The family from Blackburn claim £22,508 a year in benefits, equivalent to the take-home pay from a £30,000 salary. The Chawners, haven’t worked in 11 years, claim their weight is a hereditary condition and the money they receive is insufficient to live on.
Mr Chawner said: “What we get barely covers the bills and puts food on the table. It’s not our fault we can’t work. We deserve more.”
The family claim to spend £50 a week on food and consume 3,000 calories each a day. The recommended maximum intake is 2,000 for women and 2,500 for men.
“We have cereal for breakfast, bacon butties for lunch and microwave pies with mashed potato or chips for dinner,” Mrs Chawner told Closer magazine. “All that healthy food, like fruit and veg, is too expensive. We’re fat because it’s in our genes. Our whole family is overweight,” she added.
Found by Joe Carlson.
No cushy welfare system equals no story.
mmmm…bacon butties……
I’d like to get the fat chicks on the ends in a pile. I’d probably have to coax them with some fudge.
They need to get on that mom-swap show with an appropriate health-food mom
They may be too far gone, there was probably a camel toe years ago that turned into a moose knuckle and now into a full fledged FUPA.
#35, Brian,
The best answer so far.
Two problems, the first is finding healthy food at an affordable price. Most fresh foods have to be imported which drives up the price and reduces the availability.
The second problem is there is something in our food that is contributing to massive obesity. Whether is is the amount of hormones in our foods, high fructose corn sweeteners, aspartame, or whatever and in whatever combination, there is something making us gain weight.
And the family? Well, they aren’t giving a very sympathetic picture of themselves.
They give fat people a bad name.
Wow…that’s a story! How can they complain? I see a lot of potential of saving money for that family, for example they could eat less…
During hard times its and you want to get the taxes down, find some really outrageous welfare recipient, get everybody into a lather about it then cut welfare across the board for everybody. Nobody will complain because they are all fat, lazy layabouts after all. The Telegraph seems to be trying to muscle in on the Mails territory – the section of middle enagland that hates and fears everyone who is not like them.
I don’t buy into the “it’s too expensive to eat healthy” argument. My wife and I started eating much more healthy over the last two years and we have saved money. The trick is that you have to go to the store more often because you are eating fresh food. This requires more planning and more cooking. We eat very well for around $50/person/week. We don’t go out to eat and we buy very little packaged food. We eat food that rots.
I find their situation absolutely laughable.
Not able to survive on only £22,000?
My mum with FIVE KIDS was able to survive on that. …And she’s a single parent.
These people absolutely disgust me in that they blame their weight on this. There’s other means of obtaining money that doesn’t require them to move around: like getting an internet job.
Gaaaaaaah~~~ *frazzled out*
The girl in the vest has strait up sausage link arms LOL!!
When a husband and wife have the same hereditary condition, you really have to scratch your head.
Otherwise, only one of them has a hereditary condition and the other one is simply milking the system.
Leeches! 11 years without working due to food indulgence of another kind… whip them out in the fields to harvest whatever. Systemic milking of society. Shame to the parents for bringing up asocial kids and shame to a society that accept the behavior. It make me sick and happy I don’t live in the town/village…
I’m sorry but NO just NO
This is the most stupid thing I’ve read and I’m megga pissed off about it. Let’s start at the end and work up shall we.
The one learning to cut hair claims to not have time to exercise cos she’s a student. SHE’S LEARNING TO CUT HAIR NOT BRAIN SERGERY. My wee sister has just compleated a similar course she had bags of time and worked a job and still exersised and went out with friends and finished near the top of her class. So I’m going to run on a line of stupidity on this girls half. Which leads me to point 2.
How can you not no how to loose weight??? Its every where and has been for the last few years. Since flippin Jamie Oliver got a bee in his bonnet of school dinners. Every sign post and dogs had info on it. I can give one tip off the bat. Have a sandwich instead of a beacon butty you no cheese and ham or something and cut out the butter or use less.
3 you don’t deserve more cos you do bloody nothing. He is not so overweight to not work. I work with people all the time in retail that weigh more then him. That’s just lazyness and if you are so concerned by the situation get off your fat ass and do something.
4 £22thousand or whatever it was is more then my dad makes supporting himself and 4 other people comfortably whilst paying a mortage, bills, car running costs, food, pocket money and whatever else needed payed for at the time and never in my life did I hear dad say we don’t have enough to eat healthy. The only way you could claim that would be to buy ready meals and frozen crap cos you don’t have enough time to cook properly and even then that’s a streach. And let’s face it its not like they are pushed for time here are they? Or did I miss something.
5 ok assuming it is genetic and assuming they didn’t no this till after the children then you can still fight it by I don’t no eating sencibly. Treat it like a heart condition or diabeties or any other number of diseases where you can’t cure it but you can stall and reduce it effects. In this case its really easy todo aswell.
I did have another point but I’ve forgotten it but I would like to make one last comment. I’m fed up of paying taxes that go to people that do bugger all and are plain stupid, we have the royal family, these people and I’m betting on alfie the 13 dad and his kid I think there should be a stupidity or lazynessclause on these things. Just think how much money could be put into education if there was, people would be less stupid and less lazy cos we could free up some time for gym and a class on eating healthy and how a condom works. Just a thought
Ahhh the favrite fantasy of fatties everywhere “I’m fat because it’s in my genes”, “I have a glandular condition”, etc. I saw a TV program about this once. Several doctors said that obesity caused by anything other than shoving too much food into your maw is extrmely rare.
In cases where entire families are obese, this is usually because they are all eating the same crap.
I suggest sticking these people on a desert island somewhere to see how lng their “genetic condition” lasts.
Maybe if they spent some time working, they would lose some weight. Just thinking. That blond girl on the end could be pretty cute if she lost half her body weight.
Sigh.
Do you hate fat people because they are fat?
Do you think that there is no disability involved in being fat? No additional social or work disadvantage?
Do you hate the state caring for disabled people? What about a quad? What about a ventilator case?
Do you say that we should put them out on the street? Let them beg?
Go visit India for a while.
Most of us fat people work, but it’s a day to day struggle against the eejits.
#53–daavO==do you this the post is about hatred towards fat people?
Do you think being fat alone should be a basis for welfare payments?
Do you think this agency is making the above assessment?
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Somewhat relevant: read a while back about an overweight driver who got lost in the snow. All he had was water. Took him 60 days to die from lack of food. He lost one pound per day in cold weather (went from 240 pounds to 180 when body recovered.)
Facts?== 1 gram fat=9 calories, so one pound of fat = 454 grams or 4086 calories per day, not the 2500 the article claims or indeed does the cold weather demand that much more calories, or what else am I missing?
I’ve worked with way bigger people than that… especially in the computer games industry, where at least half the workers were. The dad doesn’t even look all that big IMO
Glad the smarter countries don’t consider “too fat to work” a disability to give benefits for
# 53 daav0 said, “Most of us fat people work, but it’s a day to day struggle against the eejits.”
Umm, eat less and the problem will go away.
#54, Bobbo,
The 2000 calorie or 2500 calorie daily diet is the amount recommended for a normal healthy adult. More than that will accumulate as fat and less will lead to starvation.
A person doing extreme work will obviously require more calories. For example, I understand some Olympic swimmers will consume as much as 9,000 calories per day during training and not gain an ounce.
Cold weather will require more energy (calories) to maintain body temperature. The amount required would depend on how cold it is, how much other work is being done, and how much clothing the person has.
A starvation diet as you describe would either kill the person or have serious side effects. Besides energy, the body needs daily nutrients and proteins to function. Deprive the body of these daily nutrients and the body won’t function after a short time.
Your logic is right and the number 9 is correct for fat. But, the accepted standard is 3500 calories = 1 pound. That disparity is due to the fact that a pound of human fat is not 100% fat. There’s water and connective tissue and blood vessels. (Even fat gotta eat and breathe!)
So, they could lose one pound a week by burning 500 calories per day MORE than they ingest. The article claims they eat 3000 calories per day. T’ain’t easy to burn off 3500 per day, every day. Gonna have to be some food cutbacks, too.
I remember once we had a patient who weighed in excess of 600 pounds AFTER we’d removed his gangrenous legs. His wife and adult son were also enormous. When he was discharged, a social worker went to visit and reported the family had three sofas in an arc facing the TV. The floor was littered with chip bags, pizza boxes and beer/soda cans.
I suspect the family above, have four sofas.
Less than that doesn’t lead to starvation. It just leads to a lower weight and new equilibrium. The same with a higher diet.
We can expect to see more of that here, as the stimulus plan undid welfare reform, and encourages states to expand their caseloads.
I always laugh when I see posters claiming that fat people can magically violate the first law of Thermodynamics.
#53 daavo wrote, “Do you say that we should put them out on the street? Let them beg?”
That’s the perfect solution. Put them on the street with a sign that reads…
“Can you spare a bacon butty so I don’t starve?”
–or–
“Will NOT work for food”
We shouldn’t allow hardships caused by true disabilities to be diminished by people with self-caused, reversible disabilities like obesity. I don’t entirely believe the article, but if it’s true, these people show no desire to remedy their conditions through actual effort. They only show a desire to get paid more benefits.
Ummm… strange that in every shop or supermarket I’ve ever been to, lettuce and tomatoes are cheaper than bacon – i.e. salad buttie cheaper than a bacon one!
Finally how about this simple solution. Pay out part of their benefits in the form of vegetable seeds and free rent of a garden/allotment. Growing their own vegetables will
a: relieve them om the ‘expensive healthy food’ problem.
b: save them not only money Pounds.
c: as as result of b: – enable them to grow up and stop scrounging off the many people who work their butt off for much less.
Should be rehoused immediately to a new council (housing association) house where the doors are not wider than 2’6″ (80cm).
They lie.
Fruit and veg is cheaper than processed crud IF they buy in season.
They have gotten used to eating that way that they don’t WANT to change.
As for work, that too is a lie. Again they just don’t WANT to.
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