Another lazy obesity epidemic story in the tellytubbygiraffe today. This organ has long since given up any hope of actually being a reliable purveyor of news, it seems, given that it is giving column space to misanthropic twats like William Leith.
Something terrible is happening to our bodies. In the UK, in 2012, one in four adults is obese. That’s right – obese. What does this mean? It means that one in four of us is walking around – or, more accurately, shuffling or waddling about – with great slabs of wobbly flesh hanging off us.
Bollocks on stilts. I stopped at a motorway services today. As there were coach parties filling the place up, it was pretty crowded. I didn’t see one – no not one single one – obese person. Most were like me, pretty average. I’ve looked about me for this obesity epidemic and come to the conclusion that it doesn’t exist outside of newspapers and the BMA – along with the fake charities that see money to be had promoting the latest health scare.
Of course, if you use BMI as an indicator, you can deem pretty much anyone to be obese, which, it would appear, is precisely what is happening. Sure, there are fat people about, but one in four? Do me a favour, this is risible and observable nonsense. Given this rampant and obvious use of hysterical hyperbole, the rest of William Leith’s, ridiculous article can be safely ignored. But, then he has a book to shill. One best left on the shelves, I would suggest.
Twenty or so years ago I got weighed on a computerised weighing machine at a leisure centre. It had a keypad for entering your height and build and stuff. The machine informed me that I was overweight. If you had seen how lean and fit I was in those days you would have laughed. Presumably, now that I have gone a bit soft around the middle, that machine would be telling me I’m obese.
“Given this rampant and obvious use of hysterical hyperbole, the rest of William Leith’s, ridiculous article can be safely ignored”
which is exactly what I did.
“Of course, if you use BMI as an indicator, you can deem pretty much anyone to be obese, which, it would appear, is precisely what is happening.”
As the ‘Mail’ pointed out yesterday. Totally normal children. Not a Billy Bunter among ’em.
BMI is, or would be a perfectly respectable measure if …..
One were to take into account the base statistics on which it was determined, which were NOT a proper average/baseline at all.
It needs revising.
How so?
Because the original studies were done in 1940’s USA, in the mid-West … that’s right.
On people who had grown up during the dustbowl/depression years.
The MEASURE is correct, the base-line is not.
One of the joys of the differences between accuracy and precision and certainty (or not) in measurement.
Do you have any evidence that the ‘base statistics’ have not been ‘updated’ (and indeed that they are based on mid-westerners in the 1940’s)?
I remember about four years ago, maybe more, reading an article on the BBC saying that one in four children was now ‘obese’. Not merely fat, but obese.
So that afternoon I went for a walk around 3.30pm which happened to pass by some schools. I saw no ‘obese’ children. I saw a few slightly chubby ones who would soon grow out of it.
No a completely scientific study obviously, but a sample of about a hundred kids in a town/area which is perfectly normal. I concluded that there is a hysteria, a sort of denialist mental illness which has infected nearly all of our establishment.
A terrible ‘admission’ by Rob – he walked past a school and LOOKED AT the kiddies!
If we could get hold of reliable information I suspect we would find obesity starts where anorexia ends.
If one is concerned about being ‘obese’, one method of sure confirmation is to keep and eye on TV news reports, specifically on the topic of obesity.
If they’re using you walking away from the camera as demonstrative library footage, the chances are, you are indeed; a fat bastard.
Otherwise, I wouldn’t worry.
😉
One of the problems is that ‘Obese’ is a medical term which applies to, essentially, people who are a bit overweight (aka just over to one side of average), but a coloquial term for someone who is a ‘big fat bastard’.
Putting aside the (entirely valid) discussion over whether the medical standard is a fair one, it’s quite possibly true that one in four people is technically obese.. but most people don’t know what that actually means.. and this exploited by the scaremongerers and the control-freaks/prohibitionists.
Voyager
No – I don’t know if the baseline has been updated – though I suspect not
Yes – the original stats did come from the US as stated
I asked where you got that information, not for you to reiterate it.
Irrespective of that, it is a flawed measure as mass could be either muscle/bone or fat and the measure does not differentiate.
I don’t know if it is a flawed measure. It may not be perfect for 100% of the population, 100% of the time, but I suspect it is a reasonably simple way to identify potential future health problems for a large number of people.
Greg tells us that the data used is based on mid-40’s mid-western Americans and if that is so, it might well be flawed, but unless that ‘fact’ has any basis in reality how will we know?
I do recall that early BSI ergonomic data was based on figures collected by the RAF for aeroplane design during the war, but this was identified as a problem when making usable kitchens for housewives and the data was (and probably still is) reassessed. Similarly I have no reason to believe that the entire BMI system is still based on 70 year old calculations.
“Similarly I have no reason to believe that the entire BMI system is still based on 70 year old calculations”
And you ask for facts! 🙄
What is your point? That the BSI started using data that was gleaned from measuring airmen and realised that the data sets were not good enough to extrapolate for the whole population and looked for more suggests to me that BMI is probably not based on 70 year old data from mid-west USA.
But I’m not the one claiming that the BMI data IS based on anything, I’m asking for where that evidence for it being irrelevant for today came from?
I suggest that the anecdote about mid-western USA is erroneous and therefore no reason to dismiss BMI as a way for identifying individuals with potential future health problems.
Likewise, I have no idea whether the anecdote is true. I can however dismiss it as a reliable measure because it quite clearly cannot differentiate between muscle and fat. If it cannot cope with the rugby player and the gymnast without determining them as obese at one end of the scale or anorexic at the other, it is worthless. It is nothing more than a figure, which tells us nothing about future health problems. Without some corroborating evidence it has no value. So, the GP will have to look at the patient and make an assessment using their own observations and the patient’s medical history – i.e. treat each as an individual, not as some homogenised statistic.
BMI is flawed below the waterline and is used by charlatans to convince us that 25% of the population is obese when observation tells us that this is not the case.
I think that a good measure of the reliability of the BMI Index as a measure of obesity (and, therefore, ill-health)is the fact that twelve out of the England Rugby XV would be classified as either obese or grossly obese.
Go figure.
I would imagine that if you only measured a number ‘sports’ persons you would skew the results. It is the nature of rugby players to be large and muscle-bound individuals, indeed the only reason they do well in their sport is that they have that tendency. I don’t doubt that tiny gymnasts or ballet dancers would be at the other end of a Gaussian distribution curve.
But that does not mean that BMI is not a reliable indicator for future health problems for the vast majority of the lard-arse population.
Now you are just trolling.