Speaker: Talking past each other: Ideological silos and research
345 Responses
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Rebecca Gray, in reply to
Ironic that we posted at the same time… but I hope we can manage to want different things sometimes while still acknowledging each other as "good and reasonable". That’s more or less why I had decided to experiment with giving libertarians the benefit of the doubt in the first place.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
This also seems like a good approach.
Nice. I'm (trying) to write something that covers a similar approach to drug policy, per Tuari Potiki's UN speech.
Papa Nahi, who was on our show this week talking about drug policy, is also quoted in this story on an initiative by a Ngāti Whātua sports club to stop offering sugary drinks at its clubrooms. Simple, community-driven.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
Thing is, people HAVE actually been making some very worthwhile points among the rest of that noise. And some of those points only seem to be at cross-purposes because the commentators are concentrating on different sides to the issue or different terminology for similar issues.
Thanks Rebecca. We'll have you back :-)
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This is from someone who doesn't feel safe posting here, but wanted to contribute.
WTF. Seriously what fate hate? Nobody was deriding people for being obese. For some reason (and I know offense is always in the eye of the beholder) someone felt offended by others saying obesity is a major health problem that will harm the lives of those suffering the disease (and yeah I know those are hard words).
I am going to assume good faith and explain why the people here - and reading this and not feeling safe to comment - are feeling and seeing fat hate.
Because to be fat is to see fat hate everywhere. From the people staring anytime you put anything in your mouth, to the kindly strangers commenting on your body. From feeling like everyone is staring at you when someone makes a joke about fat people, to the woman who stopped me in the street two weeks ago to tell me my skirt was too short for "a woman like me."
So when you describe the "obesity problem" you're not talking about a health problem like lung cancer from smoking. You're talking about my body. I'm obese, therefore I am a problem. As Deborah and others have already said, you can't separate the person from the body. Believe me, I spent most of my twenties and thirties trying to do exactly that. Were it possible, I'd have figured out a way.
For what it's worth, I've been fat all my life. My parents are fat, so were my grandmothers. We didn't have very much money when I was a kid, and the habits and tastes I developed then have absolutely had an impact on my body. So I am not suggesting we do nothing. But a sugar tax is an incredibly blunt tool that will harm the people it purports to help. We need food. It's what we live on. No one needs tobacco or alcohol to live - there is a difference, and the policy responses need to be different. The most positive change I have made in my own life is to move my body - but being a fat person, that's incredibly hard. It's hard for me to buy workout clothes, buying bras is an exercise in masochism, and the patronising or outright threatening responses from other people make it more and more difficult.
We're not going to fix this until we figure out a way to separate bodies from lifestyles, and to stop judging and diagnosing people based on how they look, instead of on their actual medical status. We're not going to fix this when you all continue to treat "obesity" like it's an abstract problem, and not what everyone thinks when they're confronted by my thighs.
When I was 13, someone put a weightloss pamphlet in my locker at school. It is to this day one of the most humiliating experiences of my life. I've spent most of the rest of my life doing everything I can to avoid that feeling - which, yes, includes eating my feelings on occasion. I don't know what the person who put that pamphlet in my locker was thinking, but I imagine they thought they were helping. Like you guys do, I imagine they thought they were being kind. She wasn't. You aren't. And you aren't helping.
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giovanni tiso, in reply to
but I hope we can manage to want different things sometimes while still acknowledging each other as “good and reasonable”
Not at the cost of pretending that there are no competing social interests at play. The sugar tax is popular among conservative politicians because it enables them to be seen as doing something while not actually doing anything of substance, and placing all the cost on consumers, regressively - as opposed to corporations or taxpayers, progressively. It's the thing we can do for the least political cost, instead of other things that would be of much greater benefit. So long as the topic is ideology, it seems worth pointing out.
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The thing is, Bart, we don't need "hard words", because we get them every single day. There is a more-than-zero chance I will be yelled at on the street for exercising. There is a more-than-zero chance I will be minding my own damn business and have someone shout abuse at me in public. There is a more-than-zero chance that people will think I am stupid or lazy and not be able to hide it from me. And I'm a middle class person with plenty of money and two postgraduate degrees. Imagine if you're a poor, brown woman. It's like handing someone a shit sandwich to have a bunch of "reasonable" people talk about how fat people are all doomed to terrible blighted lives and wave a sugar tax around as if it solves a damn thing.
(And forget class issues - I haven't even STARTED to talk about the feminist implications of this.)
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Sacha, in reply to
I'm going to venture "not on the basis of that article"
Thanks for fact-checking. Spotted that in a break. Amazing what's coming out about our microbiome now.
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I reported it elsewhere but 'm still shocked by a comment at a public lecture I attended at Victoria University last week. The session explored (not necessarily promoted) the idea of a sugar tax and the speakers were a tax expert academic and a public health researcher. At the end a member of the audience (middle aged white male) asked why we don't just tax fat people.
Fat hate summed up right there.
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Danielle, in reply to
Cognitive Impairment: A Hidden Consequence of the Childhood Obesity Epidemic
A health professional who similarly feels unsafe posting here read the original research papers you're talking about in this post and notes that poor cognition is linked to depression and poor emotional wellbeing, which is intrinsically connected to "obesity", which is really the entire point of the research. Obesity doesn't make you stupid, but because the obese are being treated as a doomed social blight instead of people, they are depressed and their cognition is therefore poorer.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
The sugar tax is popular among conservative politicians
Really? It’s been dismissed by John Key, opposed by Katherine Rich and notoriously and dirtily campaigned against by Carrick Graham and friends.
Which conservative politicians in New Zealand can you name as supportive of a sugar tax?
Green Party health spokesman Kevin Hague said awareness and industry initiatives were clearly not enough to combat obesity.
He compared the approach to obesity to smoking, for which the Government had aggressively lifted prices and limited marketing.
As I said, I have strong doubts about the merit of a sugar tax, but you’re making a very dubious claim here.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
Obesity doesn’t make you stupid, but because the obese are being treated as a doomed social blight instead of people, they are depressed and their cognition is therefore poorer.
I was concerned that you'd respond by accusing me of saying "Fat people are stupid," so I'm happy (well, relieved) with this response.
I would note that all the linked papers propose pathological and physiological causes in some detail. This, of course, does not mean that the psychological factors you cite aren't at play, but I'd be surprised if they could account for the strong association with Alzheimer's.
I don't think there's anything wrong with worrying about what the research indicates, or hoping that the diets of children improve.
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Danielle, in reply to
At the end a member of the audience (middle aged white male) asked why we don’t just tax fat people.
Oh yeah, that's quite a common refrain. I'm waiting for my inevitable hospital surcharge. "Reasonable" people would probably agree that the consumer needs to pay, right?
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giovanni tiso, in reply to
Which conservative politicians in New Zealand can you name as supportive of a sugar tax?
I wasn’t aware New Zealand was the only country that counted. The sugar tax was famously championed by Bloomberg, a Republican. Adopted in Mexico by a conservative president, in France under Sarkozy, in England under the Tories. But hey I guess I’m making a “dubious claim”.
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Carol Stewart, in reply to
The sugar tax is popular among conservative politicians
Really? It’s been dismissed by John Key, opposed by Katherine Rich and notoriously and dirtily campaigned against by Carrick Graham and friends.
And supported by a very large group of public health professionals. People whose pronouncements about such public health interventions as improving the housing stock we listen to carefully.
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Danielle, in reply to
I was concerned that you’d respond by accusing me of saying “Fat people are stupid,” so I’m happy (well, relieved) with this response.
I really resent this implication that you think I'm so unreasonable that I'm incapable of reading comprehension. Is there anything in my posts in this thread to imply such a thing? Considering that my SOLE POINT in this thread is asking people to think very carefully about how they think and speak about fat people? Asking for people not to exaggerate their woeful predictions, because those exaggerations are harmful? Asking people to care more deeply for children's mental wellbeing, so that their physical wellbeing can be improved? I mean, hold the fuck up. You're giving me shit for my own COMPASSION?
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Danielle, in reply to
I’d be surprised if they could account for the strong association with Alzheimer’s.
PS My health professional friend notes that there is an association between Alzheimer's and depression: "an odds ratio of 2.0 for depression occurring more than 10 years before the onset of dementia symptoms".
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Russell Brown, in reply to
Asking people to care more deeply for children’s mental wellbeing, so that their physical wellbeing can be improved? I mean, hold the fuck up. You’re giving me shit for my own COMPASSION?
No, I'm not. I've acknowledged what you've said. But I honestly was worried you'd have a go at me.
I hope you picked up that I was concerned about children too.
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David Hood, in reply to
"England under the Tories"
Hang on, in England it has been advocated by Labour for years, the Tories were very much pushed into.
Norway also has a sugar tax. And among Finland's somewhat complicated coalition arrangements, as far as I can see can the sugar tax has been removed (multiple times) by more right leaning coalitions and brought back by more left leaning ones.
If you drew Venn diagrams , sugar tax would include most public health people, some right wing politicians, and some left wing politicians (given we can name both right and left wing politicians for it and against it). I think this makes the essential idea empirically apolitical. Equally I think a right wing implementation of it is likely to be more regressive than a left wing implementation.
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But I honestly was worried you’d have a go at me.
Don't get me wrong, it's good to get the full "bitch be crazy" treatment sometimes. Just so I can be reminded of where I stand.
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giovanni tiso, in reply to
If you drew Venn diagrams , sugar tax would include most public health people, some right wing politicians, and some left wing politicians (given we can name both right and left wing politicians for it and against it). I think this makes the essential idea empirically apolitical.
I’m sure hidden in this interesting catalogue is something that contradicts my claim that conservative politicians like the tax, and it’s just me who can’t find it.
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Rebecca Gray, in reply to
An audience member of the same (middle aged white male) demographic made the same (tax people by the amount they are considered overweight) suggestion at the NZ Initiative event. Seemed really pleased with himself and his hilariously original idea :-(
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linger, in reply to
Just so I can be reminded of where I stand.
Surrounded by respectful and fearful (if, and because, sometimes blundering) supplicants?
... And also, unreconstructed idiots like that NZInitiative audience member. From here, hard to tell which is in the majority. Going off now to re-read the "missing stair" thread...
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David Hood, in reply to
I’m sure hidden in this interesting catalogue is something that contradicts my claim that conservative politicians like the tax, and it’s just me who can’t find it.
That it not what I was trying to do, because some conservative politicians like it (and some dislike it) and it is not clear if there should be a "some" or "all" in your claim. I'm not getting sucked into that argument.
I was responding to your earlier statement, in good faith, that "Or you could give me examples of places where the sugar tax is being advocated for as part of a balanced package of measures, along with others aimed at reducing the chief cause of the problem – namely, poverty. I’d be all ears."
Since you said you would be keen to know, I responded.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
Don’t get me wrong, it’s good to get the full “bitch be crazy” treatment sometimes. Just so I can be reminded of where I stand.
That’s not what I said and I honestly don't know what to say now.
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Wait, where are those examples then? Have any governments introduced the tax and used to money to, say, make fresh food and vegetables cheaper?
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