The obesity. didn’t surprise me. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen it from being little. When I was little, most people had difficulty getting enough food. Certainly, when I was growing up there wasn’t any wastage in food. There weren’t the supermarkets when I was growing up. Your food, you went with a basket and you bought it. My grandfather used to go to the market to buy the meat on Saturday and bring vegetables home and it was, it was cooked food. The only thing we had in tins were peaches for Sunday and carnation milk that went over the tinned peaches, so everything was fresh. And we were outdoors a lot more and moving a lot more, so I didn’t, I don’t think I even knew or heard the word obese when I was little. I don’t, you know, and, and if there was a fat person, you were shocked. You were taken back by somebody that was really overweight. It just, wow, we wouldn’t think that they’d got that way with eating. We thought they must have a medical condition, okay. So it never occurred to us because there was very, there wasn’t that much food around that we thought anyone could get fat off it to be truthful, so it wasn’t an issue.

Too much convenience food really, and if you look at convenience foods, then they’re full of fat, they’re full of salt; that’s not going to help you. And they’re easy to have lots of because you don’t have to prepare them; just put them in the oven or the microwave, which is a bit different than spending half an hour peeling and chopping and doing what else. So, I recognise that it’s going to be a problem. I suspect they’re talking about younger generations coming through, it being the problem so much, I don’t know. I’m aware of the conversation about it.

Well, when I grew up we used to… we didn’t have cars, so you tended to walk more. Now we have cars, we walk less. We don’t walk to the pub, to the bus-stop even so much now because you get in your car outside your house or something, so I should think that’s probably a big reason. And I suspect, apart from the people who do a lot of exercise, and that’s probably a fairly small amount really, I suspect most people don’t, apart from the people who do a lot of exercise, I suspect the rest do less exercise than we used to, therefore you’re going to put more weight on because you’re not burning it off, and your portion sizes are bigger than they used to be. And the sort of food we get now is less healthy than we got when I was youngster, purely and simply because it’s much more processed. So, I suspect that’s… those are the only thoughts I’ve got on why it’s going to be a problem.

So, I think that age, the age we’re in of the readymade meal or the instant food is probably the thing and the other thing I think for young people, luckily my two, are these energy drinks that I’ve seen young kids drink. I can’t believe that, they are just sugar basically in a, in a tin and that’s, I know, friends of mine have got teenagers who could drink six or eight of those in a day, every day and it’s those things weren’t available when I were young, when I was younger, so there are other bad things. We ate potatoes and no vegetables, but our sugar levels were quite low. But I do believe, I think that’s probably, and the fact for youngsters they’re much more sed-, we’re all more sedentary, I think. Fifty years ago, a lot of work was manual, and you’d come home, you’d done manual work, or you’d walked to work, you’d walked to school. You’ve done all this, so you could eat a larger dinner.

Nowadays, you drive to work, you drive to school. Everyone sits down all day and you still have your large dinner. But we’re not doing the same amount unless you actually go to the gym or do something to make it, but I think from fifty or forty years ago, we’d travel about on foot a lot more and say a lot more jobs. We’d go out playing or go out walking or something like that. Whereas, now it’s the computer, the Internet. I think the combination of the both is making it, that’s how I see it.

Better, yeah because with my job I wasn’t, I was starting at 7 so I wasn’t eating anything before I went out and I used to have the breakfast cereal bars that you get in the packets, and I was having that at ten o’clock. Eating a lot of the Special K things, you know, having lots, not really looking at the time beforehand and then following heart attack and being in hospital, put on lansoprazole you must eat within half an hour anyway. So, I was then, I was having them when I woke up and then having cereal before I went out. So I totally cut out the cereal bars, which then when they say to you, Yeah, because they’re full of sugars and salt So with just doing that and some small changes has made, and then going to the gym and everything else.

Okay, okay. So a small change that made a difference.

Yeah, things that you, you think you’re doing healthy by having say, like you say, having cereal bars but then when you look at them what’s actually in them, you’re not doing as good, even when you’re, who did I ask, about like the brand name yoghurts. You think, Yeah, you’re doing well because you’re having yoghurt and you’re having fruit. And then you get told, No, they’re not that healthy. You’re better off having just a no fat yoghurt and getting fresh fruit and doing them, making your own yoghurts that way

Do you have any more general ideas about why more people are overweight these days?

I think it’s just simply because of the availability of food and in fact I think it’s worse now than when I was younger because I think with the coffee shop culture, you know, you walk through any city now and there’s loads of coffee shops and so many people sitting there with you know, lattes and with, you know, with caramel flavourings in and cakes and things and food is cheaper than it was and more readily available and there’s just more rubbish food about if you know what I mean.

I mean, you know, I, I love rubbish food but it’s so readily available, you know, you look there’s Cornish pasty shops, there’s pie shops, cake shops, sweet shops, fudge shops, you know they’re everywhere. it’s very hard to avoid temptation, very hard and it’s like, if I meet friends, you meet, you meet for a cup of coffee and nine times out of ten people will say, Oh shall we have cake as well You know and that, you don’t just go for a cup of coffee, you go and have cake as well. So, it’s hard, it’s hard for people I think.

I think just, just one thing I would like to mention really is the busyness of today’s world is a big factor that I haven’t mentioned. I do think society is changed and speeded up an awful lot and people have jobs that have, you know, perhaps not as physically demanding obviously but mentally very demanding and a lot more stress in life and I think all of that is another major contributor to overweight. People not having the time to cook, to think about the shopping before they do it. To be supervising the children, to be sat down at a family meal table. I think time is a massive other factor that needs to be thought about in any initiatives. it’s no good thinking we, we live in this ideal world of the fifties because no, nobody does anymore.

I can only say for myself I don’t think it’s one thing at all. I think that would be most people’s experience that yes my father was overweight, but he got diabetes and his mother was overweight and the same thing so, there is like a possible genetic thing there. But I do think everyday life comes now with so many sort of, you know, ways that encourage you to be overweight and I think a lot of people, it’s like having a selection of a hundred things and people chose some of them. So, for example, my local mini-supermarket a bar of chocolate is 80p, but you can have three bars of chocolate for £1.20 and as a chocoholic that’s terrible temptation because you think, Well that’s ridiculous. I’ll buy three and I’ll put two in the glove compartment. One can be for tomorrow. One can be for the day after,’ but no you see I’ve been eating. I’d creep out to the car at midnight and get one out of the glove compartment. I, I just think there are so many every day temptations and if you’re already over weight and you think to yourself that you think a slimmer person has either got more self-control or doesn’t need to exercise for some reason their brain is wired differently, you know, that you’re presented with say thirty choices in a day to do with calories or exercise and you just pick some of them wrongly every single day.