UK Council To Send Obese People 'Motivational' Texts Telling Them To Use Stairs

Qedward writes "Stoke-on-Trent City Council is sending texts to obese people in the area to help motivate them to lose weight. Examples of the texts sent include 'aim to eat a variety of fruit and vegetables each day,' 'aim to eat regular meals and keep a check on snacks and drinks' and 'maybe walk to the shops or use the stairs more often.' Over 100,000 people in the region are overweight or obese, the council said, and the texts are for those who are aged at least 18, have a body mass index of 25 or over and who have proactively signed up to receive the motivational messages."

Comments

Misleading headline again.

[sconeu]

But then I read the last line of TFS.

This is OPT-IN. You only get them if you sign up for them.

Of course, at some point, they will tap into NHS (I'm assuming that this is UK), and send to everyone, regardless of whether they had opted-in or not.

Re:Misleading headline again.

[Anonymous Coward]

It speaks volumes that the idea that in the UK something like this isn't opt-in seems entirely plausible.

It does, but it speaks volumes about Slashdot, not about the UK.

BMI

[TranquilVoid]

BMI is designed as a measure of population weight, not individual. Mine is over 30, making me technically obese, yet I have so little body fat I cannot float in swimming pools, and only just in the ocean.

Re:BMI

[ZenMatrix]

Yeah BMI isn't a hard number to go by, there are many factors that can affect it. Generally speaking if your overweight you know it... you don't need some number to tell you. I'd rather see labels disappear and just focus on what you need to do to stay healthy. http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/dow...

Re:BMI

[Ralph Wiggam]

That's called the "bodybuilder problem". The vast, vast majority of people with BMIs over 30 are obese.

Re:BMI

[AthanasiusKircher]

True. BMI is hardly perfect... but it's a good first step. Kinda like "Did you reboot it?"

Actually, no it's NOT a "good first step." It's a fair to poor "first step." It's more like a troubleshooting procedure that's guaranteed to give bogus results in a significant percentage of cases -- i.e., where it's wrong or off so often that asking the question is almost more likely to lead you down the wrong path for many cases, rather than giving you useful information.

The BMI formula assumes that adiposity relates to height squared. It does not. This is a simple fact. When people get taller, their bodies scale in three dimensions, not two. So, for really tall people, it's guaranteed to say they are more fat than they really are, and for really short people, it's guaranteed to say people are at a healthy weight when their fat or even obese.

The only reason the BMI formula appears to work at all is because women are both shorter and tend to have higher "healthy" bodyfat percentages. The BMI ranges are more-or-less supposed to be the same for men and women -- that should be a major red flag to anyone who knows anything about bodyfat, since healthy bodyfat ranges for men and women are clearly known to be different.

So, the mean female height is less than the mean male height, but the mean healthy female bodyfat amount is higher. Thus, to have a formula that works for both sexes, you need something that doesn't accurately reflect a "normal" body being scaled up or down. BMI fits the bill, and thus it has been used for population studies to compare mean statistics for overall populations. For individuals -- which it was never designed for -- it's TERRIBLE.

You can immediately see that from the men vs. women problem. BMI says a short man who is in the middle of the height range for women should have the same weight as an average woman. Given what we know about bodyfat, that doesn't make sense. Or, a tall woman who's over 6' or something -- to have a "healthy" BMI she'd often have to look like a waifish model.

"But," you say, "it's still a good first step. It's a simple formula."

Nope -- doesn't excuse it. There are a number of studies that have shown that a number of even simpler measures are actually more accurate at predicting health problems, propensity for disease, etc. For example, simply measuring the waist circumference for men -- regardless of height -- has been shown to be a better predictor of health problems than BMI. Think about that for a moment. Clearly a guy who is 5' tall should not have a waist size the same as a 7' tall guy. But studies have shown that even measuring the waist and saying, "Is it bigger than X inches?" without knowing anything about height, weight, or anything else is a better predictor than BMI.

Yeah, BMI sucks that bad.

But could a simple formula do that much harm? Well, why not just modify that "simple formula" to make it more accurate? In the days when you had to calculations by hand or with a slide rule, a formula involving only an exponent of 2 and a division might make sense. But most people don't calculate BMI by hand anymore -- they plug things into some sort of web calculator or look at a chart.

We can easily fix BMI to make it much more accurate. First, just change the exponent. Logically, as I mentioned at the outside, squaring the height makes NO SENSE. You might think that cubing the height would be better, since the body expands in three dimensions, but it turns out that the male/female factor and other things that don't quite scale precisely with the cube of the height makes an exponent of 3 bad too.

Various empirical studies have suggested an exponent of somewhere in the 2.3 to 2.7 range would be better. But really, to get any accuracy at all, you'd have to at least consider separating the sexes. At that point, you could narrow the range of the exponent for males an

Re:BMI

[TranquilVoid]

But if I used "mass" I could never lose it, just convert it into energy.

Re:BMI

[fatphil]

No. BMI is designed for naive people two hundred years ago who just want a number, no matter how meaningless it is.

Weight does not and should not scale with the square of height unless you imagine that taller people are taller and wider, but not thicker. It's not a cubic relation either in reality, but there would have been more logic supporting that than square, even if it's a no better fit to common-sense results wise.

Everything to do with exponent-2 BMI should just be totally ignored. It's total bullshit. It says no more, and plenty less, than a whole range of other measures that aren't bullshit. It should have been thrown into the toxic waste bin of stupid medical superstitions that's of no use to anyone decades ago.

We do some work in the field, in governmental contexts. We've come up with phrase "policy-based evidence-making" for such bogostats.

What's your BMI using a 2.5 exponent, as proposed here?
http://people.maths.ox.ac.uk/trefethen/bmi.html
(And no, sorry, I'm not volunteering mine on either scale, given where on the bell-curve I sit. (yes, the flat bit.))

Re:BMI

[Bacon Bits]

The problem with BMI is that the formula is bad. A first year physics major should notice the issue.

BMI = mass / (height^2)

so:

BMI * (height ^ 2) = mass

So it says that mass is directly proportional to the square of the height. That's not right at all. Mass is directly proportional to the volume of an object, which is a cubic value, not the area of one of the facings. Therefore BMI should be mass / (height^3). The formula as presented inflates BMI for the very tall and deflates BMI for the very short.

i hate fuck fat guys as much as the next...

[sexconker]

that butt's uncalled for!

they need an incentive

[thetoadwarrior]

I don't think it's a surprised that people in Cambridge, for example, are quite healthy and fit and people in Stoke are not. It's not just a case of wealth but people in Cambridge are better educated and probably feel they have more to live for. The UK government has drained a lot of the country's ability to compete in favour of advancing London. It's no surprise people in poorer areas probably simply don't care. What's the incentive to lead a healthy life when you live in one of the more economically depressed areas of the country and the government makes it clear you don't matter because you're not a banker?

Re:they need an incentive

[postbigbang]

That's a rationalization. You can be happy anywhere. Certainly the affluent are perceived to be happy, but mostly it's because they're drunk, or stoned, and trying to get a grip like everyone else. Happiness is what you make of it.

There's no magic about one place or another, it's all your own attitude. It's very personal, and carbs are horribly addictive. Take out the carbs, and life is much better. Less sugar means your insulin doesn't kick in and store everything to your tissues. This takes place in London, Bath, Stokes, Leicester, Wales, wherever. It's how we're put together. Depression causes people to carb-load. That's a personal problem, not a regional one. Carb loading to increase serotinine is a well-honoured pass-time.

Re:they need an incentive

[mjwx]

Yes but the difference is, in Oxford it's much easier for your butler to make a healthy meal where as in Stokes, you have to go to McD's yourself.

Re:they need an incentive

[gnasher719]

Take out the carbs, and life is much better. Less sugar means your insulin doesn't kick in and store everything to your tissues. This takes place in London, Bath, Stokes, Leicester, Wales, wherever. It's how we're put together. Depression causes people to carb-load. That's a personal problem, not a regional one. Carb loading to increase serotinine is a well-honoured pass-time.

For the last thirty years, people have been hammered with messages to avoid fat. Coke is full of sugar and fat free. Companies put sugar into food when they remove fat, because removing fat without replacing it with sugar makes things taste bad and people don't buy them. So for the last thirty years people have been stuffing themselves with carbohydrates, making them fat and diabetic. And the more you try to avoid fat, the worse it gets.

And then they start dieting. Those with plenty of will power are the unlucky ones: They actually lose lots of weight. The body thinks it's starving. And all the weight comes back, with some more, because all the will power in the world cannot overcome a starving body in the long run.

The best advice: Ignore all the advice that tells you to avoid fat. _Do_ avoid sugar and other carbohydrates. Do _not_ try to lose weight. Ignore your weight, because being obsessed with your weight will make you unhappy which bad in itself, but will make you eat more as well.

And, if someone calls you "fatty", hit them in the face as hard as you can, knock them out, and kick the shit out of them when they are on the ground.

Hello Citizen - U Look GRate! Today!

[the_skywise]

"I don't know... lately I just don't feel like there's anything special about me."

"You are an incredibly sensitive man, who inspires joy-joy feelings in all those around you."

Sample Texts

[simonbp]

"Get off your arse and walk, fatso!"
"Put down the fork, you slob!"
"You're disgusting! No one will ever love you!"

"Be sure to vote in Council elections next Tuesday!"

Re:Sample Texts

[Anonymous Coward]

"Oy you Essex slapper, lay off the pies n' pasties."
"Listen ya swamp donkey. Get the bangers outta yer pie hole Or I'll give ya a right trunky in the tradesman's entrance and make ya lick me yarbles!"

Run, Fatboy, Run

[ChunderDownunder]

Motivational messages voiced by Dylan Moran:

Hey, maybe there's a little man in there who looks just like you but he's really good at running.

Well... yeah... you put one leg in front of the other over and over again really really fast.

Too many puddings

[Ralph Wiggam]

If you don't know, the UK's obesity rate is right behind the US's and increasing. Since the government provides their health insurance, it's very much in the government's interest to get their people healthier.

Re:Too many puddings

[Anonymous Coward]

A part of being a member of a society is that you care for your fellow citizens. Some even take it so far that they are willing to risk their lives for their society, while others simply dedicate their entire lives and entire mental capacity to create ways to make you and other citizens safe. If you're a sociopath, at least consider that their death would mean that you would no longer get the benefits of their respective lines of work. A lot of geeks are too fat, and if you kill all fat geeks then the world would be a much scarier place.

Fortunately for you, geeks will keep protecting your networks against information warfare, keep improving the medical devices your will need when you get older and keep improving collision avoidance in the cars you drive. They will keep doing that even if they know that you despise them.

You're welcome...

Re:Council Money Well Spent

[dreamchaser]

You make it sound like people need gyms to exercise. They don't. You don't even need any special gear at all.

You're doing it wrong

[Demonoid-Penguin]

Instead of being lazy and sending texts - those obese public servants should ride a bike, or walk, to deliver the message. (or tax the hell out of sugar and fund health programs?)

Oh wait (weight?).... maybe it's only people who are not public servants who are morbidly obese.

Re:i hate fat fucks as much as the next guy...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, if you RTFS, they signed up to receive the messages. So it's called for.

Re:BMI is Flawed and Incorrect

[beelsebob]

Worse than that, the locations of the "normal", "overweight" etc bands on the BMI scale were decided at a very similar time with no scientific backing to them.

Recent studies have demonstrated that they're actually located one whole position too low. That is, mortality rates are lowest in people in the "overweight" category, they're second lowest in the "obese" category, third lowest in "normal". Finally, "underweight" is less healthy even than "morbidly obese".

Re:Weight-ist, and HIPAA violation

[Demonoid-Penguin]

Wow. Bigoted and illegal in the US. And everyone says the USA is privacy invasive. If someone did that in the USA they would be sued for violation of medical privacy law.

What part of opt-in didn't you understand?

The bit that where it's likely to motivate fat lazy people - to make the effort required to request someone (else) motivate them.).

How about - compulsory weight checks outside fast food stores and supermarkets, in concert with compulsory liposuction? You could require fast food deliverers to have portable units - and make it part of a re-employment plan for TSA and NSA staff (they already have the necessary skills and motivations). Reduce health and public transport costs and create a viable biofuel program.

Just musing on my keyboard....

Re:correlation

[s.petry]

Duh, that is the secondary purpose for the texts.

Re:Council Money Well Spent

[pspahn]

Are you the naked guy I saw running with no shoes on during the blizzard?

Re:i hate fat fucks as much as the next guy...

[dreamchaser]

You should stop feeding the trolls. It's making them fat.

Re:Council Money Well Spent

[dreamchaser]

Why, yes. Yes I am.

One possible problem

[techno-vampire]

I can just see an obese person chowing down on fish and chips, looking at a text message about eating more vegetables and commenting, "Potatoes are vegetables, aren't they?"

Re:i hate fat fucks as much as the next guy...

[realityimpaired]

*mutters something about feeding trolls*

Well for starters any time the company buys us lunch, it's two pizzas or two whole chickens per Fatass, and one slice or one bony wing for each of the rest of us.

I've known some pretty fat people in my life (people > 600lbs), but never known somebody who could finish off two x-large pizzas in a single sitting, let alone 2 whole chickens. Either way, it's a pretty dick move of your company to allow somebody to walk away with 2 whole pizzas before everybody else has had a chance to get some.

Depends on the job. In my case, in an office, they get to have a $800 office chair while the rest of us have to deal with the $70 crappy models... because the normal max weight on a regular office chair is 250 pounds and you have to buy a really NICE one to support a 450 pound individual.

Get a doctor's note. I'm not even close to the 250lb limit you cite (which, btw, is *way* less than most office chairs are designed to handle), and I have the nice $1000 office chair, because of a bad back. If your chair is making you uncomfortable or causing medical/ergonomic problems, then get the appropriate documentation and fix it, don't come here to bitch about it.

Not my spot, because I can't park in the handicapped/disabled parking section. But it DOES take one of those spots away from the guy who has to use a walker due to advancing MS, the lady in the next cube over with a severe chronic Asthma condition, and the guy down the hall who busted both his legs when a drunk hit his car, and has a temporary permit while's he's in physical therapy.

So, being morbidly obese (which may have a medical cause that you don't know about) has magically given a person the ability to drive 3 cars at once? Or do you live in an area that lets people drive 18 foot wide cars on the street? Being grossly overweight causes all kinds of medical issues, and for most people who are that large, there's usually a medical problem that is causing the issue, or at least making it difficult to correct the issue without getting a procedure like a gastric bypass. And even that is not a guaranteed thing, as a lot of hospitals won't perform surgeries on bariatric patients because of liability issues.

The thing which bothers me most about fat people is when they try to act like they're some kind of victim. You're not a victim, you're just too lazy/unmotivated to DO anything about it. I have little sympathy for people with problems which are entirely of their own making, and yes that includes Fatass Mutherfuckers alongside drug users, alcoholics, and other assorted low-life scum.

If you've never been obese, you have no fucking clue what you're talking about. If you have been obese, then you're either supremely lucky in how easy it was to lose weight, an asshole. Losing weight is almost never a question of pure willpower. Here's a hint to get you started: the food guide that the educators have been stuffing down the throats of Americans for 40 years? Complete bullshit. Fad diet courtesy of the grain lobby, and a recipe for heart failure, obesity, and depression.

"Touch your toes, Winston!"

[Nova Express]

"Smith!" screamed the shrewish voice from the telescreen. "6079 Smith W.! Yes, YOU! Bend lower, please! You can do better than that. You’re not trying. Lower, please! THAT’S better, comrade."

Oblig Mark Twain

[Anonymous Coward]

"Nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits. Fanatics will never learn that, though it be written in letters of gold across the sky. It is the prohibition that makes anything precious."

Eating is the new smoking

[Evtim]

I cannot help but feel somewhat satisfied about this news. As a smoker, I have no issue with the reasonable demands of non-smokers [I hated smoking on the working place or in trains even though I smoke, for instance].

But the hysterical propaganda that still rages on, the ever increasing "financial incentives" to quit [ever higher taxes and license fees - do you notice they always do it to things we are "addicted" too , like energy, housing, food, drinks...treats to increase medical premiums....] has left me bitterly disappointed by the gullibility of the human race and its pettiness. The lies about secondary smoking, the "cost" of smokers to society [all damn lies, but let's not digress] all these hatred [remember, it made enough impression so that Rockstar to include in GTA 4 an "interview" on the chat radio with hysterical mom that was advocating shooting smokers on site] - I felt and still feel very upset...

And all the time when having discussions with those people I was saying "Beware, next they'd come after you - for your beer, for your food, for your car, for your sex life, for your opinions [if they make difference - freedom of speech applies as long as the speech has no detectable political impact]"

Enjoy now, idiots!

Re:i hate fat fucks as much as the next guy...

[mwvdlee]

The thing which bothers me most about fat people is when they try to act like they're some kind of victim.

You mean like you're doing right now?

Re:i hate fat fucks as much as the next guy...

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

So your attitude towards other people is contingent on your taxes to pay for their problems, a system you forced on them withot choice?

"Here's medical care which we force on you. Oh, by the way, I hate you because you are a fat fuck using it."

So you what? Think their use of it authorizes micromanagement of their lives? Fuck you. You can't give people something unasked then lord over them on it.

Re:Stairs

[TangoMargarine]

Please tell us more about how you managed to take one whole flight of stairs.

CondescendingWonka.jpg

Re:i hate fat fucks as much as the next guy...

[pr0fessor]

Being fat is not a condition.It is a lifestyle choice

That is not true and my wife will gladly tell you how she was injured, unable to walk more than a few feet for three years, given steroid based treatments that's side effects included weight gain, went from size 12 to 24 and now that she is able to exercise again, is back to size 18 and still loosing weight.

If you would like she can also tell you about worthless over priced treatments and tests and how insurance companies try to get out of paying.

Re:correlation

[digitrev]

"and who have proactively signed up to receive the motivational messages". Read the freaking summary at least, dude.

Re:correlation

[gnasher719]

News flash, it's expensive to die, no matter the reason. Smokers aren't adding to that bill any more than you are. Not a smoker.

I can tell you most definitely that dying is a very cheap affair. Digging a grave and putting you inside a coffin costs a lot less than keeping you in hospital for a week.