THE BLAME GAME'S GOING TO GET NASTIER AND MORE PERSONAL

Feburary 2 2007: When no-one knows what's going on, or where to look for answers and when the panic begins to set in - that's when the witch hunts begin.

It's starting to get nastier as we enter another year amid claims of an ever expanding obesity problem, yet still with no serious answers being advanced either by our political leaders or through the mass media.

Over the last year or two the debate has already segmented along the predictable political and class lines. The Right sees it all as a matter of personal responsibility (which is synonymous with morality, so frequently a convenient differentiator from people not like us).

The Left has its own overly simplistic assumptions. Just as Big Oil must take the lion's share of responsibility for our gathering global environmental crisis, so it is Big Food which must take prime responsibility for our growing obesity crisis. In Europe, if it is the US's Big Food which can be fingered, so much the better - it nicely fits in with the existing anti-US world view blame game.

The net upshot of this existing polarisation is quite predictable - very little practical or useful will now be discussed or achieved within the political arena. The Right may posit that overweight non-slimming refuseniks can be punished with State provision disenfranchisement (welfare benefits, health care entitlements etc.). Weight-driven apartheid might feed eager newspaper headline writers - but it ain't going to happen. It's crass.

Almost equally ill-conceived is selective grandstanding against bogeymen food producers. Whether in the final analysis production feeds consumption, or consumption drives production, only strict State rationing of food will control the type and quantity of foodstuffs. That ain't going to happen either.

And beyond the infeasibility of direct intervention, the State is also largely impotent at the food advice level. Both the US and UK governments have been issuing dietary advice to their citizens for a full century now. The consistent emphasis has been on variety, moderation and a concentration on grains, vegetables and fruits, with leaner meat in modest quantities. Lacking the allure of quack dieting, such practical advice has generally been all-but ignored and there is little reason to believe that it will not continue to be so.

So it becomes increasingly personal, led by the media and followed by an increasingly frustrated State........

There are the "Fat Kid Camp" shows, constructed with all the delicacy of old time circus freak shows. The implicit starting assumption of these is that the parents are to blame, hence taking the children off to some rural quasi-prison camp, beyond the influence of incompetent moms and dads. However, the focus of recrimination usually shifts during the course of such shows from an implied parental failing to overt attacks on the kids.

Then there are the "Celebrity Fat Schools", where the blame game rapidly becomes very much self-blame, with excruciatingly painful mea culpa admissions forming the backbone of these shows.

Now the UK State has stepped in and trumped them all - for the time being, at least. Social workers are placing obese children on the Child Protection Register, a measure previously reserved for cases of suspected neglect, or physical or sexual abuse. In extreme cases children have been placed in foster care where it has been held that parental failure to enforce weight loss in their children has exacerbated health conditions.

Ironically this comes at a time when there are no targets for doctors to achieve on overweight per se amidst the plethora of measures against which their performance is assessed. Inconsistent? - no more so than most facets of this highly confused territory.

So, who is to blame? - This is the most important question currently being asked. Because it is in fact the wrong question. Until we move away from the finger pointing of the blame game, there will be little room for a calmer and more appropriate consideration of causation.

Let's go back to the kids. To their schools, in fact. How about putting self-awareness and self-esteem on the curriculum? And the relevance of choice, set against the backdrop of social influences. To enable that you could add the ability of personal reflexiveness to establish a path of personal planning and achivement, coupled with a personal sense of positioning in time and relationships with others.  

But, of course, we don't talk about these fancy things. They're embarrassing. For weirdos only. It's far safer to keep your head down and swallow the misery along with a bellyful of junk.

So we talk about dieting and choose to perpetuate the big lie, even though we know it doesn't work. And can anyone, hand on heart, sincerely claim that cutting off an overweight person's State entitlements will achieve success - or, for that matter, fining a US food manufacturer over some claimed gaudy, sleight of hand advertising will roll back the flab from entire nations? This is vapid posturing.

In fact, if we do wish to apportion just a small slice of blame, why is that the things we don't teach our children are the things that they in fact require most to nourish their lives? Is that because we so ill-understand these fundamentals ourselves? But, of course, this is really a matter for reflection and education, not blind hysteria.

There's a little bit more to all of this than making fat kids cry.