Last summer, I went on very public record with my opinon that the überhyped and screechingly hysterical ‘obesity epidemic’ was nothing but a crock of shit, cooked up (in this country at least) by grasping public sector vested interests and amplified by their MSM handmaidens.
While I will continue to do whatever is in my power to undermine this whole wicked, mendacious plot over here, I am pleased to note that there is also some serious fightback going on over on the gun-toting side of the Atlantic:
One would be forgiven for thinking CDC stands for Center for Damage Control. Just a year after its widely-publicized and exceedingly controversial announcement that excess weight kills 400,000 Americans annually, the agency is rumbling, bumbling, stumbling toward an explanation for a new study that says the real figure is just 26,000.
Unfortunately, trial lawyers who see dollar signs where the rest of us see dinner have seized on the CDC’s 400,000 deaths number to justify their frivolous crusades.
Now word comes from experts within the CDC that excess weight is about one-fifteenth as dangerous as previously thought, and has a lower death toll than diseases like septicemia and nephritis. Each death is of course tragic. But has anyone heard of the septicemia “epidemic” or the nephritis “tsunami”?
It’s said that a lie can travel halfway round the world while the truth is putting on its shoes. Well, the truth about obesity is finally lacing up. And that’s bad news for trial lawyers pursuing obesity lawsuits against food and beverage companies as well as the self-appointed diet dictators seeking extra taxes on foods they don’t like.
Not that that will stop them, mind. Truth has little currency when compared to the value of a well-forged career-path or the tantalising lure of brimming public coffers. (By the way, the link above is to the website of an American organisation called the ‘Center for Consumer Freedom’. Not only do they appear to be on the side of the Angels but their website looks like an excellent activist resource that is well worth a bookmark).
Still, the backlash has to begin somewhere, somehow and debunking the fraudulently inflated statistics is an important part of that process. However, it is equally important to maintain the principle that, even if all the har’em-scar’em statistics were true (which they clearly are not) then the responsibility for and solution to the problem of obesity lies with the obese themselves and not with judicial system or the apparatus of tax-collection.
I have also held the opinion for years that the obesity “epidemic” was a crock of shit, David; but I think you are missing another element of it. Anti-Americans everywhere love to refer to the general American public, especially anyone who voted for Bush, or watches NASCAR, or sits in a duck blind, etc., as fat. It’s pretty much a tenet of the anti-American canon that Americans are fat.
You see it constantly, from comments on DU (which are probably being made by an obese–espescially by CDC standards–leftist sitting in their parents’ basement much of the time) to the hype that obesity in the US is given by all media.
It fits the anti-American view of Americans too well for them to discard it, and anything that props it up is devoured by them.
As David is the shy and retiring type who doesn’t like to draw attention to himself, on his behalf, I want to nominate this for Quote of The Day: “Truth has little currency when compared to the value of a well-forged career-path or the tantalising lure of brimming public coffers.”
Alfred E. Neuman, what the Guardianistas want people to understand is that REPUBLICANS are fat, waddling morons who sit around calling talk radio while drinking gallon Slurpees and listening for the ping of the microwave as it heats up the next half dozen pizzas. Democrats, on the other hand, look like Hillary Clinton who, without the long-jacketed pant suits, would be revealed to be no Audrey Hepburn, and John Kerry.
To be fair, their hero, Michael Moore is the perfect portrait of the fat American ignorant slob. It’s just that he’s on the wrong side.
Verity,
You are a cruel, yet eminently correct, woman. Poor Michael Moore, I’m quite sure he regards himself as ‘big boned” rather than obese.
As Denis Leary said “Big Boned? You’re big-assed, okay?. DINOSAURS are big boned … put the fork down”.
Trial lawyers and lepers are in a dead heat in the competetion for most popular people in the US.
While I certainly agree with David that obesity should only be the business of the obese, except maybe their doctors, I have to point out that, regardless of their political affiliation, American are fat compared to the rest of the world. Mind you, if you only visited NYC or LA, you aint seen nothing yet.
Oh, and of course I have no trouble believing David’s assertion that the numbers are inflated and overhyped. We’ve been there with smoking and sun exposure. It still does not mean that there are no people that are dying from smoking or skin cancer.
Alisa,
Absolutely right.
The number of obese, but really obese, people you see in the USA is appalling. And you don’t see such monsters in such numbers nowhere else.
Whatever the statistics say, I don’t beleive that such obesity is healty. Anyway, I would not want my son to look like that, god forbid.
Some social pressure on people to mind their shapes (whithout compulsion) is in order.
I don’t think there actually is much doubt that people in much of the western world have got fatter over the last 20 years. Oddly, though, the arguments that it has much to do with diet are actually pretty weak. Diet actually hasn’t changed very much in the last 20 years. (If there is an obesity epidemic, it certainly is not the fault of the fast food industry or anything like that). What has changed is that we are getting less exercise. This doesn’t have much to do with transportation (people went most places by car 20 years ago, and this hasn’t changed dramatically either). What has changed in that time are work practices. The number of people who spend all day sitting in front of a computer has increased dramatically, and these kind of jobs are far more sedentary than even office jobs of 20 years ago. If there is something to blame for people being fatter, this is probably it.
The other question is how unhealthy this is. I don’t think there is much doubt that being extremely overweight is bad for you – for one thing lots of chronic conditions become worse if you are – but the effects of being a little overweight seem on most evidence pretty mild. And it is certainly better for you to be a bit overweight and quite fit than it is to be at your “ideal weight” and not get any exercise.
And the evidence is strong that it is actually rather more unhealthy to be underweight than overweight. But except in the cases of extreme eating disorders, this doesn’t get the same publicity because being thin is fashionable. Being fat isn’t.
Nichael Jennings writes:
” Diet actually hasn’t changed very much in the last 20 years…”
Oddly, we consume fewer calories than previously.
Personally speaking, I’m not convinced by the lack of exercise hypothesis. I rather doubt that the reduction is sufficient to account for the problem. My guess (and that’s all it is) is that we will eventually find a problem with something(s) in the contemporary food chain, along the lines of trans fats, high fructose syrups et al – something like that.
As has been pointed out, it is not so much being overweight or obese that’s bad for your health, but the lack of exercise of which obesity is normally a symptom.
Studies have shown that fit people who are overweight only have a modestly increased rate of major diseases. However, the unfit and overweight (or obese) have a greatly increased chance of major diseases.
I object to paying for the treatment of these diseases through my taxes and the spectactularly inefficient NHS for those who expect the state to sort out the resulting health problems.
Well, hold the front page; here’s an instance of where I disagree with G Cooper, although not philosophically. The fact is, we really do exercise much less. We waslk don’t cycle (except if you’re Boris Johnson) to work, we don’t work in physically demanding jobs any more, we don’t even have to spend an hour or so moving around the kitchen making a meal. We just take off the wrapping and put it in the microwave. We sit at computers most of the day. Many people lunch at their desks two or three times a week. We don’t scrub laundry. We don’t walk to the store and have to carry heavy bags home. We don’t plant taters. We don’t pick cotton.
Except for those people who deliberate exercise, I think it’s a fair guess that most of us spend at least 500 calories fewer a day than people say, 30 years ago, were spending.
HJHJ – Your point illuminates one overwhelming problem of nationalised medicine, even were it as good as it is in France: your private life becomes the government’s business in the name of “saving the taxpayer’s money”.
You all make valid points, but lets face it: a person of average height who cannot fit him/her self into a regular chair (I don’t even want to think about an airplane seat) cannot be healthy, no matter what are the reasons for their obesity. Same goes for a person who may not be obese, but has trouble walking up a flight of stairs fairly quickly, or a person who’s skin and teeth are all yellow from tobacco, or whose sking is all cracked-up from exposure to the sun. It all should be about common sense, and common sense dictates moderation in everything.
“My guess (and that’s all it is) … ”
My guess (and it’s a certain thing) is that the reason for obesity is that people eat too much. Way too much.
I think Verity and Michael Jennings get to the root of the issue: work patterns. I sit in front of a pc for much of the day in the course of my job; my father, now a retired farmer and ex RAF jet aircraft navigator, had to spend a lot of his time doing heavy exercise. (Even modern farming requires that). My parternal great grandfather had a spell as a coalminer and also worked as a farmer; I have old pictures of him and there is not a spare inch of fat on him.
Sure, Americans by and “large” are too fat. They exercise too little because of their convenience oriented lifestyle right down to electric car windows and toothbrushes. They eat too much because food is relatively cheaper than anywhere else in the world and because it has a high entertainment value. I would not judge them too harshly; most other people would react similarly under similar circumstances. We humans, along with most other animals, have built-in appetites which are difficult to deny. Before the twentieth century, almost all of human existence was oriented around trying to eat more and work less in an environment of pervasive scarcity.
In the twenty-first century, people, bureaucrats especially, still want more wealth, more job security, and less work. Accordingly, we have allowed the bureacrats to invent an “obesity epidemic” which purportedly requires massive government intervention. It’s a big expensive crock, and it’s not the government’s business anyway. Even the left-leaning Scientific American admits that in their latest issue.
Ailsa, unfortunately sense isn’t common.
All, You can’t put on twenty pounds of bone !
Since these comments quickly veered from a discussion of the so called “obesity epidemic” to rude criticisms of Americans’ weight, I thought I would share observations collected over years of travel.
I found the comments in this thread critical of Americans’ weight to be rather ironic, especially coming from the inhabitants of the “Land of Big Ankles”. I and my traveling companions always noted the immense size and homeliness of the British and German women. Southern Europeans, on the other hand, seem to start out fit and slender, but quickly bloat around the age thirty, especially the women. It was disconcerting to see fat, ugly Spanish and Italian women and realize they once were thin and beautiful. Made me want to avoid establishing anything but the briefest relationships with them.
Finally, if you have the opportunity to watch “Wild Man Blues” take note of the immense size of all the Europeans with which Woody Allen interacts – especially the audience in London. Whenever I see the diminutive Allen compared to the grotesque obesity of the Europeans and think about European charges of American obesity, it makes me chuckle.