Doctors propose a new view: Treat obesity like alcoholism
The maps we use to define how we live and what we believe are constantly updated.
We no longer use four-year-olds as chimney sweeps or drown women who float on water as witches.
Conventions once regarded as uncontestable can, in time, often seem relics of primitive perception. We move on, our views change.
Britain’s Royal College of Physicians has suggested we cross another Rubicon and change a deeply-held perception.
RCP suggests we regard obesity as a disease rather than a consequence of a weak-willed, indulgent lifestyle.
The proposal will, in a country where 70% of men and 52% of women are overweight, find an attentive audience.
That Britain’s Public Health Agency found children have, on average, consumed more sugar than the maximum recommended for an 18-year-old by their 10th birthday suggests a fundamental change is urgently needed.
That Britain’s Cancer Research said obesity could overtake smoking as the biggest preventable cause of cancer in women by 2043 adds to that urgency.
We accept that alcoholism is a disease and treat it accordingly.
It’s time to regard obesity in the same light and impose more taxes on destructive foods.
After all, if obesity is recognised as a disease, Government must take new, firm countermeasures — especially as it would no longer be surprising if it was confirmed that obesity does more societal harm than alcoholism.
