The 'obesity crisis' is but one of many issues that have proliferated since the role of social stigma was largely removed from society (connect to your previous stack, David, on pity). Put simply, when we were allowed to pick on fat kids there were far less of them, which had a self-regulating effect. Now that we are expected to tell morbidly obese women they are 'gorgeous' it's no surprise there's a lot more of them. (Edited to add - not that I am advocating nasty behaviour, but it cannot be denied that since we have been coerced to be 'nice' we have damaged a lot of people far worse than hurty names would have done).
No doubt it's also a consequence of increased time pressure on parents, especially in single parent families or those where both parents work full time. But there are whole books that could be written about that subject.
I agree, to a point. But then take single motherhood which, within my lifetime, has gone from being socially stigmatised (see above) to hostile acceptance, to tolerated, to pitied, to admired, to a lifestyle choice which the state is prepared to underwrite and, in effect, pretty much facilitate. I'm not for the casting out of single mothers, but there's a difference (at a societal level) between dealing with adverse circumstances and positively creating them. The no strings attached, be whatever you want to be, live however you like philosophy has had a lot of negative outcomes. This, coupled with (as observed in your previous writing) the expanded role of the state as pretty much a 'parent' (and the concomitant absence of almost anything resembling personal responsibility) has been a disaster.
Ironically, to reduce obesity and its many consequent ills - such as diabetes - it would be best to restrict not sugar, but refined grain products such as flour and everything made from it.
Unfortunately, our rulers have painted themselves into a corner after 50 years of loud preaching that meat, eggs, and dairy are dangerous and that everyone should eat lots of "healthy whole grains". As one might expect, it is grains - whole or otherwise - that have been making people fat and sick. And our overlords are doing their damnedest to get rid of meat, eggs, and dairy so that no one (except perhaps themselves, in secrecy) will eat healthily.
As farmer producing free range eggs who is constantly amazed by the miracle that is a hen producing virtually an egg per day from a handful of feed I can't like your comment enough. Go Eggs....
On reflection I find it highly amusing that grains are healthy food for humans - provided they have been passed through a hen first. Or, of course, a cow, a sheep, a pig...
I was amazed to learn quite recently that ungulates, which of course eat only grass and other vegetation, nevertheless have a diet of little but saturated fat. Thanks to the bacteria that live in their stomachs and turn the cellulose and other vegetable matter into pure saturated fat - the thing that human vegetarians avoid like the plague.
But don't worry - by the time our overlords have loaded them up with Bovaer or similar to prevent them farting (sorry, emitting greenhouse gas) they won't be producing and consuming nearly so much saturated fat. And that in turn will mean more grassland on which to build windmills.
I could weep when I remember how relatives and friends were told by their trusted doctors that eggs were lethal, and they should not eat more than one a fortnight - or just the almost worthless egg white, throwing away the ultra-nourishing yolk.
As a fairly typical Baby Boomer, I was lucky enough to grow up (mostly) after rationing ended and while traditional, correct ideas of nutrition held sway. Then there was a period, during my 20s until roughly my 50s, when I foolishly believed the story told by doctors, scientists, and governments: cholesterol was The Enemy and we must gobble Healthy Whole Grains. (By pure coincidence, US Senator McGovern, who chaired the committee that began the stampede, represented the agricultural state of South Dakota, which produced much wheat and corn).
By my 50s I was in pitiable shape, and - far worse - I had misled my family with my false “expertise”. I began reading, discovered Gary Taubes and eventually Dr Weston A. Price, went back to eating meat, eggs, cheese, and double cream, and within a few years became far healthier. At 76 I now feel far better than I was at 45. And all because I failed to realise that doctors and scientists are just as liable to lie for money as politicians and businessmen.
Many other intelligent and assiduous doctors and scientists are out there - more of them all the time. Dr William Davis, author of the “Wheat Belly” series of books which are canonical for the harms caused by grains. Barry Groves. Dr Richard David Feinman (not to be confused with Dr Richard Feynman!). Professor Tim Noakes. Dr Zoe Harcombe… and many, many more.
A really good book with a most deceptively unpromising title is “Diabetes Unpacked” from The Noakes Foundation. It contains a number of chapters by various authors including Noakes, Harcombe, and Dr Malcolm Kendrick (who is not particularly into diet, but knows an enormous amount about circulatory diseases and diabetes). It is Noakes’ chapter in this book that informed me about how cattle turn grass into saturated fat. (page 243). He concludes: “The end result is that all mammals subsist on high fat diets. The sole exception is humans after we were advised to adopt high carbohydrate diets by the 1977 US Dietary Guidelines!” Because, of course, humans lack the bacteria that turn carbohydrates into fat.
I strongly recommend everyone interested in these topics to read “Diabetes Unpacked”. You are sure to learn something useful.
Thanks for the “Diabetes Unpacked’ tip. I’ve read Noakes’s “Real Food on Trial” (gripping) and Malcolm Kendrick “The Clot Thickens” (wonderful, and humorous, considering the subject). We should slightly apologise to David - instead of agreeing with his insights about the managerial state instrumentalising the legal and tax systems to micromanage society, we wanged off into the hot-button issue of obesity. Separate issues really, though it was government going well beyond its remit and evidence that got us here.
Your missives are very illuminating and easily to understand. In that sense perhaps they have something of the ease with which the sugary drink is consumed. We are all the better for it because we learn something or maybe it is even more than that, the reader (or at least I am) is learning the art of discernment which is so different and more desirable than the accumulation of facts as a basis for education. The skill of discernment can be brought to bear every where and at all times thus possessing potency. Could you comment on Cipolla's essay on stupidity and how it relates to those promulgating this nonsense?
Rather than trying to roll-back sugar and carbohydrates (by taxing them) the establishment needs to roll-back 50 years of error (and lies) told about meat, eggs, dairy, saturated fat and all the foods that parents through the ages knew, or were told, were essential for growing children. It is much more constructive to tell people what is the right thing to eat than to criticise them for doing the wrong things. If a child is given cheese and eggs - hey, what about a cooked breakfast! - they will not need to graze on carb-rich snacks all day. It is the mis-information that has caused this (very real) crisis.
I often try an experiment after reading a piece like this. Which is to imagine attempting to present the argument verbally to someone who identifies as part of the technocratic class. It's a good way of quickly realising how a deeply ingrained culture conditions not only what we believe, but *how* we think. 'Oh, so you're saying we shouldn't try to reduce childhood obesity' is a tricky one to get past. The only way to win this one would be to empirically demonstrate that a particular set of approaches fails. But you can't get past the belief that the government *should* try. Cultural conditioning's a bitch.
Yes, it's a tough nut to crack because of the 'I know an old lady who swallowed a fly' nature of the issue. Why are so many children obese? Because they have poor diets. Why do they have poor diets? Because they're not raised to eat healthy food. Why are they not raised to eat healthy food? Because of a million social changes that have taken place over the last century, mostly to do with the expansion of the welfare state....
I think it is relevant that, although there is "the current Labour government with its shenanigans over the sugar tax", the tax itself was introduced in 2016 under the Conservatives.
What this tells us is that it is a policy of the "Princes" in the Deep State, and not a Labour policy. It is a policy that bypasses democracy.
This is the other thing to be said about the decay of the British State into a Machiavellian technocracy: it is directly opposed to the concept of democracy.
The election results this week represented a revolt by the people against this form of government. It remains to be seen whether the revolt will succeed.
The problem is that deciding who is adding value, and who is merely self-serving, has been left to the very same professional-managerial class to decide. I expect that DOGE's reform project will fire plenty of government employees doing useful work. The pertinent question is: useful for who, exactly?
Thanks for this essay, David. The micro-management of our everyday lives in Britain extends to how we may behave when walking on the coast, regarding the disturbance of over-wintering migratory birds. I wrote about how this 'behavioural insights' work is funded with housing stealth taxes recently, on my Substack.
Since then, I challenged Natural England about its 'bird aware' levies on coastal property development, on the grounds that a tourism enterprise that only operated in summer could not possibly harm birds which visit Britain in winter. Its response was to re-write the guidance so that summer-only developments still have to pay the levy, albeit at a discounted rate.
Exactly how this rate was calculated on the basis of harm to birds which are not actually present was not explained by the experts, but I suspect it has something to do with paying the year-round salaries of bird rangers: local government staff who are paid to do their hobby of bird watching, while 'nudging' us to be aware of the harm to birds that irresponsible coastal walkers cause.
I see zero evidence that this nudging causes behaviour change; that assumption is baked into the funding model.
'Bird aware' is just one of dozens of stealth taxes being loaded onto the price of new housing in the UK. Another really odd one is developers being required to pay for new general practitioner surgeries, which are private businesses under the NHS model, regardless of whether doctors are available and willing to work in them.
The price rises in UK housing aren't all to do with the cost of materials. Stealth taxes and the legal negotiations required over them have a chilling effect on development which can prevent building altogether. And people who already own property are paying precisely nothing into these funds.
Well done, though I wasn't able to identify the place (the 3rd one) you refer to in the text of Machiavelli's Prince where he comments on "good laws" or just laws in general (leggi). Actually, the son of a lawyer skips "good laws" for "good arms". Could you quote the place you meant?
Excellent essay. But an unhealthy food landscape isn’t down to ‘choice’ it’s downstream of large corporations choosing to prioritise profit at all costs. Taxation as a leverage on consumer choice is irrelevant, they will just find ways to persuade people to consume other crap, but with additives that are as unhealthy as sugar. It’s all about hacking human beings to buy more.
Added to that, a lot of young people now eat from hot food takeaways and snack counters on a daily basis, rather than eating at home or in school. That may have something to do with parents having to work multiple jobs to pay the bills.
The 'obesity crisis' is but one of many issues that have proliferated since the role of social stigma was largely removed from society (connect to your previous stack, David, on pity). Put simply, when we were allowed to pick on fat kids there were far less of them, which had a self-regulating effect. Now that we are expected to tell morbidly obese women they are 'gorgeous' it's no surprise there's a lot more of them. (Edited to add - not that I am advocating nasty behaviour, but it cannot be denied that since we have been coerced to be 'nice' we have damaged a lot of people far worse than hurty names would have done).
No doubt it's also a consequence of increased time pressure on parents, especially in single parent families or those where both parents work full time. But there are whole books that could be written about that subject.
I agree, to a point. But then take single motherhood which, within my lifetime, has gone from being socially stigmatised (see above) to hostile acceptance, to tolerated, to pitied, to admired, to a lifestyle choice which the state is prepared to underwrite and, in effect, pretty much facilitate. I'm not for the casting out of single mothers, but there's a difference (at a societal level) between dealing with adverse circumstances and positively creating them. The no strings attached, be whatever you want to be, live however you like philosophy has had a lot of negative outcomes. This, coupled with (as observed in your previous writing) the expanded role of the state as pretty much a 'parent' (and the concomitant absence of almost anything resembling personal responsibility) has been a disaster.
Ironically, to reduce obesity and its many consequent ills - such as diabetes - it would be best to restrict not sugar, but refined grain products such as flour and everything made from it.
Unfortunately, our rulers have painted themselves into a corner after 50 years of loud preaching that meat, eggs, and dairy are dangerous and that everyone should eat lots of "healthy whole grains". As one might expect, it is grains - whole or otherwise - that have been making people fat and sick. And our overlords are doing their damnedest to get rid of meat, eggs, and dairy so that no one (except perhaps themselves, in secrecy) will eat healthily.
As farmer producing free range eggs who is constantly amazed by the miracle that is a hen producing virtually an egg per day from a handful of feed I can't like your comment enough. Go Eggs....
On reflection I find it highly amusing that grains are healthy food for humans - provided they have been passed through a hen first. Or, of course, a cow, a sheep, a pig...
I was amazed to learn quite recently that ungulates, which of course eat only grass and other vegetation, nevertheless have a diet of little but saturated fat. Thanks to the bacteria that live in their stomachs and turn the cellulose and other vegetable matter into pure saturated fat - the thing that human vegetarians avoid like the plague.
Excellent observation and news to me too!
But don't worry - by the time our overlords have loaded them up with Bovaer or similar to prevent them farting (sorry, emitting greenhouse gas) they won't be producing and consuming nearly so much saturated fat. And that in turn will mean more grassland on which to build windmills.
Solar farms will perhaps be less favoured once Rubberband blocks out all the sunlight.
I could weep when I remember how relatives and friends were told by their trusted doctors that eggs were lethal, and they should not eat more than one a fortnight - or just the almost worthless egg white, throwing away the ultra-nourishing yolk.
As a fairly typical Baby Boomer, I was lucky enough to grow up (mostly) after rationing ended and while traditional, correct ideas of nutrition held sway. Then there was a period, during my 20s until roughly my 50s, when I foolishly believed the story told by doctors, scientists, and governments: cholesterol was The Enemy and we must gobble Healthy Whole Grains. (By pure coincidence, US Senator McGovern, who chaired the committee that began the stampede, represented the agricultural state of South Dakota, which produced much wheat and corn).
By my 50s I was in pitiable shape, and - far worse - I had misled my family with my false “expertise”. I began reading, discovered Gary Taubes and eventually Dr Weston A. Price, went back to eating meat, eggs, cheese, and double cream, and within a few years became far healthier. At 76 I now feel far better than I was at 45. And all because I failed to realise that doctors and scientists are just as liable to lie for money as politicians and businessmen.
We are dietary twins. Gary Taubes and also Nina Teicholz.
Many other intelligent and assiduous doctors and scientists are out there - more of them all the time. Dr William Davis, author of the “Wheat Belly” series of books which are canonical for the harms caused by grains. Barry Groves. Dr Richard David Feinman (not to be confused with Dr Richard Feynman!). Professor Tim Noakes. Dr Zoe Harcombe… and many, many more.
A really good book with a most deceptively unpromising title is “Diabetes Unpacked” from The Noakes Foundation. It contains a number of chapters by various authors including Noakes, Harcombe, and Dr Malcolm Kendrick (who is not particularly into diet, but knows an enormous amount about circulatory diseases and diabetes). It is Noakes’ chapter in this book that informed me about how cattle turn grass into saturated fat. (page 243). He concludes: “The end result is that all mammals subsist on high fat diets. The sole exception is humans after we were advised to adopt high carbohydrate diets by the 1977 US Dietary Guidelines!” Because, of course, humans lack the bacteria that turn carbohydrates into fat.
I strongly recommend everyone interested in these topics to read “Diabetes Unpacked”. You are sure to learn something useful.
Thanks for the “Diabetes Unpacked’ tip. I’ve read Noakes’s “Real Food on Trial” (gripping) and Malcolm Kendrick “The Clot Thickens” (wonderful, and humorous, considering the subject). We should slightly apologise to David - instead of agreeing with his insights about the managerial state instrumentalising the legal and tax systems to micromanage society, we wanged off into the hot-button issue of obesity. Separate issues really, though it was government going well beyond its remit and evidence that got us here.
Good point about the hijacking. Apologies to David! 8-}
Carnivore. Eat at least 8 a day. Superfood
Exactly so...
Your missives are very illuminating and easily to understand. In that sense perhaps they have something of the ease with which the sugary drink is consumed. We are all the better for it because we learn something or maybe it is even more than that, the reader (or at least I am) is learning the art of discernment which is so different and more desirable than the accumulation of facts as a basis for education. The skill of discernment can be brought to bear every where and at all times thus possessing potency. Could you comment on Cipolla's essay on stupidity and how it relates to those promulgating this nonsense?
Excellent point made.
Thanks, by the way.
I've never read it, but will give it a go!
Rather than trying to roll-back sugar and carbohydrates (by taxing them) the establishment needs to roll-back 50 years of error (and lies) told about meat, eggs, dairy, saturated fat and all the foods that parents through the ages knew, or were told, were essential for growing children. It is much more constructive to tell people what is the right thing to eat than to criticise them for doing the wrong things. If a child is given cheese and eggs - hey, what about a cooked breakfast! - they will not need to graze on carb-rich snacks all day. It is the mis-information that has caused this (very real) crisis.
I often try an experiment after reading a piece like this. Which is to imagine attempting to present the argument verbally to someone who identifies as part of the technocratic class. It's a good way of quickly realising how a deeply ingrained culture conditions not only what we believe, but *how* we think. 'Oh, so you're saying we shouldn't try to reduce childhood obesity' is a tricky one to get past. The only way to win this one would be to empirically demonstrate that a particular set of approaches fails. But you can't get past the belief that the government *should* try. Cultural conditioning's a bitch.
Yes, it's a tough nut to crack because of the 'I know an old lady who swallowed a fly' nature of the issue. Why are so many children obese? Because they have poor diets. Why do they have poor diets? Because they're not raised to eat healthy food. Why are they not raised to eat healthy food? Because of a million social changes that have taken place over the last century, mostly to do with the expansion of the welfare state....
The UK Government has been trying to change our diets at least since 'Dig for Victory'. Yet we are getting less and less healthy.
It's almost as if people are responsible for their own diets.
I think it is relevant that, although there is "the current Labour government with its shenanigans over the sugar tax", the tax itself was introduced in 2016 under the Conservatives.
What this tells us is that it is a policy of the "Princes" in the Deep State, and not a Labour policy. It is a policy that bypasses democracy.
This is the other thing to be said about the decay of the British State into a Machiavellian technocracy: it is directly opposed to the concept of democracy.
The election results this week represented a revolt by the people against this form of government. It remains to be seen whether the revolt will succeed.
Yes. Here Mansfield's language of 'regimes' is helpful. We are not governed by this or that political party, but by a regime.
I saw it put like this:
It doesn't matter who you vote for, the government always gets in.
Great post! I didn't think to connect many of the ideas together.
They bring the tired old trope of needing to do this for the safety of children.
Can this well-worn excuse be used for everything?
If not, how many times can it be dragged out as a Trojan Horse?
I also note the way they evoke the magic 'our'. 'Our' children, 'Our' NHS, 'Our' democracy.
Yes, 'our' is one of those words, like 'justice', that immediately rings alarm bells...
Just three letters; so much more efficient than typing 'Volksgemeinschaft'.
I doubt that it is any deeper than subject matter ‚experts‘ make-work schemes to justify their own existence.
No doubt that's the proximate cause!
Yes, which is why part of the answer is reducing their numbers through mass redundancies in the civil service.
The problem is that deciding who is adding value, and who is merely self-serving, has been left to the very same professional-managerial class to decide. I expect that DOGE's reform project will fire plenty of government employees doing useful work. The pertinent question is: useful for who, exactly?
I would describe governments that succumb to this impulse to micromanage our lives not as beneficial but tyrannical.
Thanks for this essay, David. The micro-management of our everyday lives in Britain extends to how we may behave when walking on the coast, regarding the disturbance of over-wintering migratory birds. I wrote about how this 'behavioural insights' work is funded with housing stealth taxes recently, on my Substack.
Since then, I challenged Natural England about its 'bird aware' levies on coastal property development, on the grounds that a tourism enterprise that only operated in summer could not possibly harm birds which visit Britain in winter. Its response was to re-write the guidance so that summer-only developments still have to pay the levy, albeit at a discounted rate.
Exactly how this rate was calculated on the basis of harm to birds which are not actually present was not explained by the experts, but I suspect it has something to do with paying the year-round salaries of bird rangers: local government staff who are paid to do their hobby of bird watching, while 'nudging' us to be aware of the harm to birds that irresponsible coastal walkers cause.
I see zero evidence that this nudging causes behaviour change; that assumption is baked into the funding model.
Bird aware levies! Amazing.
'Bird aware' is just one of dozens of stealth taxes being loaded onto the price of new housing in the UK. Another really odd one is developers being required to pay for new general practitioner surgeries, which are private businesses under the NHS model, regardless of whether doctors are available and willing to work in them.
The price rises in UK housing aren't all to do with the cost of materials. Stealth taxes and the legal negotiations required over them have a chilling effect on development which can prevent building altogether. And people who already own property are paying precisely nothing into these funds.
Well done, though I wasn't able to identify the place (the 3rd one) you refer to in the text of Machiavelli's Prince where he comments on "good laws" or just laws in general (leggi). Actually, the son of a lawyer skips "good laws" for "good arms". Could you quote the place you meant?
I'll dig it out tomorrow!
Excellent essay. But an unhealthy food landscape isn’t down to ‘choice’ it’s downstream of large corporations choosing to prioritise profit at all costs. Taxation as a leverage on consumer choice is irrelevant, they will just find ways to persuade people to consume other crap, but with additives that are as unhealthy as sugar. It’s all about hacking human beings to buy more.
Added to that, a lot of young people now eat from hot food takeaways and snack counters on a daily basis, rather than eating at home or in school. That may have something to do with parents having to work multiple jobs to pay the bills.