Nearly two thirds of people in Wales in their early 40s are overweight or obese, according to new research.
The University of London study found 37% of adults were overweight by the age of 42 and men are more likely than women to have a weight problem but are less likely to realise it.
A further one in four men (26%) and women (27%) were obese.
Researchers studied the body mass index (BMI) of almost 10,000 men and women in Wales, Scotland and England.
Okay, 10,000 sounds a lot (although given the size of the population it is statistically insignificant). However, they are using BMI. BMI is a discredited method of measuring whether someone is overweight or not as it is incapable of differentiating between fat and muscle. Also, there has been a creeping trend to shift the point at which someone becomes “obese”. I’m 5’6″ and weigh in at between 10 and 11 stone (it seems to vary). This gives me a BMI that ranges from 22.6 – 24.9. You are deemed overweight at 25. On a bad day, I’m bordering on the overweight according to BMI. I can assure you, that given my skinny 30″ waist, I am not even remotely overweight. Not even within a parsec of it. Yet BMI is pushing me close to the edge. So, take someone who is just a bit heavier and they will be deemed by these charlatans as overweight. This is all about fudging figures, not an accurate representation of the real world with real people.
The obesity epidemic that is supposed to be all about is us a lie. A huge fat lie that is being used to browbeat us over what we eat and drink; to justify sin taxes and restrictions on foodstuffs such as sugar and transfats and whatever the latest fad for banning falls within the gimlet gaze of the ghastly puritans. I went to London last weekend (not been for a while and am in no rush to return) and I watched all the people rushing by – along the Euston Road, on the underground and milling about the West End. Did I see any obese people? Well, yeah, one or two. Did I see an epidemic of fatties? No, I did not. Because, the obesity epidemic simply does not exist (not least because it is not an infectious disease). The vast majority of us are not overweight. What has happened is that the charlatans of the public health lobby have successfully convinced swathes of people that two and two really does equal five.
The obesity epidemic is a lie. It is an obvious lie, yet like the all the big lies told before, people believe it because it is drip-fed into our consciousness and people believe the media rather than the evidence of their own eyes.
Your last sentence hits the nail on the head. I recommend visiting BBC news online and typing obesity into the search engine. There is hardly a day when the BBC doesn’t give it a mention. Its perspective is relentlessly and uncritically healthist.
Well of course, if you move the goalposts far enough to the left, you can get any result you like. The problem, as always, is that most of the drones will scrape through the BMI parameters, and filled with self-righteous smugness will then give credence to the whole farce. Once you have the majority onside, you can then set about persecuting the minority ‘with God (aka “for your own good”) on your side’. It’s become the standard MO for the bansturbators.
More softening up – not of the people but of the Welsh Assembly.
Remember this from 2011?
From next year, GPs will receive a payment for every obese patient they advise to lose weight – on top of money for keeping lists of those who weigh too much.
Under a national payment scheme for all family doctors, they will be able to boost their income if they record giving “weight management advice” to obese patients, or offer them a free place on a diet club, which the NHS would pay for.
Suddenly your ‘creeping trend’ starts to make a horrible kind of sense.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/8527835/GPs-will-be-paid-extra-to-tell-patients-they-are-fat.html
I had forgotten that and yes, it does make sense.
macheath,
funny thing you said that, a few years ago my girlfriend was sent early to hospital to deliver my daughter, I opened the letter he sent with her which said she was an ExSmoker, which was verry funny, as she has never smoked in her life!!
did they get extra money for her `Reform¬ as well?
XX Did I see an epidemic of fatties? XX
I have spent the last month on a rehabilitaion thingy at our local hospital.
Stroke patients and heart patients tend to hang around together.
Did I see an epidemic of fatties?
NO!
But, according to the “health” department, we should all have been weighing in at twenty elephants and a water buffalo.
In fact, especialy with the heart patiants, “fat” was only conspicuous by its ABCENCE!
AND, at a guess, I would say that not a single ONE of the Welsh rugby team are withing their “BMI.”
Fat bastards!
Here it’s used as a reason for our Federal Government to decide what we will and will not be allowed to eat.
Today came with the news that our F.D.A. will ban trans-fats.
Some part of me wonders if they have ever given any serious thought to the idea that as a country we follow what their dietary recommendations are.
If there is an obesity epidemic it lies solely on their solders and on the solders of the medical industry which keeps moving the markers for what’s obese and what is not.
The worst thing they ever did was decide to use averages to dictate what healthy vs unhealthy looks like.That’s all a BMI does.
I hope this link is allowed,guess we’ll find out http://authoritynutrition.com/6-graphs-the-war-on-fat-was-a-mistake/
This is another of those “I am so tired” stories.
Seriously when will everyone butt out of everyone elses business and just let people be.
We have never all been the same shape and size and we never will be no matter how hard the left and the PC brigade try to make us all fit in the same square hole. I have always been a tad overweight yet I don’t eat to excess, my father was a big man who loved his food he did eat to excess. my mother was and still is at 71 stick thin my maternal grandmother was a big woman but did not eat to excess either but my maternal grandfather was a stick. Some of this is genetic it is not all about how much food we shovel in our faces.
” I am so tired” of this ‘let’s give everyone a complex about everything’ and make them feel guilty nonsense. I keep reading these sorts of stories and the last few days it has just made me want to cry with frustration and sadness at the way society is going….. peoples health = lets interfere, personal choices = let’s interfere smoking, drinking , eating,gambling, breathing, procreation, attire the list grows daily….WHEN WILL IT STOP.
“The masses never revolt of their own accord, and they never revolt merely because they are oppressed. Indeed, so long as they are not permitted to have standards of comparison, they never even become aware that they are oppressed.”
George Orwell, 1984
and therein lies the problem the young have no comparison so they believe this state interference is normal. It is only the older generation who do have a comparison and as we will eventually die out, this interference will become normal to future generations.
This BMI thing is completely unscientific and, in any case, should relate only to poulations rather than indidviduals, On a personal note, my grandson, nine, is like a whippet – you can see more fat on a cold chip, but his parents received a letter telling them he was ‘overweight’ according to some chart or another.
Heaven only knows who dreams up these crackpot schemes, but I do know the money they cost could be much better spent.
opsimath
I agree with every comment thus far in regards to the uselessness of the BMI measure – I’ve at various points gone from quite large amounts of muscule to my present state of ‘a bit of a belly’ and my BMI has hardly changed at all!
The comments in relation to pressure being put on children have really chimed with me though. Just lately my daughter – six years old, subjectively beautiful and objectively well proportioned for her greater than average height, has recently become obsessed with ‘being fat’. With a little digging I managed to establish her class are being told by teachers how terrible it is to be fat, how the proscribed version of ‘eating healthily’ is the be-all and end-all and that being overweight is something to be ashamed of. At six years old. Six! In my generation it used to be called puppy fat and kids grew out of it with little or no encouragement – indeed I went from a chubby 12 year old to being like a lat at 15, and whilst I took my share of knocks from my classmates during that period, the teachers were generally supportive of kids who were bullied for their size. My concern now is that, even at school, fatties become fair game as they no longer fit in to the permitted shape for a human being, based upon a spurious measure of ‘healthy size’. Having said that, as children are now routinely arrested for racism and homophobia they need an outlet – it might as well be chunky white kids, especially as the smokers often tend to be the hard kids and will probably hit back…
“…I watched all the people rushing by – along the Euston Road, on the underground and milling about the West End. Did I see any obese people? Well, yeah, one or two. Did I see an epidemic of fatties? No, I did not.”
Try a local council housing estate instead. You might be surprised!
Or Asda in Basildon, not near the Euston Road though !