association for the [...]
Encouraging children to use interactive computer games such as the Nintendo Wii will become part of a public health drive to tackle rising rates of obesity amongst the young according to The Times. The findings of a pilot project in the East Midlands show that playing interactive games could increase the number of calories burnt by [...]
The Independent recently reported that chances of early death from preventable diseases is the same as smoking 10 cigarettes a day for overweight adolescents. If you’re smoker, you know it (even if you lie to your mum). The tricky thing about obese teens in Fatville is they often don’t know they’re obese. They see their similarly [...]
In Fatville we ruddy love science that comforts us as we waddle down the inexorable path to obesity. We recall a story in The Telegraph earlier this year that claimed scientists have ‘discovered’ how some of us never put on weight while others struggle to shed an ounce. Hooray for those clever boffins! Thanks to them we [...]