Junk food: opiate of the masses

In fact, my female patients often know more than me about which foods are fattening and which are not. In the world of women’s magazines, fat is huge, albeit dwarfed by the pressure to be thin.

If I think they will cope with the thought that I sometimes suggest to my chronically dieting overweight patients that their best bet would be to move to a developing country for a few years. There is nothing like a complete change of culture and diet - not to mention chronic diarrhoea - to keep you slim.

And within industrialised countries, guess who’s fattest? Certainly not the fat cats. Elites commonly eat carefully, attend a gym and lead long and healthy lives. Instead, obesity increases as one slides down the perceived social scale. In rich countries, poor people tend to be fat.

There is also a correlation is between social inequality and obesity. Guess which industrialised countries have the greatest obesity problem? The ones with the most marked social inequalities and greatest disparities between rich and poor. The USA is worst, with Australia tumbling towards it. Scandinavian countries and Japan are both the most egalitarian and the least fat.

The inference is obvious but too little discussed. People eat crap to make themselves feel better. Junk food is the opiate of the masses. To tackle obesity, let us first consider what causes it.