Times 2 - UK (2020-07-30)

(Antfer) #1

2 1GT Thursday July 30 2020 | the times


times


G


uess what?
We’re all too fat.
I’m too fat
(slightly, since
lockdown*).
You’re too fat
(someone had
to say so). Boris
Johnson was too fat, but now he
isn’t so fat, but will likely get fat
again because that’s how it goes.
So what to do about all this
fatness? Or the “obesity crisis”, as
it’s more precisely called? Which
is now so serious they’ve even
come for Percy Pig. Leave the pig
out of it, was my first response.
Come for the pig and where will
it end? Who’ll be next? Colin the
Caterpillar cake? So my second
response? Leave Colin out of it.
But since I’d already, that
morning, reached for a Kit Kat
while knowing that an apple is
good for me, I did then have to
self-chastise with: “You’re a
fine one to talk, missy.”
Actually, I reached for a
Kit Kat, but had to settle
for three Jaffa cakes
because someone in this
house had eaten the
last Kit Kat. While
knowing that an apple
is good for them.
Why can’t we put
into practice what we
all know? And where is
this taking us all, as a
society? It’s a complex
business and so I have
recruited an obesity expert
to answer your questions:

Dear obesity expert,
This morning I also reached for
a Kit Kat while knowing that an
apple is good for me. It’s like
I’m made this way.
The truth is, we all are. Spool
back thousands of years and
eating calorie-dense foods made
sense. Hunting and foraging were
a faff, so the more calories you
could take on board at one time

statement “too much fuss is being
made about the risk of coronavirus”
and were not bothering much with
precautions. What’s the etiquette
for when you get a blokey resister
and an elderly aunt at the same
wedding table?
This was the tension expressed
by Danny Altmann, professor of
immunology at Imperial College,
London, when I contacted him
this week. “We are still living with
a very transmissible, unpredictably
lethal virus with no vaccine imminent
and [even though] many have got a
little bored of pandemic excitement
and feel a need for normality, the virus
is identical to the virus in March,
when we were all terrified watching
nightly coverage of people dying It
hasn’t got bored of us,” he said.
However, at the same time he says,
“I believe all rational, numerate people
should try and live their lives based
on a sound understanding of statistics.
Where I live, currently, if I go to a
crowded, indoor space, train carriage
or aeroplane, the chance I will be up
close to a person who is shedding virus
on me is one in some thousands. How
does this compare to the risks I
normally think about in my life? It’s
similar to rolling four sixes in a row —
we’ve all had games of Monopoly
where this has happened.”
So, this summer, is it safe to go back
into the water? Or rather, is it safe to
go back into the newly reopened
swimming pool? Ditto: restaurant,
wedding or cinema?
Indoor gyms, fitness studios and
pools were able to open legally from
Saturday; whereas wedding receptions
and contact treatments such as facials
must wait till August 1. The rules are
many and variable, between the
government, the local authorities, the
industry bodies and the mood of a
pub landlord, but that’s just the
start of it. It’s other people who are
surprising, in all their glorious human
inconsistency. We are engaging in
game theory every time we meet
for a drink.
And that includes some of the most
expert in the fields of virology and
public health. I spoke to Altmann, as
well as Linda Bauld, the chairwoman
of Public Health at the University of
Edinburgh; Ian Jones, a professor of
virology at the University of Reading
and a member of the Medical
Research Council Infectious and
Immunity Board; and George
Lomonossoff, a professor of virology at
the John Innes Centre in Norwich. I
asked each how far they would dip a
— sanitised — toe into the new
opportunities opening up.

Would you go to the gym or
indoor pool?

Bauld I’m very keen, but I will avoid
any changing rooms.
Altmann I won’t for the foreseeable
future.

T


he emergence of
Covid-19 followed the
plot of the first Jaws
movie: the threat to
society of the invisible
killer, and the two
blunt archetypes in the
way those in authority
could react: Mayor Vaughn, venal,
devil-may-care dismissive, versus
Chief Brody, panicked, paranoid
and ultimately right.
Should the beach be put on
lockdown for the summer? The mayor
says no, the chief says yes and it leads
to the central showdown of the film.
Not that between shark-hunter and
Great White, but between the mother
of a killed child and the authorities.
“You knew it was dangerous, but you
let people go swimming anyway,” spits
the enraged mother, Mrs Kintner,
played by Lee Fierro, at the men in
charge. “You knew all those things.
But still my boy is dead now.”
Things have moved on. We’re not in
tense Jaws territory any more. We are
now living in parallel to its sequel, the
imaginatively titled Jaws 2, which has
arguably the best tagline of any film:
“Just when you thought it was safe to
go back in the water.”
There are again just as many
similarities with Covid-19. People
have become a bit bored with the
drama. It’s summer and we want to get
to the beach. We want to do the things
normal people do. This sequel to the
lockdown, if it had a name, would be
called something like The Return. The
Return of the pandemic, or ordinary
life? You decide.
During lockdown Fierro died of
complications related to Covid-19. A
columnist for the Los Angeles Times
wrote, “We’re all Mrs Kintner now,”
but the truth is that we aren’t Mrs
Kintner any more, we aren’t fired by
that urgency and anger.
The shock of the new has passed.
More and more venues are opening
up: wedding receptions of 30 guests
allowed this weekend, cinema chains
opening, as well as pools and gyms.
Each encounter requires a fine
calibration of risk to oneself and
altruism to others at risk.
We are more like the scattered
beachgoers in Jaws. Some of us are
rushing, gaily, on to a packed playa;
some of us are on Weymouth beach,
but barricaded by sand moats marking
off two metres (I have seen this), and
some of us are scanning nervously for
lurking monsters from the car with the
windows wound tightly up.
Studies have repeatedly shown that
men and the young are more likely
to be comfortable with risk, and that
usually women are more altruistic
than men. No surprise that, during the
lockdown, research by King’s College
London found that about 10 per cent
of British society were “resisters”, who
were more likely to be men in their
twenties, who mostly agreed with the

Probably. If you follow the money
it is going, mostly, to the fast food
industry and the industries that
make highly processed foods, but
how do you take on industries
giving people what they want
while benefiting the economy?
Perhaps you don’t take them on
via governments who say, “Let’s
ban junk ads and let’s put traffic-
light warnings on food, but, hang
on... don’t forget to Eat Out to
Help Out!”
However, all is not lost because
most fizzy pop manufacturers do
produce diet versions of their
drinks, and while they have been
linked to strokes, strokes can burn
a significant number of calories.
So, fair play, the industry is doing
its bit here.

Dear obesity expert,
I’m “big boned” and wondered if
medical science has come any
nearer to recognising this
condition.
No. Sorry.

Dear obesity expert,
If obesity is “the new
smoking”, as some are
saying, and junk food is
“the new tobacco”, and
if we ever did beat this
thing, will we one day
look back and be amazed
that it was permissible to
be fat at our desks and on
the top desk of the bus?
And also at the cinema?
No idea. But, for now, if an
obese person comes to my
house I do make them go and be
obese down at the bottom of the
garden, whatever the weather.
Actually, no. If it’s especially
miserable I will let them stand
and be obese at the back door.

(*That which once needed belting
no longer needs a belt, shall we
say. Or as my grandma would
have said, “Someone’s
got heavy.. .”)

No place


to park


a bike


have a house with a
side passage, say, and a
lockable shed out back,
fine. Great. I hope you
and your bike will be
very happy together.
Or you have a sizeable
home with a wide
hallway? Again: fine.
Great. I hope you and
your bike will be
very happy together.
But otherwise?
I live in a small place
with no side passage —
and no real garden
anyhow — and a
narrow hallway that

a bike would block, and
if I locked it up outside
it would get nicked. It’s
just how it is in this
part of London. I’ve had
my window boxes
nicked. I had a big
agapanthus in a big pot
out front. Substantial.
Heavy. Still nicked. So
I know a bike would be
nicked. Or bits of it. I’d
come out and there
would be a back wheel
but no front one.
True, you can rent a
place in a bike hangar,
those cylindrical

containers with locking
doors and bike hoops
inside, and we have one
on the corner of our
street, in fact. But. The
family next door kept
their two bikes there.
And? Nicked. Bike
hangar broken into.
Bikes nicked. Still, the
police were wonderfully
helpful. “Go on to
Gumtree and look for
them there,” they said.
I do, actually, quite
fancy a bike, but this is
what is stopping me.
Any ideas, anyone?

Get a bike, they say. A
bike is what we all need
right now in this fight
against obesity, which
we haven’t a hope of
winning. But what no
one is saying is: hang
on, where am I meant
to keep it?
If you live rurally or

Deborah Ross


Yes, there is an obesity


crisis. But don’t worry,


my exp e r t c an help


Is flying OK


The list of things we’re allowed to do


keeps growing — but does that mean


they are safe? Helen Rumbelow asks


experts what precautions they’re taking


Kit Kat
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have to
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s:

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Dear obesity
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No idea
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Actually,no

the better. Did early humans cut
the fat off their mammoth steaks?
Probably not. The difference
today is that we don’t have to
work for high-calorie food, which
is cheap and constantly available,
and which, as we have seen, we’re
primed to want, over and over
and over. This is why no one has
ever said: “I’m so craving an apple
I’m going to stop on my way
home to buy one, goddam it.” Or
has raided the fridge at night for
cucumber, saying: “I am quite a
weak-willed person and just
couldn’t resist all that lovely
watery goodness. Don’t judge me!”

Dear obesity expert,
So, hang on, if we’re primed to like
these foods, and they are now
everywhere, it’s game over, isn’t it?

Why can’t we


put into


practice what


we all know?

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