War On Fat: Daily Mail Says Welsh People Are Putting Chips In Milk Bottles
DID you know that a six your old had stroke brought on by “the obesity epidemic fuelled by parents feeding children pureed junk food“. (And that’s not the best quote – read on for the best Quote Of The Year).
The busy “Daily Mail Reporter” has facts:
An epidemic of obesity is leading to babies being treated in hospital for weight problems – and children as young as six are suffering strokes.
And:
Some parents encourage children to eat junk food, seeing a family excursion to a pizza parlour or hamburger restaurant as a treat.
A hamburger is treat? Well, yes. That’s good isn’t it?
And what about that six-year-old stroke victim fed pureed junk food?
We hear from Paul Sacher, who works for MEND, a charity which “educates parents on nutrition“. MEND? Anorak has a pretty firm policy on this sort of thing. Any organisation whose acronym spells a word linked to their ambitions is best treated with massive skepticism or avoided totally. The impression is that the message is all. You, of course, what to know what MEND stands for? It stands for:
Mind, Exercise, Nutrition… Do it!
MENDI! As you know (checks Wikipedia), Mendi is a province in Papua New Guinea, where everyone is rumoured to be anorexic and happy to the point of delirium.
The Mail adds:
Paul Sacher…was the child health consultant for Jamie Oliver’s Return to Jamie’s School Dinners.
Indeed, readers. As you gnaw on that chunk of carpet and then your fist, think of the calories you are burning. Say the over-qualified Sacher:
“I see children all the time who are being given a lolly, a chocolate bar or packet of crisps. I see mums pouring fizzy pop into their baby’s bottles and in parts of Wales they put chips in milk in bottles.”
Chips. In milk bottles! Blimey! Chips IN milk bottles? And you know – you just bloody know – the milk was used to cook up crack. (Chips is milk bottles is also a pretty damning indictment on the state of the newspaper industry – what happened to putting them in paper?)
But what we want to know is about that six-year-old stroke victim. They never get named. The NHS tells us:
Every year, about five out of every 100,000 children have a stroke. That means around 100 children in total every year in the UK. Stroke is much less common in children than in adults.
Go on:
About half of all affected children have an underlying medical condition, for example, sickle cell anaemia or a heart problem, which increases their chance of having a stroke.
The other half are apparently healthy beforehand. There are many possible causes of stroke in this group of children. One of the commonest is a narrowing of the blood vessels within the head as a result of the chickenpox virus. This is a rare effect of chickenpox and it is not known why some children develop this complication. Other causes of childhood strokes include other abnormalities in the blood vessels supplying the brain or an increased tendency for the blood to form clots. In around ten per cent of children who have a stroke, no cause is identified despite extensive tests.
The causes of strokes in children are not the same as in adults.
The Mail is not alone in this war on fat. The Telegraph’s headline states:
“Obese child stroke victim aged just six”
In two extreme examples, a six year-old and an eight year-old suffered strokes that were thought to have resulted from their weight.The figures, which were released by 66 of Britain’s 168 acute hospital trusts under the Freedom of Information ACt…
So. There is no proof that these young stroke victims suffered because they were fat. It’s just a guess. We are not told how many young stroke victims were underweight? More than two? Less than two? Did they have chicken pox or some other underlying condition? That information is not given – because it does not fit with the agenda.
Being fat is the modern scare story? First they came for the smokers – now they want the fat to roll over…
Posted: 12th, June 2011 | In: Key Posts Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
