A poll as to who's overweight? Or whether we agree with the comment about slacker brains and being more and more overweight with long term health issues. I'm happy to do either - I know I'm about 1 - 2 stone overweight, but that comes from best part of 40 years of a sedentary job and corporate entertaining. I know eat much more healthily and walk around 12 miles a week searching in bushes and forests for a pesky little white ball. However, my weight is relatively stable (went down about 1 stone when I retired but not much loss since). I also agree wholeheartedly that over-weight can lead to slack habits and habitual laziness. I'm all for more and more sport and getting youngsters up and off their arses and out enjoying the wide world ......
And that's another thing. Cook everything from scratch and you are in control of your intake of salts, fats, etc... Open a tin and you are at the mercy of the supplier. Thinking about it, I may just do the same. Luckily, tinned polpa di pomodori have only 0.01g of salt in there, so I'm fine saving myself the sweat of preparing tomatoes. But I'll certainly add more salt, like you do.
Both.! No, I was just thinking about who is over-weight, under-weight or ideal [I'm over-weight if that helps]. If it furthered the conversation and exploring WHY people are often over-weight from an honest personal perspective, not the perspective of just plain data.
I may be sceptical that smoking is THE cause of lung cancer. There are far worse things for the lungs. Most cancers you are genetically prone to. Most of my ancestors smoked, none died from lung cancer and none worked down a mine or in a factory. Since the 70s when the if you smoke you'll die campaign started cigarettes have filters and low tar content. People who get lung cancer and have never smoked blame passive smoking. I'm not convinced the truth is told but obviously I agree that putting smoke in your lungs ain't clever!
The problem with playing sport in your youth is that by the time you're in your fifties your knees have gone, your back has gone, yours hips have gone and all the people that didn't play sport (but kept slim) are much fitter and whizzing past you as you hobble to the take-away!
Most people quote anecdotal stuff to disprove smoking is a major cause of smoking. Undoubtedly some families have much better immune systems than others and are less likely to die of cancer....my family have little history of cancer (before old age) or arthritis (an autoimmune disease) but seem to die of heart problems early until modern treatment was available. Smoking is also a cause of mouth and throat cancers, chronic bronchitis and emphysema, so its is basically like playing Russian roulette....do you feel lucky?
I have noticed over the years that people who play sport to a high degree often have arthritis and need knee and hip replacements....like all things, it's a matter of degree. However, if you enjoy, do it....after all you have no idea how long you will live.
https://uk.yahoo.com/news/news-cartoons-yahoo-artist-patrick-124001850.html I was drawn to the cartoon about United Airlines....but sadly it isn't the first up. Still enjoy the others. Wasn't there at all.... Still it was funny.
Saying "my experience is..." when talking about epidemiological studies is misleading at best. Person A says "I know a person who smoked like a chimney who lived to 107" is just gainsaid by (and this is true for me) "My uncle smoked, suffered emphysema most of his adult life and died aged 55". Both are correct and, bluntly, neither helps to clarify anything. So, how do we find the truth? By a statistically sound and repeatable survey of thousands of people. Which has been done, over and over, taking into account confounding factors (such as working in dusty mines). The latest estimate is that, on its own, smoking increases risk of dying from lung cancer by a factor of 15 - 30 times. That's not a marginal result and it would be foolish to ignore it. Making life choices based upon what happened to my relatives would be ludicrous if there is the weight of evidence that there is for the link between smoking and lung cancer. Vin
Eat/drink too much and am naturally lazy. Bad knees from playing rugby and riding (i.e. Falling off) motorcycles as a youngster hasn't helped ......
I honestly believe that some weight issues (probably a small percentage) are governed by how an individual's body deals with and burns up calories. I am one of eight children, all of whom were brought up in a relatively poor household. All meals were homemade, all meals were suited to the age of the person eating them (as in the eldest generally had more than the youngsters, because they were bigger and needed more sustenance), all meals included vegetables and there were no snacks between meals. Of the eight children I was the only fat kid. I played football, cricket and all sorts of active games at and after school, yet was perpetually overweight. At one stage I was doing all the above, plus I had a morning and evening paper round and cycled to and from school, but was still a fat kid. Over the years, my weight has fluctuated, depending greatly on what type of job I had - office work, weight would go up, shop floor/warehouse work, weight would come down a bit, or at least stay static. Currently, following several years of sedentary work, I have a very active job,(8hours of non-stop walking and activity per day) and have lost 4 inches off my waist (don't know how much weight I have lost as I have only recently bought some scales, but I have lost some). The weight gain and weight loss, in my case, has little to do with eating too much, or too little but revolves around my activity. I know, when I do stop work, no matter how carefully I watch my diet, it will be just a matter of time before the weight starts to pile on, again, because as I get older, staying as active as I am now, will be impossible. I know there will be some who will not consider this a valid point, but it is what it is.
Actually came on here to tell you about Horrible Bosses [2011]. I wanted to watch something really light and funny the other night and I noticed this one initially because it had the good guy from Hancock, who turned out to be Jason Bateman. Then I looked at the supporting cast of bosses - Colin Farrell, Jennifer Aniston and Kevin Spacey, and that swayed me enough. And I'm glad it did. Really quite good, tight, black comedy where 3 male employees, who are also great friends, have such horrible bosses [and they are horrible, although I'd have to wave on Jennifer Aniston, but under the circumstances] that they decide to kill them. They recruit Jamie Foxx, who is very good, and have some semi-wacky adventures while attempting to get their bosses killed. There are countless tasteless jokes in it, which the film itself knows are tasteless, so anyone who would be offended would not be getting the jokes. Personally, I found it interesting after 5 minutes, I was definitely in there after 20, and catching myself grinning and chuckling along for the remainder. If you haven't seen it, I recommend it for a good chuckle over 95+ minutes. A bonus is that they did a sequel which, going by the reviews, is very nearly as good. So that's better than being an absolute dud. EDIT: Here, have a trailer. Be careful though. Nearly the entire story is told here:
I agree with everything you say but if your Uncle suffered with emphysema most of his adult life then it probably wasn't the result of smoking because it started so early? Quoting statistics is never the end all when we know that you can say anything with statistics and none of them are right especially when there are hundreds of other factors which are impossible to nullify. If a government decides it wants people to stop smoking then it will back it up with statistics. Recent studies have proved that how brown your toast is and how crispy your bacon is increase the chance of bowel cancer. The great MMR vacine causes autism fact has resulted in thousands of deaths. The deaths from smoking statistics are pulled from people that actually died, who lived in a world many many years ago.
We all believe stats when it suits us. If someone says 9 out of 10 people say VVD is going to leave, we are in disarray. If someone said 9 out of 10 know he is staying, we believe it. However, I get what you are saying, but if you smoke all your life, statistically you are more likely to die from a smoking related illness. Whether that is early or not is a different question... At the end of the day a 100% fact is we all have to die of something. 'Old age' isn't a disease...
I should have said "All the time I knew him" If you say that you need to educate yourself in how to account for confounding variables. Other factors are not "impossible to nullify". It's basic statistics. I used to do stuff like that (in a previous existence) on pretty much a daily basis. One of the following is true: The government decides to stop people smoking then looks for statistics to back it up or the statistics show that smoking is a serious health hazard then the government decides to stop people smoking. My money's on the latter. Indeed - it was a laughably bad study carried out in such and appalling and mendacious way that the perpetrator is now no longer allowed to be a doctor. Not relevant, for two reasons. Firstly, as I've mentioned, you control for other factors. And secondly, studies are still being done. They are being done in 2013. http://wiki.cancer.org.au/policy/Ci...V,_Rostron_B,_Thun_M,_Anderson_RN,_et_al_2013. I can't find it but there was a study out within the past five or so years about smokers in their twenties, so purely about people born after about 1982. If you want to smoke, by all means do so. If you want to believe that smoking isn't related to cancer, by all means do so. However, do it because you believe it, not because there's some kind of statistical logic behind it. Vin
As somebody who pays to commute to work every day via train, it really annoys me to see people getting on a train without a ticket, sitting down with obviously no intention of buying one from the guard, and then waiting until the rare occasion they are actually checked by a guard before innocently saying "can i buy a ticket" for a stop one of two stops down the line as if they've done nothing wrong. And i'm not talking about train skipping youths who are probably struggling for money anyway, i'm talking about people i see on the train regularly, wearing formal clothes and clearly well off and commuting to work. It's the lack of any remorse that gets me, as if they think its a perfectly fine thing to do. And i bet they complain about the price of tickets going up... Unfortunately i can't even call this rare.
