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How many obesity studies does it take to build one cycle path?
- Nicole S Lavery (15 December 2007)
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Diary products
- rama prasad (18 December 2007)
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Nicole S Lavery, Community Advisor Northern Ireland BT45
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Dear Editor, Re: Thin Living by Hannah Westley and Steps to a Leaner Europe by Rory Watson BMA 15 /12/2007 How many studies into obesity does it take to build one cycle path for children to get to school on? I believe we have now reached saturation levels re as to how many studies and articles it takes to convince us that we are too fat as a nation. What good does it do to advise people that they need to walk/cycle/swim when the infrastructure is doing its best to prevent exactly this. One more person to tell me to walk more – and I will invite them personally to my house in Northern Ireland, and onto roads that are death traps for pedestrians and cyclists. Having lived in several places in the GB and Northern Ireland I have come across the same problems everywhere. There is something amiss in between all the suggested health assessments, dieticians’ advice, government guidelines and supermarket labels: action to force planners, developers, councils and local authorities to end totally unsustainable, fat-making practices. Practices like building roads without cycle lanes, like trying to get away with painting a thin white line on a 70m/hr road – and declaring it a cycle path, like putting up a nice little road sign ‘walk to health’ along a busy, traffic jammed road heavy with exhaust fumes. Councils having ‘cycle to work days’ – knowing that the best a cyclist can hope for on most roads is that it has a decent, soft ditch to fall into. The worst is to run out of cycle path and find yourself between a bus lane and two lanes of heavy traffic. More examples of fat-making practices are building schools that are impossible to get on foot or by bike. Also, swimming is regarded as one of the healthiest exercises, but the availability, accessibility and the opening hours of public pools in the UK is generally pathetic compared to European countries. I suggest that all research stops now, all advice stops now and all infuriatingly patronising labelling stops now. I am aware that my double cheese deep dish piazza contains fat – without the red traffic light label on the box. I could always walk it off… The money MUST NOW be spent on buying land of private owners, farmers, developers - and building cycle paths. The only way we will be able to tie our laces in the future and not need CPR at the age of 35 is to demand and build a functioning, cyclist and pedestrian centred, integrated, reliable public transport network. Having witnessed the government’s transport policies in the last decades – there’s a fat chance. Nicole Lavery Competing interests: None declared |
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rama prasad, Retired Tiruchi India 620001
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In India we still get milk products from villages where the cow gives only about 1lit of milk every day. They do not use any hormones to produce more milk. Children on this milk are slim and fit. But children on milk from farms where they use hormones to produce more milk are obese and over weight. The milk contains these hormones there by they act on our system also and cause obesity ad girls become meture at an early age. Some research is required in this line. Competing interests: None declared |
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