What if they gave an obesity epidemic and nobody got any fatter?

[nancylebov]

http://news.independent.co.uk/health/article3088069.ece

That's an article arguing that there no evidence people are putting on more than a tiny bit of weight. The highest average gain I've heard (can't remember where) is 9 pounds. And people just don't look fatter to me.

Is it possible that the whole thing is purely imaginary?

Comments

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

from the article: "But this is an extraordinary case of moving the methodological goalposts: in 1997, the BMI classification of being overweight was changed from 27 to 25."

Holy! I thought that had changed...but didn't have the memory/evidence. No wonder.

Now, who stands to benefit from attacks on Big Sugar and Big Corn? Hmm...

[kallisti.livejournal.com]

Well, I would thing that the industry who would benefit from an attack on them might just be Big Oil. Corn and Sugar, if relieved of providing sweets can provide a lot of renewable ethanol.

Having grown up in a "project", I can tell you that the people on the low end of the economic scale have always been fairly obese because they can't afford a well balanced diet. As well, the rates of nicotine addiction are very high there too.

ttyl

[captain-button.livejournal.com]

I'm not following you. By this reasoning, Big Oil should be pro-obesity, not anti-obesity. If more people are called obese, they may start eating less sugar and corn syrup, reducing demand for them and making ehtanol fuel cheaper.

Unless reclassifying obesity is a double-fake deal to make people despair of losing weight and give up trying, or something complicated like that.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

The weight loss industry gains when a lot more people are defined as being too fat.

[madfilkentist]

The whole notion of an obesity "epidemic" is nonsense. It implies that obesity is something that you catch, like bubonic plague.

[avram]

One common meaning of the word "epidemic" is to describe something widespread. Merriam-Webster uses "an epidemic of bankruptcies" as an example.

[madfilkentist]

But no one would confuse an "epidemic of bankruptcies" with a literal epidemic. "Obesity epidemic" is frequently (I'd say usually) used as if the term had medical significance.

[osewalrus.livejournal.com]

There are similar problems when medical professionals redefine indicies for good reasons, but then the popular press picks it up.

For example, we have seen a marked increase in hypertension because the medical profession, after years of monitoring, concluded that we should lower the measure of acceptable blood pressure. We dramatically increased the number of autism cases by including Aspergers in the count -- which makes medical sense because Aspergers is a subclass of Autism and the whole category of Autistic conditions is redefined as relating to ways in which human beings process incoming information and express themselves to the outside world. We have lowered the acceptable level of glucose in the blood to reach a diagnosis of diabetes.

All of these are for sound medical reasons having to do with long term studies and treatment. But these nuances are lost when the popular press gets ahold of the statistics.

[osewalrus.livejournal.com]

As an aside, I will ventually write my snarky blog post "Fat is the new queer." Basically, the same arguments made to establish genetic linkage to sexual preference apply to obesity, except we actually have proven genetic links to obesity. So I am going to have an obesity ceremony where I and my Ben & Jerry's waffle cone are united in an intense, guilt-free and passionate relationship -- for about five minutes.

[terriwells.livejournal.com]

Oooo, do you want witnesses to this ceremony? To, you know, help you celebrate the union. ;-)

[cathyr19355.livejournal.com]

Is it possible that the whole thing is purely imaginary?

That's always possible. I'll say only that I seem to remember that I didn't see as many people who were significant obese when I was a kid (30-odd years ago) as I do now. Not that anecdotal evidence is worth much....

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

"There is an obesity epidemic" is a statement which is tremendously susceptible to conformation bias. That is, if one is told that there has been an increase in obesity, one takes every visibly fat person as confirmation of the pattern. I've fallen victim to that myself.