An extra 20% tax on sugary drinks should be introduced to tackle the obesity crisis, the British Medical Association says.
The role of the medical profession is to cure the sick, not lecture us about how we live our lives. A GP with a patient presenting with symptoms that may be helped with lifestyle changes may well proffer advice in that regard, and that will be fine. However, as a blanket hectoring, this is becoming – what’s the word? Oh, yeah “unacceptable”.
It estimates poor diets are causing around 70,000 premature deaths each year.
Name one. Go on, show us a death certificate of just one person where it states that the cause of death was “poor diet”. I’ve got plenty of time.
The Food and Drink Federation said the measure would not change diets.
Damned right. It won’t change mine. I do not change my behaviour in response to nasty authoritarian scumbags who think that how I live my life is one whit of their business. It isn’t. I’ll take a trip to Calais and stock up there sooner than pay one penny in sin taxes. My life. I live it. I will not – absolutely, ever, will not, comply with the desires of these shitbags.
In its Food for Thought report, the BMA warns that a 330ml can of pop is likely to contain up to nine teaspoons of sugar that are simply “empty calories”.
There is no such thing as an empty calorie. A calorie is a measurement of energy* – you either have a calorie or you don’t. You can’t have an empty one. So a calorie of sugar is providing energy. If you exercise, you burn it off. That’s how energy works. We need energy to fuel our bodies.
Doctors said a tax of at least 20% would be needed to deter customers.
As is usual with the leftist puritans, they seek to attack the poor, for it is the poor who will make a purchasing decision such as this. The wealthy will shrug and carry on.
The report says the extra revenue should be used to make fruit and vegetables cheaper so that we “create an environment where dietary choices default to healthy options”.
This is not making a choice. It is the instigation of force. Choice means leaving us alone to decide for ourselves without any outside influence or manipulation.
Dr Shree Datta, from the British Medical Association, told the BBC: “I think it is a massive problem illustrated by the fact obesity is creeping up.
“We’re looking at 30% of the UK population being obese by the year 2030, a large extent of that is due to the amount of sugar we’re actually consuming without realising.
Bollocks. Utter, utter, rampant, gold-plated, diamond encrusted bollocks. Much like climate change alarmism, this one will be shown to be the nonsense that it is. Some people are fat. It is not, never has been, nor ever will be an epidemic – despite these charlatans manipulating the figures and suggesting that “slightly overweight” is the same thing as “obese” and continue to use the disreputable BMI as a measure. I prefer to use my own eyes when out and about and I do not see an army of fatties. The odd one or two here and there. And it is their problem, not mine and not the BMA’s and not the state’s.
“The biggest problem is a lot of us are unaware of the amount of sugar we are consuming on a day-to-day basis.”
Bollocks. I am well aware. I simply choose to ignore the BMA’s hectoring on the matter as I do with salt, fat carbs and everything else. I am not fat. I am not overweight.
A spokeswoman said obesity was of “great concern to this government”.
Well stop being concerned. It’s none of the government’s business. You look after defence and criminal justice and leave the rest of us to live our lives as we see fit.
The BMA’s report is timely. Later this week, the UK’s official Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition will publish its final advice on the amount of sugar we should be eating.
As little or as much as I see fit. Now go fuck yourselves. It is not your place to give me advice. I am an adult. I’ll work it out for myself.
————————
* The large calorie, kilogram calorie, dietary calorie, nutritionist’s calorie, nutritional calorie, Calorie or food calorie is approximately the amount of energy needed to raise the temperature of one kilogram of water by one degree Celsius. It is equivalent to 4.2 kilojoules. You can’t have an empty one – it either exists or it doesn’t. It can raise a Kg of water by one degree or it is not a calorie. The empty calorie is scientifically impossible and charlatans that use the term “empty calorie” should be pilloried.
When the clinical trials for attitude adjustment by fecal transplant get going – the Public ‘Elfs at the BMA et al are self selecting to be in the vanguard of guinea pigs although the sheer quantity of manure required might be a challenge…..
I think the ’empty calorie’ bollocks is an attempt to say ‘calories with no other nutritional value’ without causing the ignorant hack at the other end of the Skype chat to explode from an excess of information. It’s dumbing down of the worst kind as it results in misleading terminology.
In any case, if obesity is a problem, perhaps the BMA should concern itself rather more with finding out why, given that children tend to be naturally physically active.
One does not magically *become* seriously overweight without reason. There is always an underlying cause. It might be undiagnosed broken bones caused by a childhood accident*, for example. Or it might be a neurological disorder—a dodgy thyroid perhaps. Or a psychological problem. Or any of a number of other reasons, possibly in combination.
We live in an increasingly complex society, so our problems are likely to become more complicated too. The BMA need to stop hectoring and demanding tax hikes: their research role is to *inform*, not punish. The BMA are *advisors*, not parents.
If the BMA thinks the biggest problem with today’s society is the sugar content of a can of flavoured, carbonated sugar-water, they should all be struck off their own register for gross incompetence.
* (This is from personal experience. Impressively, not one of my six GPs, over a period of some 23 years, ever thought to ask me: “Why are you limping?” There was, after all, nothing in my medical history to explain it. It took a routine X-ray after a sprained ankle for the underlying cause to come to light. I spent most of 2009 learning how to walk properly again and it’s far from over yet.)
Dear Mr Longrider
It is always amusing to note how far in the future the projections are made. 2030 is relatively short, but in terms of career, the parties concerned will have progressed up the ladder, changed profession or retired, leaving these predictions far behind.
All projections have a relatively short shelf life, being trumped by new projections the week after next. By their ‘use by’ date they will have long been lost in the noise of the ever growing flood of projections which divert attention further into the future.
The climate change scammers truly have it made: they can be reasonably confident of being dead by the end of the century. They will of course blame it on climate change.
The question is: how do we stop these people from sponging off the real wealth creators in the land, i.e. those who earn their crust by free exchange?
Put another way: how do we down-size government?
DP
Regarding the claim that rates of obesity are expected to hit 30% by 2030, you said:
“Bollocks. Utter, utter, rampant, gold-plated, diamond encrusted bollocks. Much like climate change alarmism, this one will be shown to be the nonsense that it is.”
Here’s a graph showing rates of obesity in a few OECD countries, including England:
http://i.guim.co.uk/img/static/sys-images/Business/Pix/pictures/2014/5/27/1401200421087/Obesity-trends-in-selecte-011.jpg?w=620&q=85&auto=format&sharp=10&s=65abc38153f95eb39d014354e775c6ed
From that graph I’d estimate that the rate of obesity is likely to be approximately 30% by 2030 if the trend over the last 25 years continues. Do you have any evidence to the contrary?
Assuming that the rate of obesity does continue rising, do you seriously suggest that the government and organisations like the BMA should just ignore the issue, especially when obesity causes increased rates of heart disease etc and therefore a greater strain on the NHS? Doing nothing is basically not a credible option, whether you like that or not.
The graph is meaningless. There is no indication of how obesity is measured (if it uses BMI, then it is nonsense from start to finish) and predictions are just that – predictions. The past is not an indicator of the future. They will be proved as accurate as the alarmist climate change has been. So, no, 30% of us will not be waddling around in rolls of fat in 2030. As I said, this alarmism is the usual shroud waving bollocks.
It isn’t. Or, at least, certainly not to the degree the puritans would like us to believe. I see people around me every day – I travel across the country to a variety of towns and cities and I sometimes see a fat person. I notice because they are not the norm -they are unusual. The deliberate and cynical conflation of overweight (which is not harmful) with obese is a flagrant fraud being conducted by the public health parasites. I’ll trust the evidence of my own eyes before I trust those charlatans or their pretty little graphs. A graph, like a computer model will say what you want it to say.
BMI is proportional to weight, and weight is very highly correlated with prevalence of diabetes:
http://2014.igem.org/wiki/images/2/2c/Edex_bio_obesity.jpg
and according to this:
http://www.bmj.com/content/347/bmj.f5446
“East Asians with a body mass index of 25 or above had a raised risk of death from overall cardiovascular disease, compared with the reference range of body mass index … This association was similar for risk of death from coronary heart disease and ischaemic stroke; for haemorrhagic stroke, the risk of death was higher at body mass index values of 27.5 and above.”
So, not a nonsense from start to finish.
“The past is not an indicator of the future.”
We’re not talking about share price performance here. Long term trends in health are obviously more likely to continue if nothing is done to change people’s behaviours.
“The deliberate and cynical conflation of overweight (which is not harmful) with obese is a flagrant fraud being conducted by the public health parasites.”
I suppose I should expect a comment like that from a climate change denier. Do you believe that 9/11 was an inside job as well?
BMI does not differentiate between bone, muscle or fat. So, yes it is nonsense. The “norm” has been adjusted since its inception making people who were deemed to be normal becoming overweight. This is what is known as “fraud” in plain English. It has been thoroughly discredited and I treat it with the contempt it so richly deserves.
You change your behaviour if you wish. Other peoples behaviour is no one else’s business but theirs. If they make bad choices and their health suffers, that is their problem. Not mine, not yours and not the state’s. How dare you presume the effrontery to decide that other people’s behaviour be changed. Your arrogance is staggering. it is not your place – and it certainly is not the place of the taxpayer funded parasites in public health. Obesity is not a contagious disease, consequently it is not a public health issue.
Ah, yes, when in doubt, roll out the “denier” accusation. No one has ever suggested that climate doesn’t change. However, the screaming predictions of twenty or thirty years ago have been proved false. Likewise, the obesity epidemic that isn’t will likewise be proved false. But nice try with the 9/11 jibe. You are an idiot for even bringing that one up.
If logical fallacies are the best you can do, best push off, frankly. You have demonstrated your foolishness enough already.
Erm, the long term trend is flat, so the predictions are – as LR says – bunkum.
http://velvetgloveironfist.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/yet-more-obesity-babble.html
If you think that a graph (for men) that is about 65% higher at the end than it is at the beginning is “flat” then I’d suggest you need to go to specsavers.
Also, the graph on that blog shows the rate of people who’re overweight OR obese. From the same website the rate of people who’re obese shows a pronounced long-term upward trend:
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-3ku1BzTaD7g/UWapNE5dfVI/AAAAAAAAC40/OMJR1RIenPk/s320/_55652660_obese304x330.gif
And if it is “bunkum”, how come obesity is on the rise in so many other developed countries?:
http://i.guim.co.uk/img/static/sys-images/Business/Pix/pictures/2014/5/27/1401200421087/Obesity-trends-in-selecte-011.jpg?w=620&q=85&auto=format&sharp=10&s=65abc38153f95eb39d014354e775c6ed
Because taxpayer funded public health is a disease that affects the whole world and the parasites like to play fast and loose with the data. Or, to call it what it is; “lie”.
I’m opposed to stupid interventions by governments such as banning e-cigs and things like that, but sometimes it’s entirely justified for them to take action, and this is one of those cases.
No, it isn’t.
We’ll have to agree to disagree then. I’ll say one thing though which is that I’d have a lot more sympathy for people like yourself who oppose anything and everything if you actually made constructive criticisms, i.e. by suggesting better alternatives, rather than just saying “that’s shit, the government can fuck off” to everything like this.
The number of people becoming obese IS increasing and if it continues increasing at the rate it has over the last 20 years then it’s a ticking timebomb for the NHS so something needs to be done about it.
The alternative is to let us live our lives without interference. People then deal with the consequences of their own actions. It really is that simple.
In the case of the obese, they will die younger, thereby saving money on geriatric care – so the old “cost to the NHS” and ticking time bomb is nonsense as well.
As for my attitude – decades of interfering politicians and taxpayer funded parasites poking about lecturing me and hectoring me has created that.
You’re assuming adults are capable of making perfect and rational decisions in their own best interests 100% of the time. Look at the state of society these days and you’ll see that this is completely false.
I make no such assumption. If adults make bad choices, then that is their lookout. It is not for the state to make those choices for them.
“You’re assuming adults are capable of making perfect and rational decisions in their own best interests 100% of the time.”
So the BMA is comprised of infallible aliens then? News to me.
The problem, as usual, is that the government should be a lot more “concerned” with ensuring the public are both informed and educated sufficiently to understand that information, rather than constant knee-jerking and dancing to the tune of the narcissists on Twitter, and lobbyists’ attempts to impose their will upon the populace.
Nobody elected the BMA into power, so they don’t get a say in how we live our lives. None. They get to inform. That’s it.
The BMA and their ilk are also still stuck in the old mentality that quantity of life on its own is enough to justify their actions. I disagree: *quality* of life is arguably far more important. What’s the point of keeping people alive just for the sake of it? What’s the point of living to 100, if 40 of those years are spent dribbling and incontinent in a care home? If that’s my future, I’d much rather not live those extra 40 years.
Life is meant to be *lived*, not merely endured.
This.
There are those who think I shouldn’t ride a motorcycle because of the risks. I’d rather die young having enjoyed my span than live for a hundred years dribbling in that bath chair.
Me // July 13, 2015 at 11:56 if you really believe this nonsense I suggest that you jot down your height and weight and feed them into an online BMI calculator. If you are stick thin you will be found to be at your ideal weight. If you are normal weight you will be classed as overweight and if you are even a little overweight you will be classed as obese. The graph that you link to contains no information whatsoever to say how overweight or otherwise the cited populations are so, as LR rightly says, it is meaningless.
Quite.
The graph that I linked to (http://i.guim.co.uk/img/static/sys-images/Business/Pix/pictures/2014/5/27/1401200421087/Obesity-trends-in-selecte-011.jpg?w=620&q=85&auto=format&sharp=10&s=65abc38153f95eb39d014354e775c6ed) shows rates of obesity, which is measured by people having a BMI above the threshold where people are deemed to be obese. BMI is proportional to weight (BMI = weight (kg) / height (m^2)), so are you seriously arguing that weight is not linked to whether someone is overweight or obese then I don’t see what your point is?? That’s a bit of a stretch IMO.
Sigh… As stated above, BMI is an unreliable indicator as it can not differentiate between fat, muscle or bone. And that’s quite apart from the cynical manipulation of the figures that blur the lines between overweight and obese. So, yes, the graph is meaningless nonsense.
Just like those recommended alcohol limits that are regularly changed downwards, this is an arbitrary figure. Best taken with a large dose of salt. Oh, no, we can’t, can we, we might all die.
BMI may not be perfect, but BMI cannot beirrelevant when it IS proportional to someone’s weight. BMI is just a simple method that allows anyone to get a rough indication of whether they’re overweight or obese without having to undergo some expensive medical procedure to determine their percentage of body fat etc.
Ultimately, BMI does show that there is a high correlation between weight and prevalence of heart disease and diabetes so I fail to see what your problem is with it?
BMI cannot tell whether you are fat. Therefore it is unreliable. Yet this unreliable measure is being used to hector us about our lifestyle choices.
Correlation is not the same thing as causation.
A high BMI figure is a strong indicator that someone is fat, and as BMI is proportional to someone’s weight I think it’s disingenuous to claim that it’s a useless measure.
You can think what you like. It is a useless measure -and I repeat myself as this seems to be unclear – as it cannot differentiate between bone, muscle and fat. It is perfectly possible to have a high BMI and be fit and healthy.
It clearly is not a useless measure. The vast majority of fat people will have a high BMI figure.
“It is perfectly possible to have a high BMI and be fit and healthy.”
How does that work then? Do they have VERY dense bones (the typical excuse you hear from fat people)?
The average height of a male in England is 5′ 9″ (1.753m), so someone with a BMI of 30 (the threshold for being obese) would have a weight of 92.2 kg, or 14.5 stone. You don’t seriously believe that someone who’s 5′ 9″ and 14.5 stone is healthy do you?? Forget your stuff about bones and muscle, if your BMI is 30 you’re going to be very fat.
There is no such thing as an average person.
A healthy and fit rugby player.
The point was that people with a BMI of 30 are not going to be very slim though.
I’ve come to the conclusion that these fuckers have nothing to lose and everything to gain so they will never stop this process.
We may just be forced to hunt them down and put them out of our misery.
“rates of obesity, which is measured by people having a BMI above the threshold where people are deemed to be obese”
Face/palm.
Well, quite. 😉
Walking round the mall in my town, a few miles north of Newcastle, I might conclude that obesity rates for adults are around 80% now in this area. The body shape of the “average” human being has turned spherical in the past few years up here. When I travel further south it’s notable that obesity isn’t anything like as prevalent. Public health Nazis have cried wolf so much about “second hand smoke”, e-cigs and alcohol, that some of us who are nanny haters, who stand against the lying polemic pumped out about these things, and bemoan the implementation of bad policies to tackle make believe “problems”, are in danger of treating the obesity issue as just more of the same scaremongering and hysteria. But it isn’t – and I would ask anyone who believes it is to come to the north of England and see the waddling cohorts of lard butts who have been created by the food industry. Politicians have helped keep them that way by not daring to address the issue properly and take on the very rich and powerful interests which profit from obesity – leading to years of official misleading of the public with claims that weight gain was curable through exercise. That such a fuss is made over fantasies about second hand smoke and mythical harm from vaping, while the population of our cities increasingly resemble a Hattie Jaques and Cyril Smith lookalike contest, tells you all you need to know about our useless, deranged political class, their warped priorities, and their supine pandering to the food industry.
I’ve been to Newcastle recently on my travels. I saw nothing different to any other city. People of all shapes and sizes. Very few of whom could be deemed obese. Some were certainly overweight. But this is not an issue. And it certainly is not a government issue.
Nope. The food industry did not put anything in their mouths, they did it all by themselves. They are free agents. If someone is fat, it is because they consume more than they burn. This is a voluntary action. No one holds a gun to their heads.
As you seem to be opposed to any government intervention that might curtail someone’s ability to make their own decisions, do you think it was a bad idea to make people wear seatbelts in cars or to impose a drink driving limit? I would guess that if government intervention managed to significantly reduce obesity rates that would save far more lives than making people wear seatbelts.
Damned right. Government’s job is not micromanaging our lives and the sooner it is slashed and got out of our lives the better. We do not need the state to save us from ourselves.
I think the vast majority of people would disagree with you about that tbh.
I don’t give a flying fuck whether they do or not. The agreement of the majority does not make someone right. And you are not.
Just saying that I think you’re in a tiny minority if you think it shouldn’t be compulsory to wear seatbelts and that people should be allowed to drive while pissed out of their head.
I didn’t say people should be allowed to drive while pissed (actions have consequences and this would be one such) – you assumed that. But I’m not going down that route as the conversation has gone on long enough.
Just because I’m in a minority does not make me wrong that’s another logical fallacy on your part(Argumentum ad populum). The state has no business micromanaging our lives and it has no business saving us from the consequences of our actions.
This is right, proper and moral. That the majority disagree says much about the majority of drones who want the government to wipe their arses for them. Time they learned to grow up and look after themselves instead of waiting for nanny to do it for them.
People would still be able to buy high sugar drinks. They’d just have to pay 20% more than they do at the moment. That’s hardly draconian when sugar-free drinks are widely available and their price won’t increase.
Sin taxes are designed to alter behaviour or it wouldn’t be proposed. It is therefore morally wrong.
Can I try some of what you’ve been smoking? 20% more is an increase.
The drink driving limit is a different matter because the actions of a drunk driver impact on the lives of other people.
“… official misleading of the public with claims that weight gain was curable through exercise.”
I’ve entered an Olympic distance triathlon and have spent the last six months getting into shape for it. I eat sensibly but eat as much as I like. I’ve lost about seven kilos and about four inches off my waist.
The first example I used was seatbelts. I think the vast majority of people would agree that it was right for the government to make it compulsory to wear seatbelts.
And people who enter triathlons or run marathons are not the norm and clearly aren’t the people that this is about. There’s 310 calories in a Pizza Hut peperroni pizza and it would apparently take 35 minutes jogging to burn that off:
http://www.calorieking.com/foods/calories-in-pizzas-hand-tossed-style-14-pepperoni-pizza_f-ZmlkPTEwNzIxNQ.html
If you have say 5 slices that’s almost 3 hours of jogging you’d have to do to burn those calories off. How many people are going to go jogging for 3 hours? Very, very few.
The vast majority believe seat belt laws are good policy because they believe the nonsense about how the laws save lives. They don’t, they (via risk compensation) merely transferred the deaths from inside the car to the far more vulnerable and unprotected people outside the car.
http://john-adams.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/seat-belts-for-significance-2.pdf
Likewise with the egregious helmet law that started this trend. Sure, people survived – as vegetables. That’s the problem with this thinking – life at any cost. Quantity over quality as Sean mentioned earlier.
If that article is about people thinking they’re more safe because they’re wearing a seatbelt so they drive faster thus killing more pedestrians, I’m not wrong anyway, because that doesn’t alter the fact that seatbelts save people inside cars from dying. What you’re referring to is the unintended consequences of introducing the law, which is a different issue.
Btw, do you accept that you used the wrong graph earlier? The graph of obese people vs time is still trending upwards, so your claim that it is “bunkum” was wrong.
Er, not my graph, and the explanation of why predictions are always wrong was in the text.
And seat belts kill pedestrians and cyclists but protect car drivers who are already most protected, so it is a terrible law. You claim it is brilliant and an example of excelent government, you’re wrong.
Actually, we could easily do away with drink drive limits if people were able to think laterally about how offences are prosecuted. But that’s another discussion for another day – not here.
So what? A fit rugby player or body builder makes a mockery of BMI, just as someone who is petite.
You are trying hard, but you cannot alter the facts and these are:
1 – BMI is a crude measure that cannot differentiate between fat, muscle or bone, hence is an unreliable indicator of what is obese.
2 – Various organisations have decided to alter what they consider to be a healthy weight. This is an arbitrary figure with as much reliability as the “safe alcohol” limits and should be treated with caution.
3 – Those same organisations when talking about obesity choose to conflate overweight with obesity. Being overweight is not unhealthy. And see the above – what is deemed okay at one point becomes overweight at the stroke of a bureaucrat’s pen.
4 – what we eat and how much is of no one’s concern but our own – along with the consequences.
So your justification for BMI being an “unreliable indicator” is that there’s probably a few thousand people out of a population of 65m in the UK who body build to excess? In statistics they’re called “outliers”, and they’re typically ignored or removed in statistical studies, and if you did remove those outliers BMI is actually a pretty good proxy for how fat someone is.
Ultimately, irrespective of your dislike for the BMI measure, you’re still choosing to ignore the fact that there clearly IS an issue with the nation’s weight and that something needs to be done about it, and IMO a sugarry drinks tax would be a good first step.
Nothing needs to be done. If some people want to eat themselves to an early grave, we let them. It’s their choice.
And, yes, for the last time, BMI is so crude it is time it was consigned to the dustbin of history.
Your support for sin taxes shows your deeply unpleasant authoritarianism. How dare you presume to decide what others should do? Who the fuck put you in charge?
“BMI is so crude it is time it was consigned to the dustbin of history.”
The only way the BMI will be consigned to the dustbin is if an alternative measure is availab le that’s free and simple for anyone to calculate and I’m not aware of anything that fits the bill.
And I don’t normally support sin taxes, only this one.
Sin taxes are either right or wrong.There is no in between. They are wrong in all circumstances.
There is a perfectly good alternative to BMI – looking at the individual in the round.
I used to smoke cigs and although I didn’t like the govt putting high taxes on them I could understand why they were doing it, so I disagree that all sin taxes are wrong.
“looking at the individual in the round”
Yes, increasingly so.
Successive governments have hiked up tobacco duty (cynically justified entirely on health grounds), but only to the point where too many smoking cash cattle aren’t forced to quit for economic reasons. Yet poorer folk are more likely to smoke and are thus hit harder.
I would guess that most non/ex smokers and even some wannabe quitters wouldn’t lose any sleep if tobacco was banned, but £12,000,000,000 pa is a good enough reason for the government not to.
@Me – Personally, I think you’re confusing public health with the public’s health: the former, which is concerned with health at the macro level, is properly HMG’s business, the latter is not.
“health at the macro level, is properly HMG’s business”
No, that is what I’m saying. The govt should try to reduce levels of obesity because of the cost it has on the NHS.
There is no cost to the NHS – this is another lie that seems to have crept into peoples consciousness. We all pay for it. Many of us – me included – are net contributors. If my lifestyle causes me to need it, I am getting back what I paid in. If I die early, I won’t need geriatric care.
The cost to the NHS meme is one of the ugly consequences of socialised healthcare- it gives every fuckwit with an agenda an excuse to poke about in other peoples business.
I’m not convinced by your argument that fat people aren’t a greater burden on the NHS than non-obese people. They obviously disproportionately get diabetes, heart disease and so on, and your only justification for your claim that they don’t cost the NHS more money is that they die earlier so the NHS avoids geriatric care costs, but what about the ones who don’t die early so the NHS picks up diabetes and/or heart disease care costs + geriatric costs. I just don’t buy that ill people cost the NHS less than well people basically.
Well those that do live to an old age will have paid in, so are getting their own money back.
Strawman.
@Me – you misunderstand what I meant by the macro level: I meant those issues that can only be dealt with at government level eg pollution of the water supply, air pollution ie those things that an individual can do nothing about but which impact adversely on health.
Well I disagree that it’s not the govt’s job to meddle in certain aspects of people’s lives if said meddling benefits the country as a whole, which reducing obesity levels would because it would reduce the burden on the NHS. Govts meddle all the time anyway via introducing laws or changes to regulations or govt policies so I don’t view them introducing a tax on suggary drinks as being any different to that really.
Governments meddle all the time, so it’s okay for governments to meddle. Circular argument. It is never okay for governments to meddle in the private lives of citizens.
@Longrider,
“Can I try some of what you’ve been smoking? 20% more is an increase.”
The price of sugar-free drinks wouldn’t increase as far as I’m aware, only the price of drinks with sugar in would increase.
Oops, misread that.
I don’t drink sugar-free drinks because, frankly, they are vile. As I said in the piece -I’ll shop abroad if I have to – a trip to Calais isn’t exactly out of the way and not giving the state money makes it worth it. What I will not do is comply. When my wife smoked tobacco, we did this to avoid the excessive UK tobacco taxes. Belgium is the place to go for that. Again, combined with a trip abroad- stocking up makes sense.
Fair enough. I think it would make most people who’re just in a shop and pick up a can of Coke switch to buying sugar-free though which is the desired effect. I used to dislike sugar-free varieties but can’t usually tell the difference, or can’t taste much of a difference these days tbh.
I can. The artificial sweetener leaves a bitter after taste.
Yeah I can still taste the difference with some things like Coke & Diet Coke but I can’t taste the difference between no sugar & sugar-in squash drinks any more.
I don’t drink squash – horrible stuff.
But what about those people who are ‘underweight or anorexic’? Should not sugary drinks be subsidised and the price reduced so that those people will put on weight? I see thousands of people on the TV who are skelibones.
Dear Mr Longrider
Mr Wadsworth has the right answer as usual:
http://markwadsworth.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/increase-tax-on-doctors-by-20-say.html
DP
Spot on.
Very well done Longrider, you have published an article here that seems to have gone reply comment viral!
I judge other peoples’ pudding beliefs about this obesity argument according to my learning from my own actual experiences of life.
I have observed, through my world travel experiences, that people in the former poorer Eastern nations have become taller or developed more pot bellies with the introduction of Western fast fatty foods and sweetie drinks. I have observed, through my education, that our ancestor Victorians and Edwardians had thicker upper arms and thighs of muscle and not fat, because men and women power physical labour drove the economy in them days.
I have also learned the hard way that living to eat food, or not, causes my mind and body unhealthy suffering, and that only eating food to live causes my mind and body healthy well being. The proof of my pudding about the obesity argument is in the direct experienced correlation between my eating quality or quantity of food and my physical or mental lifestyle.
Therefore other people’s pudding is no proof to me, it is only their knowledge gained from their own life experiences. If they want to tell me this study about obesity or that study about obesity proves what they believe, then their learned knowledge is only evidence of a pudding not of their own. And we all should know the proof of any obesity epidemic, or not, is in our pudding beliefs.
“And people who enter triathlons or run marathons are not the norm and clearly aren’t the people that this is about.”
There are a lot of us but that wasn’t my point. I was countering the claim that exercise doesn’t lead to weight loss.
“There’s 310 calories in a Pizza Hut peperroni pizza and it would apparently take 35 minutes jogging to burn that off:”
It doesn’t really work like that, just living burns energy without you having to do deliberate exercise. 35 minutes is how long it took me to do my first 5K Parkrun. Thousands of normal people do Parkrun every Saturday morning and they tend to lose weight.
This was the comment you were replying to:
“official misleading of the public with claims that weight gain was curable through exercise”
Someone else said that, not me, but I agree with him. I know that it is possible to lose weight by exercise but in reality it’s just not very practical to do that. That’s why I used the example before that you’d have to go jogging for about 3 hours to burn off the calories from eating 5 slices of a Pizza Hut pizza.
If someone wants to lose weight or avoid putting on weight it would be a lot more sensible to avoid consuming the extra calories in the first place.
Quite so. But that is a personal decision.
Absolutely. But I don’t have a problem with the govt attempting to influence a person’s decision via a sin tax if doing so is in the best interests of the country, i.e. by reducing the burden on the NHS in this example.
Think we’ll have to agree to disagree though because we’re obviously not going to agree that they are justified in doing that.
The government has no business micromanaging peoples lives or influencing them. That is not its job. I don’t give a flying fuck about the good of the country, it is irrelevant. What matters is the right of the individual to live his life without interference from the state or the various fake charities poking about, meddling and generally prodnosing. If this is the consequence of socialised medical care, then do away with it for the price is too high.
Fortunately, this administration appears to agree with me and is resisting the efforts of the fascists in the BMA and various fake charities. What they now need to do is hit them with some serious austerity good and hard by defunding all of them.
It clearly is the govt’s job to influence people’s lives if they deem it necessary. Why else do they introduce new laws or modify existing ones?
No, it is not. They deem it necessary is far to broad. The only time it is necessary for laws to be made is to prevent harm to others. Someone causing harm to themselves is none of the state’s business.
It’s clear (beyond any doubt) that BMI is a very broken metric of humanity that’s been a misshapen ever-changing political football for politicised medics and “health campaigners” for years. That anybody can now argue it’s valid is akin to promoting FIFA as epitome of football goodness.
Some people will eat everything that is put in front of them and do no work… other people see it as their mission in life to inflict group punishment for some folks perceived sin of overeating and yet more others seek to make some twisted political capital out of portraying this as the deliberate work of eevil food companies…
The prod nosed and the meddlesome are being indulged and are unrestrained by evidence in our present society – that will change. A large part of what’s happening at the moment can be attributed to the clinicians (actual hands on medics) shoving the Public ‘Elfs (failed hands on medics) out of their way. The ‘Elfs are fighting to establish themselves independently – anything at all that looks “useful” will be folded into the jobsworth recipe. Unfortunately they don’t have to persuade customers with evidence – merely convince bureaucrats to part with public funds.
How else could one explain the present briar patch of PHE and it’s assorted associated Public ‘Elfs?
If BMI were invented today, it wouldn’t use the exact same formula it does today, but it’s still a usable metric that’s simple for everyone to use – everyone knows their own height and approximate weight so they can either calculate it directly using a calculator or plug the numbers into an online BMI calculator. As such people on here are dreaming if they think it’s going to be replaced by anything that has to accurately measure a person’s body fat when that entails the use of a very expensive machine that very few people would ever use.
So people need to STFU whining about BMI and attempting to use it as a pedantic excuse to avoid addressing the issue that the UK population is increasingly getting fat as fuck and therefore something needs to be done about that.
No it isn’t and no it doesn’t. Some people are fat. The vast majority aren’t even close.
Personally I would define “the vast majority” as something that applies to say 95%+ of people, and that clearly isn’t the case with non-obese people because BMI-based figures has the rate of non-obese people at about 78% of males and when adjusted for mis-classification it’s only 43%.
“If BMI were invented today, it wouldn’t use the exact same formula it does today, but it’s still a usable metric that’s simple for everyone to use”
And that’s the problem. The human body is *complex*, not simple. BMI ignores all the complexity and relies on the ridiculous concept of an ‘average’ human being even existing. Compare the ‘average’ Nigerian with the ‘average’ Han Chinese, or Indian. Or Zimbawean. Or Spaniard… the ‘average’ changes with ethnicity. Last time I checked, the UK was an increasingly multi-*ethnic* society, which means there are *multiple* norms, not just one.
The NHS’s own BMI Calculator widget does not ask for your ethnicity. That makes its results inherently untrustworthy.
So what you’re REALLY saying is that BMI isn’t a perfect indicator for whether someone is actually obese or not, therefore it should be scrapped and any results that are based on it are totally worthless.
In other words you’re just using pedantry to divert attention away from the actual issue which is that the UK already has high levels of obesity and really something ought to be done about that, which isn’t what you libertarians or whatever it is you call yourselves want to hear.
Actually, my issue with the BMI isn’t so much that it is very approximate and doesn’t take account of a whole host of variables. My issue is the way that totally arbitrary lines have been drawn onto the scale to indicate who is normal and who is not. The way that these lines have been drawn means that people who are very slightly overweight or not even overweight at all are being classified as obese. This means that an obesity crisis has been manufactured. Of course there are people who are seriously overweight and this has a detrimental effect on their health and quality of life, but the vast majority of “obese” people are not in this category at all.
Just found this:
http://blogs.plos.org/obesitypanacea/2015/04/30/30-of-people-with-a-healthy-bmi-are-actually-obese/
which actually backs up those criticising BMI, but whereas pretty much everyone who’s criticised it on here have said that it classifies healthy people as obese, that study found the opposite:
“29% of subjects classified as normal weight and 80% of individuals classified as overweight according to BMI had a body fat percentage within the obese range. Thus, on an individual basis BMI tends to consistently underestimate a person’s adiposity [amount of fat]. This data implies that there are many individuals who don’t weigh that much on an absolute scale, but a large proportion of their weight is composed of fat tissue.”
“Conversely, approximately 5% of individuals classified as overweight and 0.2% of those classified as obese by BMI actually had low levels of fat mass. These individuals would be the bodybuilders of the bunch – high absolute body weight that is composed mostly of muscle mass. This is often the line of argument used to illustrate how ineffective BMI is at measuring adiposity. And yet, as I’ve criticized before, the misclassification in this direction appears to occur only rarely.”
So actually there must already be well over 30% of the UK population that have a level of body fat that is considered to be obese if that survey is anything to go by.
Regarding the arbitrary levels that have been set for a BMI reading to be considered obese, the thresholds have to be set somewhere. Maybe in light of that survey the threshold for obesity should be lowered rather than increased.
Which means it is utter bollocks. It is evident by looking around you that this is simply not true.
Maybe there are low levels of obesity where you live in your southern utopia. Up north where I live that isn’t the case though.
The northern English diet was created by a society that used to do a *lot* of hard, manual labour. Mostly mining, but also shipbuilding, fishing, transport, etc. All were labour intensive. That’s all gone now. Any jobs in the region are much more sedentary — call centres, for example — but the ‘traditional’ diet hasn’t caught up with that yet.
It takes time for all elements of a society to catch up with reality; these are generational habits and rarely change overnight. Governments can educate people about this, but they shouldn’t be imposing blanket taxes and meddling without being aware of *all* the details and potential for unintended consequences.
“without being aware of *all* the details and potential for unintended consequences.”
Name me an unintended consequence of placing a 20% tax on sugary drinks. I can’t think of anything other than it’ll make price-conscious people switch to sugar-free varieties of their favourite drinks.
Gosh, how terrible.
As I have repeatedly stated, I travel across the country -including the north. I do not see many obese people.
Today I was in Slough, however, I could just as easily have been in Sheffield, Manchester or Newcastle. I saw two women who were a little overweight. That was it. So, do I rely on dodgy stats made up using an unreliable – borderline fraudulent – metric, by charlatans and vested interests or do I use the evidence of my own eyes before me? Tough call, that.
There is no obesity crisis. There is no need to do anything. This time, hmg appears to be taking a sensible line. Long may it continue.
“I do not see many obese people.”
Then you’re not looking in the right places. Try looking on a council estate.
Assuming that survey’s results are correct, you can roughly estimate how the percentage of people in the UK who have levels of body fat that are obese. Using these 2 graphs:
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Q5PiJKRkSKY/U21NR2HPszI/AAAAAAAADoI/WGkdwH1KO24/s1600/_55652661_obese_overweight304x285.gif
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-3ku1BzTaD7g/UWapNE5dfVI/AAAAAAAAC40/OMJR1RIenPk/s320/_55652660_obese304x330.gif
and assuming that the data for those graphs came from BMI readings, I make it that there are approx 22.5% obese males and 66% overweight or obese males, so there must be 43.5% overweight males. Ignoring the people who have a normal BMI but have obese levels of body fat (so this will be an underestimate of the actual levels of obesity), the percentage of people who have obese levels of body fat in the UK will be:
22.5% who already have an obese BMI reading + 0.8 x 43.5% who have an overweight BMI reading but actually have obese levels of body fat = 57.3% of UK males have a level of body fat that is considered to be obese.
Blimey. Yeah, let’s do fuck all. It’s not an issue at all. Let’s go get a McDonalds.
There are lies, damned lies and statistics.
I’ve read some cack in my time but if you really believe this cocklwaffle you are not looking around you. I travel widely and I observe people – I might see the occasional fattie – 45% is clearly hysterical nonsense and 57% is so self-evidently wrong, it can be dismissed as fuckwittery of the first kind without further ado. No, there is not an issue – apart from prodnosed, interfering authoritarians getting themselves off on ever more encroachments into peoples personal lives – and I’ll trust my own eyes before I trust a dodgy survey, report or announcement from the charlatans of public health. The vast majority of people I see are perfectly normal – not overweight and certainly not obese. The fatties stand out precisely because they are not the norm. The obesity epidemic is scaremongering by the public health lobby that justifies ever more taxpayer funding for their cosy little sinecures and gives reign to their nasty authoritarian tendencies.
So, yes, we should do nothing. For those who choose to eat themselves into an early grave are making a voluntary choice. It’s not your business, it’s not mine and it is not the state’s.
And, yes, I’ll happily have a Big Mac (and do from time to time) – it’s perfectly nutritious in moderation – which is what the majority of people do.
I’m just going off what the figures say. It’s pretty clear though that if 80% of people who have a BMI in the overweight range actually have a level of body fat that would be classified as obese, then the actual level of obesity in the UK is A LOT higher than BMI-based figures suggest, which is the exact opposite of what people have been claiming on here.
I’m not surprised at your response about this as you made your position very clear from the outset, but I think given the circumstances a sugary drinks tax would be an acceptable means of influencing the purchasing decisions of people, so we’ll have to agree to disagree.
Sigh – a look around you clearly demonstrates that the level of obesity in the general population is nothing like as high as the alarmists would have us believe. There is no justification for any sin taxes. There is no justification for any action at all.
In the city centre you don’t tend to see that many clearly obese people, but that’s a self-selecting sample of relatively young, in-work, non-sedantary people. They’re the type of people you probably see on your travels. If you go to a supermarket in a non-afluent area the number of fat people you see is far higher and from that you can easily believe that the levels of obesity are as high as the figures suggest.
I don’t just travel to city centres -my work takes me all over. There is no obesity epidemic. it’s a lie.
I’m firmly with Longrider. Let’s be absolutely crystal here your government and, in the great majority of cases, your doctor doesn’t care a jot about “your” health. From a government perspective it’s an attempt to mitigate liability, from the doctors perspective it’s the biggest bang for the least contact time. Your doctor doesn’t call you in for a screening of this that or the other because they care about you, all these screening processes are bonus earning potentials. My GP surgery of some 50 years ejected me from their practice on the technicality of moving two minutes out of their catchment area. I had been diagnosed with terminal cancer with a secured place in the local hospice and I may have to be seen on a regular basis. Too much unpaid attention required. Prior to diagnosis the last visit was 28 years previous. As it transpires, I’m still here 8 years on.
The BMI are just bandwaggoning here further opportunity for head shaking, finger wagging and general empowerment by the doctors.
” when you come to see us we will be asking you about your smoking and drinking now it’s going to extend to eating habits! My stock answer to all has been and will continue to be MYO(F)B.
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
The infantilisation of the population is nearing completion, when we that can still think for ourselves have gone the government is going to have free reign to make everyone’s life an existence, scared of our own shadows and looking to the government to oversee every aspect of our lives.
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety)”
That was the line peddled in that The Power of Nightmares documentary wasn’t it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_Nightmares. Great thought-provoking documentary, but when you thought about it in the cold light of day it’s just classic conspiracy theory bollocks. 9/11 was not an inside job, and anyone believing that it was should be sectioned IMO.
I’m sure politicians typically err on the side of caution, mainly to cover their arses in case something bad happens, but that shouldn’t be confused with intentionally making the population fearful as a result of their decisions.
So someone who believes lies, misrepresentation and outright nonsense should be sectioned, eh? How very liberal of you. But then, we’ve seen your authoritarian underbelly, haven’t we?
I was exaggerating, obviously.
Just as you were when claiming that the country is becoming fat. It isn’t.
It already is fat:
http://i.guim.co.uk/img/static/sys-images/Business/Pix/pictures/2014/5/27/1401200421087/Obesity-trends-in-selecte-011.jpg?w=620&q=85&auto=format&sharp=10&s=65abc38153f95eb39d014354e775c6ed
No, it isn’t. Quoting a dodgy graph doesn’t change that.
Why is that graph “dodgy”? Oh forgot, it contradicts what you’re saying. Must be dodgy then.
It is based on BMI, which is seriously flawed. And, yes, it contradicts direct evidence seen all around me every day. It’s garbage. Tells us nothing.
Unless you’re claiming that the obesity data is made up then what you see on your travels is irrelevant. And if you are saying the obesity data is made up then you need to stop being so paranoid.
It wasn’t peddled, it was a quote from H.L.Mencken C 1906 and it’s as true today as it was when he penned it.
Without fear there is no control and most of the inspired fear is a control mechanism. You may well be correct about 9/11 but boy have the governments capitalised on it, increasing their control potentials exponentially with draconian ways to monitor populations. Totally disproportionate to the action.
This brave (LOL) new world you seem determined to create Where the population is reduced to economic units, praised for their contributions but decried when they need some, of their own, money back, it will be an abomination.
Judging by your previous posts I am inclined to think that you’re a compliant antagonist and I commend the patience of those who have responded and tried to explain themselves.
“I’m sure politicians typically err on the side of caution”, really? what politicians are actually doing, ably aided an abetted by bureaucrats and the higher echelons of the civil service is protect and aggrandise their own positions. Your government hasn’t got your back it’s standing on it.
First they came for them and you did nothing, where will you be when they come for you….and they will. Government is expanding it’s remit to encompass every area of everyone’s life exponentially.
Even if you agree with this instance you should, IMO, reject the concept.
If the proposed sugar tax was put to the people it would return a resounding no. Democracy eh……..there’s an idea.
Flyinthesky, I think the reason The Power of Nightmares was relatively convincing at the time was because you almost wouldn’t put it past Bush and his neo-con mates. I don’t think the same could be said for UK govts at the time or since or Obama’s administration though, albeit that I agree they have exploited it.
“This brave (LOL) new world you seem determined to create”
I’m not trying to create anything. I opposed the smoking ban and am against the idiocy about e-cigs. I just think that something needs to be done about obesity, because if left to the free market obesity will continue to get worse until everyone pops.
“you’re a compliant antagonist and I commend the patience of those who have responded and tried to explain themselves”
I’ve been repeatedly told that the BMI mis-classifies healthy people as being obese, when in fact it turns out that the exact opposite applies, so I’m the one who should be commended for my patience if anyone.
And for the record I can’t stand politicians. They’re power hungry, self-serving liars on the whole. But I’m just not as cynical about the decisions they make as you and others on here appear to be.
Here’s a little science for you.
All carbohydrates are metabolised into sugars.
What’s the next step, tax pastry, pasta, potatoes, carrots, turnips.
They all metabolise into sugars.
This problem has been greatly exacerbated by the government proponing a LFHC diet. Eating fat doesn’t make you fat but carbohydrates do. Eating fat does not invoke insulin production.
LFHC recommendation by the “experts”, the body doesn’t differentiate between carbs and sugar, the carbs are converted by the body into sugars. If you deprive the body of carbohydrates (sugars) it adapts (ketogenesis) to mobilise the fat storage as fuel.
Eating large quantities of carbohydrates (converted to sugars) leads the body to respond with an insulin spike, insulin is the bodys instruction to store, this rapidly reduces blood sugar, when the sugar level goes down your body tells you you’re hungry so the cycle repeats.
So government guidelines have had a large negative effect on this situation and they now “classically” propose themselves as a solution to it.
If you want to lose weight HFLC is the way to go. The opposite of the prevailing government guidelines.
Aren’t there something like 9 teaspoons of sugar in an average non-sugar-free drink though? That’s crazy and when sugar-free varieties of the same drinks taste almost identical I don’t see the problem in trying to give people a nudge towards the sugar-free version.
Anyway, the govt have already said they’re not going to tax sugary drinks so this is all hypothetical.
Sugar replacements vary from unpalatable to downright toxic. Some of the long term consequences are unknown.
Nudge becomes nudge with menaces and ultimately edict.
If obese people give up sugar while on the insulin see saw they will satiate the craving with carbs. No net benefit.
The government edicts to food manufacturers Low fat, Low salt, low sugar, it exacerbates the problem it does not solve it. Manufacturers use chemical stabilisers, emulsifiers and fillers to retain texture and palatability. most of which the consequences of long term ingestion is not known.
In a study in the USA it was illustrated that if you deprive cattle of salt it increased their appetite, they achieved kill weight much quicker. Maybe it’s the same with humans. Another possible faux pas by the “experts”
The bottom line is there are no bad foods only bad quantities.
Fat? don’t eat so much, always hungry? don’t eat so much (it’s the insulin spike from excessive carb and direct sugar intake that makes you hungry) And without some serious self discipline it’s circular, eat hungry eat hungry and self perpetuating.
There’s nearly always the afterthought
If you go out for a drink and over indulge you either want a curry or a kebab or indeed on waking a bacon sandwich, all salt laden. Large volumes of liquid and alcohol by diuretic action reduce the sodium level in the body so it craves to replace it.
Conversely if you eat a lot of crisps or salted peanuts your body craves water, it’s a near perfect organism it doesn’t require the services of an expert to dictate daily limits.
My daily limits for whatever are precisely what I say they are. The government and the public health parasites can fuck right off. I will not obey their edicts and I will avoid their sin taxes. If that means crossing the channel to stock up, so be it. I will not comply. It is not their place to dictate my lifestyle – nor nudge it.
“Sugar replacements vary from unpalatable to downright toxic.”
I don’t think they are unpalatable though. They used to be but a few years ago the taste of sugar-free drinks improved pretty dramatically and I can’t usually tell the difference between no sugar and sugar varieties any more.
“The bottom line is there are no bad foods only bad quantities”
I completely agree with that, but I think that’s the reasoning behind bringing a sugary drinks tax in.
Indeed. So, for once, government is getting it right.
Muscle is 18% denser than fat. (In fact, of blood, bone, muscle and fat, fat is the *least* dense. Therefore, 1 kilo of fat will take up 18% more space than 1 kilo of muscle.)
If you therefore decide to lose weight through exercise, such as going to a gym, there’s every chance this could make your BMI go *up*. Your light, but voluminous layers of fat may be going down, but you’re also *adding* muscle, as that’s what many forms of exercise do.
The only way to *guarantee* a reduction your BMI is, then, to starve yourself thin. Or, in Internet click-bait parlance: “NEW ANOREXIA DIET! YOU WON’T BELIEVE HOW GOOD IT IS AT REDUCING YOUR BMI!”
Bone is even heavier than muscle, so your bone structure, which is defined by genetics, will also play a big part in determining your BMI as, again, BMI makes absolutely no distinction between bone, blood, fat, muscle, brain tissue, or any of the myriad other variables related to physical fitness. It just lumps them together and takes no account of genetic variations.
In biology, the field of morphology deals explicitly with how these can affect body shape. For example, some groups tend towards a robust morphology, while others tend to be gracile. (You can very clearly see the difference in sports: gracile athletes tend to be better at endurance sports, while robust morphologies are common in weightlifting, sprinting, etc.)
BMI does exactly what it says on the tin: it’s an approximate measurement of body *mass*. All of it. Not just the fat bits. Even the NHS’ own BMI Calculator — http://www.nhs.uk/Tools/Pages/Healthyweightcalculator.aspx — includes a list of caveats in the “How the results are calculated” section. (Note that it’s particularly tricky to apply to children.)
For those who are still unconvinced:
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/18043813/ns/health-fitness/t/when-determining-whos-fat-bmi-bunk/#.VaZO2FIViUk – on BMI in general.
http://www.nature.com/ijo/journal/v36/n2/full/ijo2011100a.html – BMI’s rather wide margin for error; recommends not relying solely on BMI.
http://www.jabfm.org/content/25/4/422.abstract?sid=cd1df0f2-8344-4eba-91b0-f9c813b70bc9 – Mild obesity apparently not quite the death sentence the nanny state would have us believe.
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2006/nov/28/healthandwellbeing.health1 – being a little overweight may even be better than being underweight.
(NOTE: Some sources are indirect due to some journals requiring subscriptions to view the original source material.)
In summary: If you want quality data, you need to use quality metrics. BMI is a poor quality metric devised over a 100 ago. We’ve moved on quite a bit since then. Any ‘study’ that uses BMI as its primary, let alone sole, metric is likely to have such massive margins for error as to be effectively worthless.
It says a lot for BMI’s failings that even the ‘pinch more than an inch’ slogan once used by Kellogg’s for their ‘Special K’ cereals is a more reliable indicator of body-fat problems. (See the second source in my list above.)
This.
“If you therefore decide to lose weight through exercise, such as going to a gym, there’s every chance this could make your BMI go *up*.”
Here’s a link I’ve already posted once which you appear to have missed:
http://blogs.plos.org/obesitypanacea/2015/04/30/30-of-people-with-a-healthy-bmi-are-actually-obese/
Here’s the relevant bits from it about mis-classification of obese people using the BMI:
“First, 29% of subjects classified as normal weight and 80% of individuals classified as overweight according to BMI had a body fat percentage within the obese range. Thus, on an individual basis BMI tends to consistently underestimate a person’s adiposity [level of fat].”
“Conversely, approximately 5% of individuals classified as overweight and 0.2% of those classified as obese by BMI actually had low levels of fat mass. These individuals would be the bodybuilders of the bunch – high absolute body weight that is composed mostly of muscle mass.”
So your issue with the BMI mis-classifying healthy people as obese because they have a high BMI due to high muscle mass is a tiny problem, whereas there appears to be a huge problem of the BMI mis-classifying people as being overweight when in fact they have obese levels of body fat.
He even mentions that your argument is regularly used to criticise BMI, but that people who use the argument are wrong:
“This is often the line of argument used to illustrate how ineffective BMI is at measuring adiposity. And yet, as I’ve criticized before, the misclassification in this direction appears to occur only rarely.”
The situation with obesity in the UK is therefore far worse than BMI-based figures suggest. I calculated based on the mis-classification rate for overweight people that have obese levels of body fat that the total obesity rate for men is in the region of 57%, whereas everyone on here is near enough making out that every single male in the UK has a six pack and not an ounce of fat on him.
No, it isn’t.
And it is self-evident bollocks on stilts. Obesity is nowhere near a fraction of this rate. Not even remotely close. Hysterical cockwaffle. Utter fucking nonsense.
No, we are not.
You just jumped the shark on this one.
The data suggests you’re wrong I’m afraid.
The data is bullshit. 57% of males obese? FFS! This is so obviously wrong that it isn’t worth further comment.
Having said that, I think it would be a good idea to update the BMI by for example adding parameters other than just weight and height. It’s hardly beyond people to measure their own chest and stomach dimensions, say, and add those into the equation, and carry out studies to find out what constants should be used to multiply each measurement by to minimise the mis-classification between predicting obesity and actual obese levels of body fat.
But until something better is introduced we’re stuck with BMI, and it’s far from utterly useless as you people try to make it out to be.
Btw, I’ve no doubt that people like you would find fault with whatever metric was used, because the likelihood of finding a simple formula with a zero mis-classification rate is zero.
I have no problem with accurate measurements. The BMI simply does not qualify. And, as stated – my own observations tell me the hysterical screeching from the public health lobby and various vested interests and fake charities is gross exaggeration and best ignored – and the organisations de-funded.
As already mentioned, the BMI underestimates actual levels of body fat, so shouldn’t you be championing its use?
It’s not accurate, cannot differentiate between bone, fat and muscle, so, no, I don’t champion its use.
No, my observations are not irrelevant. When what we see directly contradicts the “figures” then someone, somewhere is being somewhat loose with the truth. And, no, I’m not paranoid this is the argument used by someone trying to defend the indefensible and having comprehensively lost the argument is clutching at straws. Go fuck yourself with your claims of paranoia.
The obesity levels are a result of exaggerated figures, conflating “overweight” with “clinically obese” and using BMI as a measurement despite it being thoroughly unreliable. The evidence of my own eyes is rather more reliable – because I see very few fat people around me. This is direct evidence unfiltered by the public health lobby and the various parasitic fake charities with a vested interest in the constant screeching for ever more restrictions on our lifestyles and more money for them.
“Go fuck yourself with your claims of paranoia.”
I’ve got no reason to doubt the data anyway. If you choose not to believe it that’s your business. Doubting official data published by the OECD from this report:
http://www.oecd.org/health/Obesity-Update-2014.pdf
seems pretty paranoid to me anyway.
Scepticism when faced with dodgy stats and outright lies (these lying aresholes are claiming that the fat tax in Denmark was a success FFS!) is not a sign of mental illness. If you wish to continue this line of argument, you will cease to be welcome here.
Some people are fat. The majority are not. Claims to the contrary are untrue. If you are that gullible you believe the bullshit pushed out by these charlatans, that’s your problem, not mine, but the facts remain; the whole obesity crisis is built on exaggeration and hysteria. The majority of people are not fat. And I’ll trust my eyes before I trust dodgy graphs and fake charity press releases.
Accusing someone of paranoia on the internet is more a figure of speech than an actual accusation of mental illness tbh so chill out.
I don’t see why an organisation like the OECD would fabricate data anyway. I’m sceptical about stuff that govts publish if I think that politicians been subjected to lobbying, but the most likely people to have done that in this case are the food lobby so I fail to see why govts would publish obesity data that exaggerates the problem. The opposite is more likely if anything.
Don’t fucking say it, then.
They conflate “overweight” with “obese”, this leads to exaggeration. Being a bit overweight is not a problem. The vast majority of people walking about are neither and this is discernible by using observation. This directly contradicts the official figures – therefore the official figures are unreliable.
As for lobbying – vile little organisations such as Action on Sugar have been doing just that. There’s public money to be had by constantly banging the drum.
There is no obesity crisis. Some people are fat. Most are self-evidently not and those that are need to be left to their own devices. There is no need to do anything – apart from ceasing all funding of those nasty little parasites lurking in the public health lobby.
We’re not going to agree about the figures. I believe them, you don’t.
Re lobbying, I can’t say I know anything about the anti-sugar organisations but I find it very difficult to believe that they’ll have anywhere near as much influence with politicians as the hugely powerful food lobby which seems to steamroller over anyone who wants to limit the amount of food that people shovel into their gobs.
I don’t believe the figures because they are in stark contrast to the reality I see about me every day. This is just another health scare like AIDS, Lysteria and BSE. None of those came to pass and this will, likewise.
Anyone who can seriously parrot such a stupid figure as 57% of males are obese needs to take a good hard look at the world about them and stop being a useful idiot.
Figures will say whatever you want them to say and if you move an arbitrary line, you get more obese people – on paper. The reality is different.
Ah, yes, the big food canard. If they wish to lobby, that’s fine with me. They are using their own money and are not restricting anyone’s liberty, unlike the fake charities and public health puritans. What people shovel into their gobs is their business and no one else’s.
“This is just another health scare like AIDS”
https://www.aids.gov/federal-resources/around-the-world/global-aids-overview/
“According to WHO, an estimated 39 million people have died since the first cases were reported in 1981 and 1.5 million people died of AIDS-related causes in 2013”
Just another health scare, there, AIDS. Nowt to worry about. Irrelevant. I don’t see people with AIDS on my travels. And believe me, I travel a lot. AIDS doesn’t exist. It is a figment of the imagination of the health lobby.
“Anyone who can seriously parrot such a stupid figure as 57% of males are obese”
I agree that 57% seems high. But that might be down to the percentage of body fat required for someone to be deemed to be obese being lower than you or I expect it to be. I don’t know what the percentage is, and I doubt you do either.
“the big food canard. If they wish to lobby, that’s fine with me. They are using their own money”
That’s the thing with lobbying though isn’t it. He with the biggest cheque gets his way. Earlier in this thread you were claiming that it is immoral for govts to meddle in the lives of the public, yet you have no problem whatsoever with the utter immorality of corporations having a huge influence on govts because they’ve got so much money to spend on lobbying them.
The global population is 7 billion. 39 million contracting AIDS over a period of nearly forty years is not the great epidemic we were warned about in 1981. We know what causes it, we know how to prevent it, so, no nothing to worry about. Just another health scare.
It’s irrelevant and I don’t care, because whatever it is, it is an arbitrary figure that can and has been changed at the whim of the health lobby.
They are not stealing money and they are not affecting my liberty. Nor are they forcing me to consume their products. If they want to lobby government to leave them alone to trade freely on the open market without interference that’s perfectly reasonable. Good luck to them.
Yup, you are a useful idiot because you are the one who is parroting the lies, disinformation and propaganda pushed out by the public health lobby – and it is you who has the fucking effrontery to state that someone should have the right to interfere in what people eat. How fucking dare you! It’s none of your business, it’s none of the state’s business and it’s none of the fucking fake charities’ business. These people are charlatans, liars and thieves. The sooner their funding is cut off, the better. If “big food” is able to put a spoke in the wheels of this vile industry, they are on the side of the angels.
Given that you clearly don’t know when you have comprehensively lost the argument and have no concept of the principle of individual liberty, now is the time to draw a line under it. Enough already. I’m tired of repeatedly debunking your nonsense.